In the Veda we find a hymn to "King Varuna," in which occurs this passage:
"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky, with its ends far apart. The two seas are Varuna's loins; he is contained also in this drop of water."
Again in the Veda we find another hymn to King Varuna:
"He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the sky; who on the waters knows the ships. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is engendered afterward."
This verse would seem to furnish additional proof that the Vedas were written by a maritime people; and in the allusion to the twelve months we are reminded of the Peruvians, who also divided the year into twelve parts of thirty days each, and afterward added six days to complete the year. The Egyptians and Mexicans also had intercalary days for the same purpose.
But, above all, it must be remembered that the Greeks, an Aryan race, in their mythological traditions, show the closest relationship to Atlantis. At-tika and At-hens are reminiscences of Ad, and we are told that Poseidon, god and founder of Atlantis, founded Athens. We find in the "Eleusinian mysteries" an Atlantean institution; their influence during the whole period of Greek history down to the coming of Christianity was extraordinary; and even then this masonry of Pre-Christian days, in which kings and emperors begged to be initiated, was, it is claimed, continued to our own times in our own Freemasons, who trace their descent back to "a Dionysiac fraternity which originated in Attika." And just as we have seen the Saturnalian festivities of Italy descending from Atlantean harvest-feasts, so these Eleusinian mysteries can be traced back to Plato's island. Poseidon was at the base of them; the first hierophant, Eumolpus, was "a son of Poseidon," and all the ceremonies were associated with seed-time and harvest, and with Demeter or Ceres, an Atlantean goddess, daughter of Chronos, who first taught the Greeks to use the plough and to plant barley. And, as the "Carnival" is a survival of the "Saturnalia," so Masonry is a survival of the Eleusinian mysteries. The roots of the institutions of to-day reach back to the Miocene Age.
We have seen that Zeus, the king of Atlantis, whose tomb was shown at Crete, was transformed into the Greek god Zeus; and in like manner we find him reappearing among the Hindoos as Dyaus. He is called "Dyaus-pitar," or God the Father, as among the Greeks we have "Zeus-pater," which became among the Romans "Jupiter."
The strongest connection, however, with the Atlantean system is shown in the case of the Hindoo god Deva-Nahusha.
We have seen in the chapter on Greek mythology that Dionysos was a son of Zeus and grandson of Poseidon, being thus identified with Atlantis.
"When he arrived at manhood," said the Greeks, "he set out on a journey through all known countries, even into the remotest parts of India, instructing the people, as he proceeded, how to tend the vine, and how to practise many other arts of peace, besides teaching them the value of just and honorable dealings. He was praised everywhere as the greatest benefactor of mankind." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 119.)
In other words, he represented the great Atlantean civilization, reaching into "the remotest parts of India," and "to all parts of the known world," from America to Asia. In consequence of the connection of this king with the vine, he was converted in later times into the dissolute god Bacchus. But everywhere the traditions concerning him refer us back to Atlantis. "All the legends of Egypt, India, Asia Minor, and the older Greeks describe him as a king very great during his life, and deified after death. . . . Amon, king of Arabia or Ethiopia, married Rhea, sister of Chronos, who reigned over Italy, Sicily, and certain countries of Northern Africa." Dionysos, according to the Egyptians, was the son of Amon by the beautiful Amalthea. Chronos and Amon had a prolonged war; Dionysos defeated Chronos and captured his capital, dethroned him, and put his son Zeus in his place; Zeus reigned nobly, and won a great fame. Dionysos succeeded his father Amon, and "became the greatest of sovereigns. He extended his sway in all the neighboring countries, and completed the conquest of India. . . . He gave much attention to the Cushite colonies in Egypt, greatly increasing their strength, intelligence, and prosperity." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 283.)
When we turn to the Hindoo we still find this Atlantean king.
In the Sanscrit books we find reference to a god called Deva-Nahusha, who has been identified by scholars with Dionysos. He is connected "with the oldest history and mythology in the world." He is said to have been a contemporary with Indra, king of Meru, who was also deified, and who appears in the Veda as a principal form of representation of the Supreme Being.
"The warmest colors of imagination are used in portraying the greatness of Deva-Nahusha. For a time he had sovereign control of affairs in Meru; he conquered the seven dwipas, and led his armies through all the known countries of the world; by means of matchless wisdom and miraculous heroism he made his empire universal." (Ibid., p. 287.)
Here we see that the great god Indra, chief god of the Hindoos, was formerly king of Meru, and that Deva-Nahusha (De(va)nushas--De-onyshas) had also been king of Meru; and we must remember that Theopompus tell us that the island of Atlantis was inhabited by the "Meropes;" and Lenormant has reached the conclusion that the first people of the ancient world were "the men of Mero."
We can well believe, when we see traces of the same civilization extending from Peru and Lake Superior to Armenia and the frontiers of China, that this Atlantean kingdom was indeed "universal," and extended through all the "known countries of the world."
"We can see in the legends that Pururavas, Nahusha, and others had no connection with Sanscrit history. They are referred to ages very long anterior to the Sanscrit immigration, and must have been great personages celebrated in the traditions of the natives or Dasyus. . . .
Pururavas was a king of great renown, who ruled over thirteen islands of the ocean, altogether surrounded by inhuman (or superhuman) personages; he engaged in a contest with Brahmans, and perished. Nahusha, mentioned by Maull, and in many legends, as famous for hostility to the Brahmans, lived at the time when Indra ruled on earth. He was a very great king, who ruled with justice a mighty empire, and attained the sovereignty of three worlds." (Europe, Africa, and America?) "Being intoxicated with pride, he was arrogant to Brahmans, compelled them to bear his palanquin, and even dared to touch one of them with his foot" (kicked him?), "whereupon he was transformed into a serpent." (Baldwin's "Prehistoric Nations," p. 291.)
The Egyptians placed Dionysos (Osiris) at the close of the period of their history which was assigned to the gods, that is, toward the close of the great empire of Atlantis.
When we remember that the hymns of the "Rig-Veda" are admitted to date back to a vast antiquity, and are written in a language that had ceased to be a living tongue thousands of years ago, we can almost fancy those hymns preserve some part of the songs of praise uttered of old upon the island of Atlantis. Many of them seem to belong to sun-worship, and might have been sung with propriety upon the high places of Peru:
"In the beginning there arose the golden child. He was the one born Lord of all that is. He established the earth and the sky. Who is the god to whom we shall offer sacrifice?
"He who gives life; He who gives strength; whose command all the bright gods" (the stars?) "revere; whose light is immortality; whose shadow is death. . . . He who through his power is the one God of the breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. He whose greatness these snowy mountains, whose greatness the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm.
. . . He who measured out the light in the air... Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the sole life of the bright gods. . . . He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly. . . . May he not destroy us; He, the creator of the earth; He, the righteous, who created heaven. He also created the bright and mighty waters."
This is plainly a hymn to the sun, or to a god whose most glorious representative was the sun. It is the hymn of a people near the sea; it was not written by a people living in the heart of Asia. It was the hymn of a people living in a volcanic country, who call upon their god to keep the earth "firm" and not to destroy them. It was sung at daybreak, as the sun rolled up the sky over an "awakening world."
The fire (Agni) upon the altar was regarded as a messenger rising from the earth to the sun:
"Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their invoker. . . . For thou, O sage, goest wisely between these two creations (heaven and earth, God and man) like a friendly messenger between two hamlets."
The dawn of the day (Ushas), part of the sun-worship, became also a god:
"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by man, she made the light by striking down the darkness."
As the Egyptians and the Greeks looked to a happy abode (an under-world) in the west, beyond the waters, so the Aryan's paradise was the other side of some body of water. In the Veda (vii. 56, 24) we find a prayer to the Maruts, the storm-gods: "O, Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living ruler of men; through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the happy abode." This happy abode is described as "where King Vaivasvata reigns; where the secret place of heaven is; where the mighty waters are . . . where there is food and rejoicing . . . where there is happiness and delight; where joy and pleasure reside."
(Rig-Veda ix. 113, 7.) This is the paradise beyond the seas; the Elysion; the Elysian Fields of the Greek and the Egyptian, located upon an island in the Atlantic which was destroyed by water. One great chain of tradition binds together these widely separated races.
"The religion of the Veda knows no idols," says Max Muller; "the worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a degradation of the more primitive worship of ideal gods."
It was pure sun-worship, such as prevailed in Peru on the arrival of the Spaniards. It accords with Plato's description of the religion of Atlantis.
"The Dolphin's Ridge," at the bottom of the Atlantic, or the high land revealed by the soundings taken by the ship Challenger, is, as will be seen, of a three-pronged form--one prong pointing toward the west coast of Ireland, another connecting with the north-east coast of South America, and a third near or on the west coast of Africa. It does not follow that the island of Atlantis, at any time while inhabited by civilized people, actually reached these coasts; there is a strong probability that races of men may have found their way there from the three continents of Europe, America, and Africa; or the great continent which once filled the whole bed of the present Atlantic Ocean, and from whose debris geology tells us the Old and New Worlds were constructed, may have been the scene of the development, during immense periods of time, of diverse races of men, occupying different zones of climate.
There are many indications that there were three races of men dwelling on Atlantis. Noah, according to Genesis, had three sons--Shem, Ham, and Japheth--who represented three different races of men of different colors. The Greek legends tell us of the rebellions inaugurated at different times in Olympus. One of these was a rebellion of the Giants, "a race of beings sprung from the blood of Uranos," the great original progenitor of the stock. "Their king or leader was Porphyrion, their most powerful champion Alkyoneus." Their mother was the earth: this probably meant that they represented the common people of a darker line.
They made a desperate struggle for supremacy, but were conquered by Zeus. There were also two rebellions of the Titans. The Titans seem to have had a government of their own, and the names of twelve of their kings are given in the Greek mythology (see Murray, p. 27). They also were of "the blood of Uranos," the Adam of the people. We read, in fact, that Uranos married Gaea (the earth), and had three families: 1, the Titans; 2, the Hekatoncheires; and 3, the Kyklopes. We should conclude that the last two were maritime peoples, and I have shown that their mythical characteristics were probably derived from the appearance of their ships. Here we have, I think, a reference to the three races: 1, the red or sunburnt men, like the Egyptians, the Ph?nicians, the Basques, and the Berber and Cushite stocks; 2, the sons of Shem, possibly the yellow or Turanian race; and 3, the whiter men, the Aryans, the Greeks, Kelts, Goths, Slavs, etc. If this view is correct, then we may suppose that colonies of the pale-faced stock may have been sent out from Atlantis to the northern coasts of Europe at different and perhaps widely separated periods of time, from some of which the Aryan families of Europe proceeded; hence the legend, which is found among them, that they were once forced to dwell in a country where the summers were only two months long.
From the earliest times two grand divisions are recognized in the Aryan family: "to the east those who specially called themselves Arians, whose descendants inhabited Persia, India, etc.; to the west, the Yavana, or the Young Ones, who first emigrated westward, and from whom have descended the various nations that have populated Europe. This is the name (Javan) found in the tenth chapter of Genesis." (Lenormant and Chevallier, "Ancient History of the East," vol. ii., p. 2.) But surely those who "first emigrated westward," the earliest to leave the parent stock, could not be the "Young Ones;" they would be rather the elder brothers. But if we can suppose the Bactrian population to have left Atlantis at an early date, and the Greeks, Latins, and Celts to have left it at a later period, then they would indeed be the "Young Ones" of the family, following on the heels of the earlier migrations, and herein we would find the explanation of the resemblance between the Latin and Celtic tongues. Lenormant says the name of Erin (Ireland) is derived from Aryan; and yet we have seen this island populated and named Erin by races distinctly connected with Spain, Iberia, Africa, and Atlantis.
There is another reason for supposing that the Aryan nations came from Atlantis.
We find all Europe, except a small corner of Spain and a strip along the Arctic Circle, occupied by nations recognized as Aryan; but when we turn to Asia, there is but a corner of it, and that corner in the part nearest Europe, occupied by the Aryans. All the rest of that great continent has been filled from immemorial ages by non-Aryan races. There are seven branches of the Aryan family: 1. Germanic or Teutonic; 2.
Slavo-Lithuanic; 3. Celtic; 4. Italic; 5. Greek; 6. Iranian or Persian; 7. Sanscritic or Indian; and of these seven branches five dwell on the soil of Europe, and the other two are intrusive races in Asia from the direction of Europe. The Aryans in Europe have dwelt there apparently since the close of the Stone Age, if not before it, while the movements of the Aryans in Asia are within the Historical Period, and they appear as intrusive stocks, forming a high caste amid a vast population of a different race. The Vedas are supposed to date back to 2000 B.C., while there is every reason to believe that the Celt inhabited Western Europe 5000 B.C. If the Aryan race had originated in the heart of Asia, why would not its ramifications have extended into Siberia, China, and Japan, and all over Asia? And if the Aryans moved at a comparatively recent date into Europe from Bactria, where are the populations that then inhabited Europe--the men of the ages of stone and bronze? We should expect to find the western coasts of Europe filled with them, just as the eastern coasts of Asia and India are filled with Turanian populations. On the contrary, we know that the Aryans descended upon India from the Punjab, which lies to the north-west of that region; and that their traditions represent that they came there from the west, to wit, from the direction of Europe and Atlantis.
CHAPTER XI.
ATLANTIS RECONSTRUCTED.
The farther we go back in time toward the era of Atlantis, the more the evidences multiply that we are approaching the presence of a great, wise, civilized race. For instance, we find the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Israelites, from the earliest ages, refusing to eat the flesh of swine. The Western nations departed from this rule, and in these modern days we are beginning to realize the dangers of this article of food, on account of the trichina contained in it; and when we turn to the Talmud, we are told that it was forbidden to the Jews, "because of a small insect which infests it."
The Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Ph?nicians, the Hebrews, and others of the ancient races, practised circumcision. It was probably resorted to in Atlantean days, and imposed as a religious duty, to arrest one of the most dreadful scourges of the human race-a scourge which continued to decimate the people of America, arrested their growth, and paralyzed their civilization. Circumcision stamped out the disease in Atlantis; we read of one Atlantean king, the Greek god Ouranos, who, in a time of plague, compelled his whole army and the armies of his allies to undergo the rite. The colonies that went out to Europe carried the practice but not the disease out of which it originated with them; and it was not until Columbus reopened communication with the infected people of the West India Islands that the scourge crossed the Atlantic and "turned Europe," as one has expressed it, "into a charnal-house."
Life-insurance statistics show, nowadays, that the average life and health of the Hebrew is much greater than that of other men; and he owes this to the retention of practices and beliefs imposed ten thousand years ago by the great, wise race of Atlantis.
Let us now, with all the facts before us, gleaned from various sources, reconstruct, as near as may be, the condition of the antediluvians.
They dwelt upon a great island, near which were other smaller islands, probably east and west of them, forming stepping-stones, as it were, toward Europe and Africa in one direction, and the West India Islands and America in the other. There were volcanic mountains upon the main island, rising to a height of fifteen hundred feet, with their tops covered with perpetual snow. Below these were elevated table-lands, upon which were the royal establishments. Below these, again, was "the great plain of Atlantis." There were four rivers flowing north, south, east, and west from a central point. The climate was like that of the Azores, mild and pleasant; the soil volcanic and fertile, and suitable at its different elevations for the growth of the productions of the tropical and temperate zones.
The people represented at least two different races: a dark brown reddish race, akin to the Central Americans, the Berbers and the Egyptians; and a white race, like the Greeks, Goths, Celts, and Scandinavians. Various battles and struggles followed between the different peoples for supremacy. The darker race seems to have been, physically, a smaller race, with small hands; the lighter-colored race was much larger--hence the legends of the Titans and Giants. The Guanches of the Canary Islands were men of very great stature. As the works of the Bronze Age represent a small-handed race, and as the races who possessed the ships and gunpowder joined in the war against the Giants, we might conclude that the dark races were the more civilized, that they were the metal-workers and navigators.
The fact that the same opinions and customs exist on both sides of the ocean implies identity of origin; it might be argued that the fact that the explanation of many customs existing on both hemispheres is to be found only in America, implies that the primeval stock existed in America, the emigrating portion of the population carrying away the custom, but forgetting the reason for it. The fact that domestic cattle and the great cereals, wheat, oats, barley, and rye, are found in Europe and not in America, would imply that after population moved to Atlantis from America civilization was developed in Atlantis, and that in the later ages communication was closer and more constant between Atlantis and Europe than between Atlantis and America. In the case of the bulky domestic animals, it would be more difficult to transport them, in the open vessels of that day, from Atlantis across the wider expanse of sea to America, than it would be to carry them by way of the now submerged islands in front of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of Spain. It may be, too, that the climate of Spain and Italy was better adapted to the growth of wheat, barley, oats and rye, than maize; while the drier atmosphere of America was better suited to the latter plant Even now comparatively little wheat or barley is raised in Central America, Mexico, or Peru, and none on the low coasts of those countries; while a smaller quantity of maize, proportionately, is grown in Italy, Spain, and the rest of Western Europe, the rainy climate being unsuited to it.
We have seen (p. 60, ante) that there is reason to believe that maize was known in a remote period in the drier regions of the Egyptians and Chinese.
As science has been able to reconstruct the history of the migrations of the Aryan race, by the words that exist or fail to appear in the kindred branches of that tongue, so the time will come when a careful comparison of words, customs, opinions, arts existing on the opposite sides of the Atlantic will furnish an approximate sketch of Atlantean history.
The people had attained a high position as agriculturists. The presence of the plough in Egypt and Peru implies that they possessed that implement. And as the horns and ox-head of Baal show the esteem in which cattle were held among them, we may suppose that they had passed the stage in which the plough was drawn by men, as in Peru and Egypt in ancient times, and in Sweden during the Historical Period, and that it was drawn by oxen or horses. They first domesticated the horse, hence the association of Poseidon or Neptune, a sea-god, with horses; hence the race-courses for horses described by Plato. They possessed sheep, and manufactured woollen goods; they also had goats, dogs, and swine.
They raised cotton and made cotton goods; they probably cultivated maize, wheat, oats, barley, rye, tobacco, hemp, and flax, and possibly potatoes; they built aqueducts and practised irrigation; they were architects, sculptors, and engravers; they possessed an alphabet; they worked in tin, copper, bronze, silver, gold, and iron.
During the vast period of their duration, as peace and agriculture caused their population to increase to overflowing, they spread out in colonies east and west to the ends of the earth. This was not the work of a few years, but of many centuries; and the relations between these colonies may have been something like the relation between the different colonies that in a later age were established by the Ph?nicians, the Greeks, and the Romans; there was an intermingling with the more ancient races, the autochthones of the different lands where they settled; and the same crossing of stocks, which we know to have been continued all through the Historical Period, must have been going on for thousands of years, whereby new races and new dialects were formed; and the result of all this has been that the smaller races of antiquity have grown larger, while all the complexions shade into each other, so that we can pass from the whitest to the darkest by insensible degrees.
In some respects the Atlanteans exhibited conditions similar to those of the British Islands: there were the same, and even greater, race differences in the population; the same plantation of colonies in Europe, Asia, and America; the same carrying of civilization to the ends of the earth. We have seen colonies from Great Britain going out in the third and fifth centuries to settle on the shores of France, in Brittany, representing one of the nationalities and languages of the mother-country--a race Atlantean in origin. In the same way we may suppose Hamitic emigrations to have gone out from Atlantis to Syria, Egypt, and the Barbary States. If we could imagine Highland Scotch, Welsh, Cornish, and Irish populations emigrating en masse from England in later times, and carrying to their new lands the civilization of England, with peculiar languages not English, we would have a state of things probably more like the migrations which took place from Atlantis.
England, with a civilization Atlantean in origin, peopled by races from the same source, is repeating in these modern times the empire of Zeus and Chronos; and, just as we have seen Troy, Egypt, and Greece warring against the parent race, so in later days we have seen Brittany and the United States separating themselves from England, the race characteristics remaining after the governmental connection had ceased.