the creation of the world, or the recovery of a drowned world by animals, as the raven, the dove, and the coyote. The hatching of all things out of an egg was another rude conception, chiefly noted among the Finns. The Indian form occurs in the Satapatha Brahmana.[1] The preservation of the human race in the Deluge, or the creation of the race after the Deluge, was yet another detail of savage mythology; and for many of these fancies we seemed to find a satisfactory origin in the exceedingly credulous and confused state of savage philosophy and savage imagination.
The question now to be asked is, do the traditions of the Aryans of India supply us with myths so closely resembling the myths of Nootkas, Maoris, and Australians that we may provisionally explain them as stories originally due to the invention of savages? This question may be answered in the affirmative. The Vedas, the Epics, and the Puranas contain a large store of various cosmogonic traditions as inconsistent as the parallel myths of savages. We have an Aryan Ilmarinean, Tvashtri, who, like the Finnish smith, forged "the iron vault of hollow heaven" and the ball of earth.[2] Again, the earth is said to have sprung, as in some Mangaian fables, "from a being called Uttanapad."[3] Again, Brahmanaspati, "blew the gods forth like a blacksmith," and the gods had a hand in the making of things. In contrast with these childish pieces of anthropo-
- ↑ Sacred Books of the East, i. 216.
- ↑ Muir, v. 354.
- ↑ Rig-Veda, x. 72, 4.
