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isi; 87 last of their grand periods of time, or as others more rationally suppose, immediately before the commencement of the present age, there was a general destru£tion of mankind, occasioned by the sleep of Brahm^ ; whence his creatures in different worlds were drowned in a vast ocea,n, Brahma being inclined to slumber, desiring repose after a lapse of ages, a strong daemon came near him, and stole the Vedas which had flowed from his lips. The incarnate God Vishnii, willing to preserve a monarch, eminent for his piety, from the sea of destrudtion, caused by the de- pravity of the age, infbrms him by what means he was to escape, and thus addresses him : " In seveh days from the present time, O thou tamer of enemies, the three wotlds shall be plunged in an ocean of death, but in: the midst of the destroying wavesj a large vessel sent by me for thy use, shall stand before thee. 'Then shalt thou take all medicinal herbs, all the variety of seeds, and accompanied by seven saints, encircled by pairs of all brute animals, thou shalt enter the spacious ark, and continue in it, secure from the flood, in one immense ocean, without light, except thfe radiance of thy holy compani- on^. When the ship shall be agitated by an impetuous wind, thou shalt fasten it with a large G 4 ss serpent on my horn j for I will be near thee, ' drawing the vessel with thee, and thy attendants ; and will remain on the ocean, O thou chief of men ! until a day of Brahma shall be completely ended. Thou shalt then know my true greatness, rightly named the supreme godhead ; by my favor all thy questions shall be answered, and thy mind abundantly instrufted," The event falls out as this divine personage had predifted, while the pious monarch, waiting in humility for the time, and conforming to the direftions which had been given, miraculously escapes from the universal dpstrufilipn. Distinguished as the whole of this recital is, by that mixture of the puerile and sublime, which so eminently charafterizes the exuberant fertility of an oriental fancy ; yet we cannot fail to dis- cover in it, evident traces of the more simple arid succinft account, transmitted to us in the Mosaical history. The cause of this signal dis- play of divine vengeance 5 th number of persons who wer6.: miraculously preserved from this con- vulsion of nature ; the manner by which Omnipo- tence interposed to effeft their deliverance, are all clearly defined, and remarkably correspond with, what we are accustomed to consider, ^s the words of inspired truth. 8© At the . same time, this passage affords an evident proof, that whatever claims to antiquity the vanity pf the Hindoos may have prompte'd them to assume : that, although the Brahmins, in their loose computation of time, have placed the the three first of these incarnations of VishnQ, at a period of immense distance: and as they are stated to have happened in their Saturnian age, or age of tiuthj a difference pf opinion has existed respefting the event which these descents were designed to point out, whether that of an original emersion of the earth from water, or of its reno- vatipn after a, flpod -, yet the remarkable cqinci- dence of circumstances decidedly shews, that they cannot be referred to any other transafition than a deluge, : and that, under a different form, they designate thstt important catastrophe, But there are other circumstances, still more jyorthy of obseryation, which relate, not only to the certainty of the faft, but what is of still greater importance, will tend to reconcile this apparent anachronism in Indian mythology. These will shew, that thq period when their last destrufition of the wprld happened, will nearly coincide with that of the Mosaical deluge. An obje^ioji has sometimes been urged, that 90 in all the historical documents which have been preserved among ancient natioris, there are tra^ ditionary accounts of different destructions of thi& globe by water ; which could not have all happened at the sarrie time. The conclusion which has been attempted to be established on this fa£t is, that there are some of a date far anterior to any which' are preserved in the annals of mankind. That of Deucalion is said to have occurred about fifteen centuries, and that of Ogyges about eighteen centuries, before the Christian aera. Thfe deluges of Armenia and Egypt, the memory of which has been preserved by the Hebrews and Egyptians, though they occurred about five centuries before either, are still more recent than some, of which the remem- brance Is now lost ; and that all of them, however memorable, must be regarded merely as local and transitory inundations. But, in reply to this objeftion, it may be ob- served, that in the records of all the eastern nations, and particularly in those of India and China, the time of one of these inundations is fixed at a period very nearly correspondent to that, which is recorded of Noah by Moses; 'Though from the best and most authentic in- 91 fprmatIon> derived from an accurate investigation of their chronological scheme, we have the strong- est authority for asserting that the Indian a;ra, which forms the commencement of their present age, is founded on retrograde calculation ; yet whenever it was formed, it had a particular refe- rence to this ev6nt : for the Brahmins themselves assure^ us, that the beginning of the present cor- rupted ag^of the world, was immediately preced'^ ed by an universal deluge. To this maybe added, that the ancient tradi- tional histories of Cashmire, as we find them de- tailed by theSecretary of Acber, affirm, that the spacious and delightful valley which is surrounded by its lofty mountains, remained for many ages submersed in water, ahd that a celebrated Brah- min, called Kashup, led thither a colony of Brah- miris to inhabit the valley, after the waters had subsided. This very singular fa£l is rendered still more worthy of regard, by the additional account which the same authority gives us, thst although no Hindoo nation, but the Cashmirians, have left kny regular histories in their ancient language ; yet, that the civil history even of Cashmire goes no farther back th,an about four thousand years, when 92 their founder, a man remarkable for the austerity of his manners, conduced his colony thither.'. It is not meant in this place to determine the exaft degree of credit, which is due to this relation in the Ayeen Akbery ; though probably^ it wasi taken from a careful examination of the ancient records of the Cashmirians : it is only cited to shew, that the Indians, like every other nation, entertain a belief, and have preserved the remem- brance of, an universal deluge, which began the present age ; and that the present age was pre- ceded by a happier state : but bolder than any other nation they have attempted to fix with pre- cison the aera of this deluge. It may also be rea- sonably ipferred, that this sera, though founded on some imaginary connexion, rather than on real truth, is not widely distant from the true period* and that the Hindoos have placed their deluge, according as tradition had vaguely fixed th^t me-! morable event. To pursue this subjeft farther, to point'out those traces of this memorable catastrophe, which are to be discovered, in many of the symbols and re- ligious ceremonies now in use among the Hindoos, ! Ayeen Akbery, v. 2, p. 179k - -- 93 to shew that the event, which is thus presefved in their sacred records, was also sculptured in their temples, and engraven on their coins, would em- brace too wide a field. Though these symbols cannot be so rationally illustrated on any other ■supposition ; and though great ingenuity and learn- ing have been employed in referring them to their true origin ; yet to insist on them would be foreigp to the prdlent purpose. "Where proofs of the most indubitable nature exist, the strength of which depends on no forced interpretation, there is less occasion to scrutinize others, which leave so much room for unsupported conjecture, and in which the rfeveries oF fancy have too frequently blinded and perverted the judgment. From a similar reason, and because the investi- gation would be attended with less advantage, it is unnecessary to advert to any objections, raised from those theories in natural philosophy, whicli have been constructed with a professed design of ^demonstrating the impossibility of this fa£t j but which, like every other fa£t, must at last depend on thei v^ue and consistency of the testimonies by which it is tonfirmed. These theories, with what- ever ingenuity they may have been formed, or however adapted to attraCl admiration by their novelty, have generally proved of too slight a tex- 94 tare, npt only to stand the test ^pf rigorous investi- gation, but to stand the test of time. They have frequently crumbled into nothing by their own weakness, and have been rememberfed no more, even before they have been supplanted by other theories,' equally amusing, but equally fallacious. They have only served to demonstrate this im- portant truth, that to point out how worlds might be or may have been formed, as well as to. form worlds themsebres, is the prerogative of omnipo- tence alone. They have served to shew, that what is above the power of manto accomplish, is equally beyond the power of man to explain. They are always in contradiftion to each other, they are often at variance with themselves, but they all assert the same claim to infallibility.