336 
MOBY DICK; OR 
cules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more 
ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa ; certainly 
they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the 
prophet ? 
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the 
whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for 
like royal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity 
in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous Oriental 
story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread 
Vishnu, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos ; gives 
us this divine Vishnu himself for our Lord; — Vishnu, who, by the 
first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified 
the whale. When Brahm, or the God of gods, saith the Shaster, re- 
solved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he 
gave birth to Vishnu, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mys- 
tical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to 
Vishnu before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have 
contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, 
these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the water; so Vishnu became 
incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, 
rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnu a whaleman, then? 
even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman ? 
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, J onah, and Vishnu ! there’s a member- 
roll, for you ! What club but the whaleman’s can head off like that ? 
CHAPTER LXXXII 
JONAH HISTORICALLY REGARDED 
Reference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale 
in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust 
this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some 
sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox 
pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the 
whale, and Arion and the dolphin ; and yet their doubting those tradi- 
tions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. 
