10 



ORIENTAL COSMOGONY. 



[Ch. II. 



between the rivers Selima and Sutlej ; and in this mound 

 were found the bones of elephants and men, some of them 

 petrified, and some of them resembling bone. The gigantic 



dimensions attributed to the human bones show them to have 

 belonged to some of the larger pachydermata.** 



But although the Brahmins, like the priests of Egypt, may 

 have been acquainted with the existence of fossil remains 

 in the strata, it is possible that the doctrine of successive 

 destructions and renovations of the world, merely received 

 corroboration from such proofs ; and that it may have been 

 originally handed down, like the religious traditions of most 

 nations, from a ruder state of society. The system may have 

 had its source, in part at least, in exaggerated accounts of 



those dreadful catastrophes, which are occasioned by particular 

 combinations of natural causes. Floods and volcanic erup- 

 tions, the agency of water and fire, are the chief instruments 

 of devastation on our globe. We shall point out in the 

 sequel the extent of many of these calamities, recurring at 

 distant intervals of time, in the present course of nature ; 

 and shall only observe here, that they are so peculiarly cal- 

 culated to inspire a lasting terror, and are so often fatal in 

 their consequences to great multitudes of people, that it 

 scarcely requires the passion for the marvellous, so character- 

 istic of rude and half-civilised nations, still less the exuberant 

 imagination of Eastern writers, to augment them into general 

 cataclysms and conflagrations. 



The great flood of the Chinese, which their traditions 

 carry back to the period of Yaou, something more than 2,000 

 years before our era, has been identified by some persons 

 with the universal deluge described in the Old Testament ; 

 but according to Mr. Davis, who accompanied two of our 

 embassies to China, and who has carefully examined their 

 written accounts, the Chinese cataclysm is therein described 

 as interrupting the business of agriculture, rather than as 



involving a general destruction of the human race. 



The 



* A Persian MS. copy of the historian 

 Ferishta, in the library of the East India 

 Company, relating to the rise and pro- 

 gress of the Mahomedan empire in 

 India, was procured by Colonel Briggs 



from the library of Tippoo Sultan in 

 1799; which has been referred to at 

 some length by Dr. Buckland. (Oeol. 

 Trans. 2d Series, vol. ii. part iii. p. 389.) 









