It is curious to contrast this recent account of the Samoides with an account, apparently well informed and discriminating, in 1762. Pinkerton, i. 522—“The religion of the Samoides is very simple.... They admit the existence of a Supreme Being, Creator of all things, eminently good and beneficent; a quality which, according to their mode of thinking, dispenses them from any adoration of Him, or addressing their prayers to Him, because they suppose this Being takes no interest in mundane affairs; and consequently, does not exact nor need the worship of man. They join to this idea that of a being eternal and invisible, very powerful, though subordinate to the first, and disposed to evil. It is to this being that they ascribe all the misfortunes which befall them in this life. Nevertheless, they do not worship, although much in fear of him. If they place any reliance in the counsels of Koedesnicks or Tadebes (the ‘Schamans’ referred to above), it is only on account of the connection which they esteem these people to have with this evil being; otherwise they submit themselves with perfect apathy to all the misfortunes which can befall them.” “The sun and moon, as well, hold the place of subaltern deities. It is by their intervention, they imagine, that the Supreme Being dispenses His favours; but they worship them as little as the idols or fitches (fetishes) which they carry about them according to the recommendation of their Koedesnicks.” gives a similar account of the Lepchas), have lapsed, apparently through sun-worship, to a state of Pantheism, if not Fetishism.
Of the Tongusy, a people who, if not kin to the Samoides, have an analogous worship—(“They are altogether unacquainted with any kind of literature, and worship the sun and moon. They have many Shamans among them, who differ little from those I formerly described.”—Bell’s “Travels in Asia, Siberia”)—Bell, travelling in Siberia, 1720, says—“Although I have observed that the Tongusy in general worship the sun and moon, there are many exceptions to this observation. I have found intelligent people among them who believed there was a Being superior to both sun and moon, and who created them and all the world.” If, then, we may connect the Tongusy with the Samoides, it would appear that whereas Mr Baring Gould (i.e., Castren) finds the latter sunk in Fetishism, they were, the one in 1762, the other in 1720, the worshippers of the sun and moon, joined with the knowledge and tradition of the true God still subsisting amongst them.
F. Schlegel (“Phil. of History,” p. 138) says—“The Greeks, who described India in the time of Alexander the Great, divided the Indian religious sects into Brachmans and Samaneans.... But by the Greek denomination of Samaneans we must certainly understand the Buddhists, as among the rude nations of Central Asia, as in other countries, the priests of the religion of Fo bear at this day the name of Schamans.” Compare Professor Rawlinson, “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 139, 172. (Vide infra, p. [163], [164], [205].)
CHAPTER VIII
MYTHOLOGY.
Since all antediluvian traditions meet in Noah, and are transmitted through him, there is an à priori probability that we shall find all the antediluvian traditions confused in Noah. I shall discuss this further when I come to regard him under the aspect of Saturn.
As a consequence, we must not expect to find (the process of corruption having commenced in the race of Ham, almost contemporaneously with Noah) a pure and unadulterated tradition anywhere; and I allege more specifically, that whenever we find a tradition of Noah and the Deluge, we shall find it complicated and confused with previous communications with the Almighty, and also with traditions of Adam and Paradise.
But inasmuch as the tradition is necessarily through Noah, and in any case applies to him at one remove, it does not greatly affect the argument I have in hand. There is a further probability which confronts us on the outset, that in every tradition, with the lapse of time, though the events themselves are likely to be substantially transmitted, they may become transposed in their order of succession. We shall see this in the case of Noah and his posterity. The principal cause being, that the immediate founder of the race is, as a rule, among all the nations of antiquity, deified and placed at the head of every genealogy and history. “Joves omnes reges vocârunt antiqui.” Thus Belus, whom modern discovery seems certainly to have identified with Nimrod, in the Chaldean mythology appears as Jupiter, and even as the creator separating light from darkness (Rawlinson, “Ancient Monarchies,” i. 181; Gainet, “Hist. de l‘Anc. et Nouv. Test.,” i. 120). But Nimrod is also mixed up with Jupiter in the god Bel-Merodach. In more natural connection Nimrod—(“who may have been worshipped in different parts of Chaldea under different titles,” Rawlinson, i. 172)—Nimrod appears as the father of Hurki the moon-god, whose worship he probably introduced; and, what is much more to the point, he appears as the father of Nin (whom I shall presently identify with Noah); whilst in one instance, at least, the genealogy is inverted, and he appears as the son of Nin. Thus, too, Hercules and Saturn are confounded, just as we find Adam and Noah confounded (“many classical traditions, we must remember, identified Hercules with Saturn,” vide Rawlinson, i. 166). Also in Grecian mythology Prometheus (Adam) figures as the son of Deucalion (Noah), and also of Japetus (Japhet); and so, too, Adam and Noah, in the Mahabharata, are equally in tradition in the person of Manou (vide Gainet, i. 199), and in Mexico in the person of the god Quetzalcoatl (vide infra, [p. 326]).
Before, however, pursuing the special subject of this inquiry further, it appears to me impossible to avoid an argument on a subject long debated, temporarily abandoned through the exhaustion of the combatants, and now again recently brought into prominence through the writings of Mr Gladstone, Dr Dollinger, Mr Max Müller, and others—the source and origin of mythology.[126]
Now, here, I am quite ready to adopt, in the first place, the opinion of L’Abbé Gainet, that every exclusive system must come to naught, “que toutes les tentatives qu’on ai faites pour expliquer le polythéisme par un système exclusif tombent à faux et n’expliquent rien.”