“a. ... The earliest Chinese chronology rests upon a conventional basis peculiar to itself, that of limiting the lunar year by a cycle of six hundred years, which is common to the whole of North Asia and the Chaldeans; and probably (as it is also met with in India) to the Bactrians also: this basis is historical.” “b. The communication took place before the Chaldees invented the cycle of six hundred years.”
From our point of view, believing that the Chaldees never invented the cycle but held to it traditionally, the above conclusion must be construed to mean that the “communication,” or diffusion of the knowledge, must have taken place before the lapse of the first six hundred years after the Deluge, which will be further confirmed by conclusion c.
“c. The Chinese observation is based upon the Babylonian gnomon,”
which appears to me tantamount to the admission that it took place, in the plains of Mesopotamia, previous to the Dispersion.
In arriving, then, at the sixty-first year of the reign of Hoang-ti, we are led up to such close proximity to the epoch of the Deluge, that the presumption that Hoang-ti was Noah would be strong, even if no other evidence was at hand to corroborate it.
It is with this supplementary evidence that I now propose to deal.
Although the tradition of the Chinese is remarkably accurate, up to a certain point, yet in the period beyond that point, where the confusion is manifest, there is no reason why we should not expect to find the same reduplications and amalgamations of ante and post diluvian traditions, which we have already found in the history of other nations.
Without attempting to unravel all complications, let us turn again to Bunsen (iii. 382), and setting aside Pu-an-ku, the primeval man who came out of the mundane egg and lived eighteen thousand years, and who has resemblances with the Assyrian Ra and Ana, and the Egyptian Ra, the son of Ptha (to whom thirty thousand are allotted, vide infra, [p. 97–100]), and Sui-shin, “who discovered fire,” and who is the counterpart of Prometheus (vide [p. 180]). Regarding Pu-an-ku, the cosmical, and Sui-shin, as the mythical tradition of Adam, we come to the historical tradition in the person of Fohi.
“I. Fohi the great, the brilliant (Tai-hao) cultivator of astronomy and religion, as well as writing. He reigned one hundred and ten years. Then came fifteen reigns. II. Shin-nong (divine husbandman); institution of agriculture; the knowledge of simples applied as the art of medicine.” [Compare pp. 210–214, Saturn, Bacchus, Æsculapius.] “III. Hoang-ti (great ruler) came to the throne in consequence of an armed insurrection (new dynasty), and was obliged to put down a revolt. In his reign the magnetic needle was discovered; the smelting of copper for making weapons;[52] vases of high art, and money; improvement in the written character, said to be borrowed from the lines on the tortoise-shell. It consists of five hundred hieroglyphics, of which two hundred can still be pointed out. He established fixed habitations throughout his dominions, and the astronomical cycle of sixty years in the sixty-first year of his reign (vide supra, [61]); musical instruments. It was in his time also that the fabulous bird Sin appeared. The empire was considerably extended to the southward.”—Bunsen, 382.
If we take Fohi as Adam, the fifteen reigns which follow will bear analogy with “the fifteen generations of the Cynic cycle” (vide Palmer i. p. 8, 23–37; also vide infra), and will correspond to the thirteen generations, viz. the ten antediluvian, and the three survivors (excluding Noah) of the Deluge in the Egyptian chronology (vide infra). Shin-nong, “the divine husbandman,” will be Noah, and Hoang-ti, Shem or Ham, or else the two will be reduplicate traditions of Noah. Compare the attributions of Hoang-ti with those of Hoa in the Assyrian tradition, p. 239. Certain statements regarding him—e.g. that he suppressed an insurrection, accord more nearly with epithets applied to Nin, the fish-god, whom I have considered a duplicate of Hoa (p. 201), e.g. “the destroyer of enemies,”—“the reducer of the disobedient,”—“the exterminator of rebels.” Compare with the Phœnician tradition, p. 211, of Saturn causing the destruction of his son Sadid by the Deluge. The appearance of the fabulous bird Sin, seems a reminiscence of the birds sent out of the ark, which is so frequent in tradition. Compare the mystery bird (the dove) in the Mandan ceremonies,—the worship of the pigeon in Cashmere,[53] &c. Other coincidences might be pointed if space allowed.