BOOK III.

1

and Ruchi, the earth was filled with inhabitants: yet in the same Puranas we are told, that Brahma, being disappointed, found it necessary to give two sons to Adima, from whom at last the earth was filled with inhabitants. These two sons were Priyavrata and Uttanapada; who, as Mr. Wilford justly remarks, appear to be the same with Cardama and Ruchi or Cain and Seth. In short, what sufficiently shews the true character of the famous Hindoo triad which is manifested as the triple offspring of the great father at the commencement of every world, it is fairly acknowledged by the Brahmenical theologists, that the three sons of Menu-Swayambhuva are incarnations of the Trimurti; and it is generally declared in the Puranas, that they were created by the Deity to marry the three daughters of the first man, with a view to avoid the defilement of human conception, gestation, and birth.*

The classical Cronus or Saturn, considered as flourishing during the real golden age, when men were exempt from sin and disease and death, when they innocently appeared in a state of nudity, and when they conversed with the brute creation, is evidently the first Menu or Adima of the Hindoos; while he is no less evidently their Menu-Satyavrata, if considered in his diluvian character. Hence, as Swayambhuva is denominated Adima; so we learn from Stephanus of Byzantium, that one of the eastern names of Cronus was Adan. 3

II. The preceding Hindoo legend may serve to explain a tradition respecting the Cabiri.

These are sometimes described, as being eight in number, in allusion to the whole family of the great father; sometimes, when the most ancient Cabiric gods are spoken of, as only two, a male and a female, who are the great father and the great mother; and sometimes as three brethren, in re

Asiat. Res. vol. v. p. 249, 250.

2 Asiat. Res. vol. viii. p. 254.

3 Steph. de urb. Vox Adava. It is rather a curious anecdote, that Bochart, in a conference with Gale, allowed the propriety of referring the character of Cronus to Adam; but owned, that he had purposely omitted the stories which induced such an opinion, because they contradicted his system which would make Cronus to be exclusively Noah, Had Bochart possessed that key to pagan mythology, the doctrine of a succession of similar worlds, he would have perceived, that this management was no less unnecessary than disingenuous.

ference to the triple offspring of the great parents. Their history proves them to have chiefly been the arkite hero-deities: but, since the doctrine of a succession of similar worlds was the very basis of pagan theology, we are not to imagine that they were exclusively diluvian gods. The three Cabiric brethren were the same as the Trimurti or triplicated great god of the Hindoos: they represent indeed the three sons of Noah; but they do not, on that account, the less represent also the three sons of Adam. Accordingly, as one of the persons of the Trimurti, when incarnate in the triple offspring of Swayambhuva or Adima, is said to have been slain by his brother at the time of a solemn sacrifice: so, with a slight variation, one of the three Cabiri is represented as having been murdered by his two brethren. It is added in the legend, that after his death he was, by the fratricides, consecrated as a god at the foot of mount Olympus; that, stained as he had been with blood, the Thessalians worshipped him with bloody hands; and that the slaughter of a brother by his brothers was esteemed a sacred mystery in the Orgies of the Corybantes.' These particulars confirm the supposition, that the fable originated from the death of Abel. The Mysteries of the ancients were a scenic exhibition of the events of Paradise and the deluge : the early transactions of two worlds were blended together into one drama, agreeably to the doctrine of a perpetual succession of similar mundane systems and mount Olympus, where the slaughtered Cabirus is feigned to have been consecrated, was, as I have already shewn, one of the many local transcripts of Meru or Ilapus; that is to say, of the Paradisiacodiluvian mount Ararat.

It is not improbable, that, on the same principle of double allusion, the murder of Osiris by his brother Typhon, and the detrusion of Pluto into Hades by his brother Jupiter, may each, though severally adapted to the history of the deluge, have an ultimate reference to the slaughter of Abel.

III. We may observe a similar fable in the early mythological history of the Atlantians.

Hyperion, one of the sons of their reputed first king Uranus, is said to

'Jul. Firm. de error. prof. rel. p. 23, 24. Arnob, adv. gent. lib. v. p. 169. Clem. Alex. Cohort. p. 12.

CHAP, IL

BOOK III. have been murdered by his brethren: but the legend, as is usually the case, is mingled with diluvianism; for Hyperion is described as being the father of the Sun and the Moon, and his child the Sun is feigned to have been plunged by the Titans into the sacred river Eridanus.' This last circumstance is the same as the consignment of Osiris to the Nile; for the Nile and the Eridanus and the Ganges were equally deemed holy streams, were equally symbolical of the deluge, and were equally represented as bearing on their waves the Argo or Argha or ship of the great father. Osiris, like the offspring of Hyperion, was astronomically the Sun; but in reality he was a mere human character: and the many incongruous tales of the Sun being plunged in a lake or a river, being set afloat in a ship on the surface of the ocean, or being compelled to take refuge from the fury of the ocean in a wonderful floating island, have all arisen from applying the literal history of a man to his sidereal representative. Thus, in the present instance, the two children of Hyperion, though styled Helius and Selenè, are first represented as being nothing more than mortals: but, after their death, they are said to have been received among the gods and to have been identified with the Sun and Moon. The actions and sufferings therefore, ascribed to the two heavenly bodies, were in fact only actions and sufferings, which had once been performed and undergone upon earth.

IV. It is a remarkable circumstance, if we may venture to give credit to it, that the Iroquois, a savage nation of America, should have accurately preserved a tradition of the primeval history now under consideration.

They are said to believe, that the first woman was seduced from her obedience to God; and that, in consequence of it, she was banished from heaven. She afterwards bore two sons. One of these, having armed himself with an offensive weapon, attacked and slew the other, who was unable to resist his superior force. More children afterwards sprang from the same woman, who were the ancestors of all mankind.*

V. In the legendary history of the Atlantians, Uranus is fabled to have had many sons: but three only are mentioned by name, Atlas, Cronus, and 2 Moeurs des sauvages. tom. i. p. 43.

Diod. Bibl. lib. iii. p. 191, 192.

Hyperion; who, as we have just seen, was thought to have been murdered by his brethren. These three, standing in this connection, are evidently those three sons of Adam, of whom alone the names have been handed down to us; and the murder of Hyperion is the murder of the righteous Abel.

Such an opinion will receive additional strength, as we advance further in the history; mixed as it doubtless is, according to the established system of theologizing, with clear references to the deluge. After the death of Hyperion, his brethren divided among them the kingdom of their father Uranus. Of these Atlas and Cronus were the most renowned; and to the lot of the former fell those western regions, which border upon the ocean. Atlas was a learned astronomer, and communicated his name to a celebrated mountain within his dominions, the top of which he employed as an observatory. Like his father Uranus, he also had a numerous family: but, among them, his son Hesperus was by far the most eminent in piety towards the gods and in justice and philanthropy towards his subjects. Hesperus addicted himself to the same philosophical pursuits as his parent: and, having one day ascended the summit of Atlas to make his wonted observations on the stars, he was suddenly carried away by a violent whirlwind and never more appeared in the baunts of men. The people, venerating his memory on account of his extraordinary virtue, enrolled him among the immortals, and worshipped the new deity in the beautiful star of evening.'

It is almost superfluous to observe, that we have here commemorated, as the next remarkable event after the murder of Abel, the miraculous translation of Enoch: and, that the two Atlantian legends are to be thus understood, will incontestably appear, when we find, as I shall presently have occasion to shew, that the whole series of events, of which they form a part, is unequivocally placed before the submersion of the old world.

VI. Precisely the same circumstance occurs in the antediluvian history of the Hindoos; and it occurs also in the very same connection.

A son of Adima and Iva kills his brother at a sacrifice: and, after the death of that holy personage, the earth is peopled by the descendants of the two surviving brethren. One of these has a son named Dhruva; who, in

Diod, Bibl. lib. iii. p. 193, 194.

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BOOK III.

consequence of the unjust partiality which his father shews to his elder brother Uttama, retires into a forest on the banks of the Jumna. Here he gives himself up to the contemplation of the Supreme Being and to the performance of religious austerities. His extraordinary piety gains the favour of God: and, after delivering many salutary precepts to mankind, he is translated to heaven without tasting death; where he still shines conspicuous in the polar star.'

The close resemblance between these two legends of the Atlantians and the Hindoos proves them to have originated from a common source: and that source can only have been the ancient patriarchal history of Enoch, with which the family of Noah must have been well acquainted long before the composition of the Pentateuch.

VII. The character of the Atlantian astronomer Hesperus melts into that of his philosophical father Atlas: and Enoch, thus exhibited, is manifestly the Edris of the east and the Idris of the Celtic Britons.

Edris is declared by the oriental writers to be the same person as Enoch; who, like the Atlantian Hesperus, is described as being a skilful astronomer and as making his observations on the summit of a lofty hill and Idris, according to the old legends of the Druids, was also an eminent astronomer, who pursued his favourite studies on the top of a high peak which from him still bears the appellation of Cader Idris or the chair of Idris. This last personage was thought, like Atlas, to have been of a gigantic stature: and the general coincidence between the two fables is such, that we can scarcely doubt Cader Idris to have been viewed by the Celts in exactly the same light as Mount Atlas was by the Africans. * But the astronomer Hesperus is proved by his history to be Enoch; and the oriental astronomer Edris is acknowledged to be the same patriarch. We may therefore safely conclude, that he is also shadowed out under the character of the British astronomer Idris.

2

1. At this point, the righteous Enoch will be found, in the legends of the Gentiles, to melt insensibly into a more recent preacher of repentance, the patriarch Noah.

Asiat. Res. vol. v. p. 252.

Davies's Celtic Research. p. 173, 174.