born man, holds in each hand a double-headed serpent, to show that he has mastered Typhon; and he stands with one foot on an enormous serpent, and with the other on an alligator: his pedestal is the rock of Ararat. In an Anaglyph, copied from a pillar, formerly in the collection of the Duc de Choiseul Gouffier, a serpent is obviously the representative of the flood';

in the middle of the Baris, above the flowing line here represented, stands a bird with a human head: now, in the system of Phonetic hieroglyphics, a hawk, an ibis, and three other sorts of birds, are constantly employed for the first letter in the alphabet. Is it, then, too much to suppose that the bird with a human head signified the first man, or, at the least, him who was so regarded by the Egyptians? It follows, too, from this discovery, that Hieracion, though under a different mask, was the same personage as Thoth; for Plutarch must have been mistaken in his assertion, that the Egyptians consecrated the first place in the alphabet to the Ibis, because it belonged to Hermes, unless it could be shown that the other four birds belonged to him likewise. It is plain, that he has inverted the facts. When these birds became signs for the first letter in the alphabet, and so acquired a sense of priority, their heads were transferred to the

1 Hieroglyphics collected by the Egyptian Society, 1823, p. 37. 2 Champollion. Lettre à M. Dacier, p. 38.

3 Plutarch. Op. ii. 738.

shoulders of Thoth, as the first legislator and first astronomer; and hence his name was given to the first month in the year, and the first sign of the zodiac.' The simplicity of that primitive age had no better means of expressing intensity of action, than by a repetition of the same idea; and in Hebrew composition emphasis is conveyed by using the same word twice over. Thus, God says to Abraham, "In blessing I will bless thee," that is, I will bless thee exceedingly; "and in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed, as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore." As, therefore, in the Indian drawing above mentioned, each hand grasped a snake, and each snake had two heads, and each foot trod on a different symbol of the flood, so, in assigning names to the stars, the priests were not content with one mode of expressing the great deliverance which they wished to record. They not only repeated

1 An astronomer of that name is commonly supposed to have invented the Canicular, or Sothic period of 1460 years, at the end of which the solar year of 365 days coincided again with the moveable year of 365, because then Sirius rose in the morning twilight of the 1st of Thoth. But it has been shown by Ideler, that the period in question was not formed at its commencement in 1322 B. C., but subsequently computed backwards to that date. The rise of Sirius was of importance to the Egyptians, because it gave them notice of the approaching inundation; and for that reason was naturally associated with their traditions of the flood: but that it had nothing to do with Osiris personally as a king or a god, is evident from this,-it was dedicated to Isis, and had one of its names from Thoth; for many of the ancients assure us that it was called by the Egyptians Sothis, or Seth; and Toth, Seth, and Sothis are, as Ideler says, incontestably one word. Lehrbuch der Chronologie von Dr. Ludwig Ideler, p. 69.

2 Genesis, xxii. 17.

the same design in different quarters of the heavens, as in the case of the double Orion, the double Sirius, the double Pisces, the double Gemini, and the more than double Hydra, but sometimes they gave a compound force to their devices. Thus Serpentarius obtained the name of Ophiuchus, because he was seen not only trampling on the diluvian symbol, but untwisting with his hands the folds of the Typhonic serpent, who had twined around his waist. This emblem of the evil spirit, who resided in the deep', fastening himself round the earth, or the diluvian mountain, is of very common occurrence in Egyptian and Hindoo mythology. The serpent Asootee, or Typhon, is frequently seen enfolding the globe, or a rocky pinnacle.

But the most remarkable instance of it is to be found in the story of Vishnu's incarnation as a tortoise. For the mountain Minder having sunk into the ocean by its weight, the Dewtahs, it is said, could not recover it till the God appeared, in the form of a tortoise, and raised it upon his back. The meaning of the tortoise is best illustrated by the Chinese

3

1 Kæmpfer says, the Japanese believe that the dragon dwells at the bottom of the sea, as its proper element; and Isaiah alludes to this superstition, when speaking of the power of Satan to be broken by Christ, he says, "In that day the Lord shall punish Leviathan he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea," xxvii. 1.

2 See instances in Faber's Pagan Idolatry, and Deane on the worship of the Serpent. A Tyrian Medal, in Maurice's Indian Antiquities, shows a serpent twined round Petra ambrosia, with a sea shell by the side, vi. No. 5.

3 Ayeen Akbery, ii. 497. Minder is here written for Mandara, and Kowrum Owtar for Kurmavatara.

tradition, that a tortoise first taught letters to mankind'; and lest there should be any doubt to what era this teacher of mankind is to be referred, the tradition goes on to say, that their famous flying dragon sprang from him.2 Now the dragon, by one of those strange jumbles of good and evil which perpetually recur in mythology, has been converted by the Chinese into the preserving power, and is, in fact, the same as the snake in the Sri Bhagavata made by Krishna, to save him from destruction by receiving him and his into its capacious mouth.3 For even at the present day a dragon, with a serpent's tail, is the form of a Chinese vehicle used on those occasions which are most retentive of mythic usages. A bridegroom seated in a car of this description, the hollow body of a green dragon with hideous head and gaping jaws, is borne on the shoulders of several men. The tortoise, then, was the deity of the flood: but the inventors of this device were not contented with making him bear up the mountain above the waters; for the same Vishnu appears also seated on its top in human form, which shows how entirely idolatry had con

1 Kircher's China Illustrata.

2 The genius of the watery element is denominated, in China, the Black Dragon, Davis's Chinese, i. 397., and therefore is the good genius of the flood; but in Hindoo mythology, the Kalinaya, or Black Dragon, is more usually the evil genius, and is said to have been slain by Crishna and by Heri in the waters of Yamuna, or of Ham.-Trans. As. Soc. ii. 311.

3 Moor's Hindu Pantheon, plate 64.

4 Tierman and Bennett's Journal of Voyages in the South Sea, ii. 278.

founded the God of the Patriarch with the Patriarch himself. But let us proceed to enquire what was going on, while the mountain was thus safe under the guardianship of the preserving power: the sea is violently agitated by the conflict of the gods and dæmons; for both parties are pulling the diluvian monster in opposite directions. This is called the churning of the ocean; but neither have they quite lost sight of the fact, that good and evil were both instrumental to the catastrophe; for the serpent is twisted round the neck of the mountain, like the bow-string in the hands of Turkish executioners; and the poor world would have little chance of escaping from destruction, did we not discover again Vishnu, the Preserver, not only above and below the mountain, but also on one side engaged among the gods in their double work. He wears on his head a three-peaked tiara; while of his coadjutors one has three faces, and the other a crescent on his forehead, and a rainbow at his back; all so many allusions to the threefold parents of the human race. In like manner at Permuttum, where Mallecarjee, i.e. Melec Argha, the king of the Ark, is adored in the figure of a rude stone, one of the groups sculptured on the outside of the temple is thus described: several people are pulling at the head and tail of a great snake, which is twisted round a lingam.' There can be no manner of doubt that the lingam here is the mountain Mandara, al

1 As. Res. v. 304.