ALLUSIONS IN SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. 227 



introduced by Mohammed, who held that the divinely appointed 

 year was of twelve lunar months ; naturally this year bore no relation 

 to the seasons. He observed that the phenomenon of an Arctic day 

 must somehow have been known to Homer, according to whom 

 (Odyssey x, 84) in the land of the Laestrygonians "a sleepless man 

 might earn a double wage," owing to the proximity of the paths of 

 day and night, i.e., because day followed upon day without interval. 

 The same author in the story of the Planctae (xii, 61) seems to display 

 acquaintance with icebergs ; whence we gather that various fragments 

 of knowledge must have reached the ancients in w r ays of which 

 there is no record. With regard to the quotation from the Book 

 of Enoch in the Epistle of St. Jude, he observed that when the 

 Ethiopic text was first discovered the identity of the book with that 

 cited by the Apostle was doubted. The occurrence of the quotation 

 on the first page was itself a suspicious sign, since the forger of such 

 a book would endeavour to win credit for it by introducing any 

 familiar quotation. He compared the case of the De Consolafione 

 ascribed to Cicero. The original work was lost, but some quotations 

 were preserved. These were introduced by one Sigonius into a 

 treatise which he fabricated and issued as Cicero's ; the fabrication 

 was in part detected by the fact that he introduced these quotations 

 in the same order as that wherein they had been arranged in a 

 collection of fragments, thereby violating the theory of probability. 



Mr. M. L. Rouse drew attention to the correspondence between 

 the chronology of the Bundahis, and the Hebrew chronology ; the 

 3,000 years of negation and the 3,000 years of the reign of the good 

 spirit might be supposed to last to the time of the Fall when the 

 enemy came in. From the Fall until the time when the Bundahis was 

 written would, in the Hebrew chronology, be between three and four 

 thousand years. From the Fall until the time of the coming of 

 Zoroaster would be about 3,000 years, and he believed that Zoroaster 

 was a pupil of Daniel. 



The Secretary then read letters from Professor F. C. Burkitt 

 and Dr. J. L. E. Dreyer. 



Professor Langhorne Orchard, in seconding a vote of thanks to 

 the lecturer, said that he had been specially struck with the originality 

 and force of two suggestions which Mrs. Maunder had made ; the 

 first, the argument which was developed on p. 187, that Yima had 

 migrated southward from within the Polar circle • the second that 



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