At pp. 477–78 there is perhaps a still more definite tradition of the Deluge (confused as usual with traditions of the Creation) in connection with the idol Topan. “Not far from Mettogamma (said the interpreter) lies an exceeding high mountain ... the top of which stand several temples which may be seen a great distance off at sea. In these temples the Bonzies worshipped that great God which formerly created the sun, moon, and stars, but also fifteen lesser deities which some ages since conversed upon the earth (compare pp. 63, 97.) Then follows their account of the Creation. “Mankind not only increased in number but also in wickedness, differing more and more from their heavenly extract, growing still worse and worse, mocking at thunder, rainbows, and fire; nay, they blasphemed the great God himself (whom when the interpreter named, he bowed his head to the ground), whereupon He called His inferior deities about Him, telling them that He resolved to destroy and ruin all things ... and make a round globe, in which the four elements should be all resolved into their former mass; and chiefly He commanded the idol Topan to make thunder balls to shoot through the air and fire all the kingdoms with lightning ... so that none were saved except one man and his family, that had entertained and duly worshipped the gods.” Of the god Topan it had been previously said “that some years since he saw the temple of the idol Topan, whose image stood on a copper altar, cast like clouds, himself armed as a warrior, a coronet helmet on his head, his hand grasping a mighty club, and seeming to fly through the sky and moving his club to occasion thunder. When it thundered, a Bonzi, whose head was adorned with consecrated leaves [Query, the olive or willow?] which no thunder could harm,” offered several fishes.” (Comp. [197], [203].) Vide also p. 94, representation of the fish-god in the person of their “god Canon” [where we read of their “gods Canon and Camis or Chamis;” if we were to substitute Canaan and Cham, quid vetat?][229]
To complete the circle of evidence, as regards the general tradition, I must add the following extracts from Captain Cook’s voyages, i. 110 (London, 1846):—“In the island of Huahieine, thirty-one leagues from Otaheite N.-W.,” Captain Cook came upon an erection, of which he says—“The general resemblance between this repository and the ark of the Lord among the Jews is remarkable; but it is still more remarkable that upon inquiring of a boy what it was called, he said ‘Ewharre no Eatua,’ it is the house of God. He could, however, give no account of its signification or use.” At p. 111, “Saw (at Uliatea) several Ewharre-no-Eatua or houses of God, to which carriage poles were attached as at Huahieine.... From thence we went to a long house not far distant, where among rolls of cloth and several other things we saw the model of a canoe, about three feet long, to which were tied eight human jawbones” [eight the number saved in the ark. Compare p. 197 with Kabiri. Compare with Ogilby (Japan, 177), where the god Canon (Canaan) is represented with seven heads on his breast, eight with himself, he having been substituted for Noah as the head of the race.] Captain Cook adds, however, “We had already learnt that these, like scalps among the Indians of North America, were trophies of war,” and suggests that the canoe “may be a symbol of invasion.” That I must leave to the reader to decide, but the heads might be “trophies of conquest,” and at the same time memorial heads,—the memorial heads having necessarily been replaced many times since the custom was first instituted.[230]
This leads me to the final question, When was this custom instituted? Up to this I have not considered whether the custom was good or bad, demoniac or only corrupted; and as to the time of its institution I have merely assumed from the fact of its universality that it was primeval.
Before expressing my opinion, I must fortify myself with an extract from the Rev. W. Smith’s very able work on the Pentateuch.[231]
“Strange, too, though it may appear, there is much in the outward ceremonial of the Levitical worship that indicates an Egyptian type. The fact need startle no one. For it is derogatory neither to the holiness of the Almighty nor to the inspiration of his delegate, that Moses should have borrowed from others rites which were good in themselves, and which became idolatrous only then, when employed in the worship of false gods. The most of external forms are in themselves indifferent and receive their determinate value from the feeling that prompts them, and the object to which they are directed: when given to God they are divine worship—when given to idols, they are idolatry. Nor is inspiration jeopardised because the material details may have come from a human source. Care and study and observation are not dispensed with in the mind that receives the divine communications; and Moses was instructed in all the wisdom and learning of the Egyptians for the very purpose of enabling him to use it to the best advantage ... as the Church consecrated to a higher purpose the temples and the rites and festivals found among the pagan populations at their conversion. We need not then be scandalised if we find the ark of Jehovah to be the counterpart of the shrine of Amun. The resemblance strikes us at once on a glance at the woodcut token from Lepsius’ Denkmäler, Ab. iii., Bl. 109.”
Let the reader refer to the engravings in Rev. W. Smith’s Pentateuch, 291, 292. Dr Smith does not discuss the point further, only he says (p. 294), “In Egypt it is the canopied boat in which the Deity is steered on the heavenly ocean; in Israel it is the covered chest, the form best adapted for holding the stone tables of the law.”
But if “the canopied boat” should have corresponded among the Egyptians to “the big canoe” among the Mandans, and the other similar memorials we have come upon, what more appropriate symbol could Moses have incorporated? Was not the ark of the covenant, in which the law was preserved in the widespread inundation of corruption, the counterpart of the ark in which mankind, in the persons of Noah and his family, were saved? and in carrying on and embodying the tradition, we may see a motive why there may have been an intentional alteration of the symbol—viz. in order to wean his people from the corruption into which the whole Egyptian ceremonial had sunk?[232] And why should it not have been so? Is there not a probability and fitness in the conjecture of some such commemorative sacrifices and memorials among mankind when they lived together before the dispersion in the times immediately following the Deluge?
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XI.
THE PONGOL FESTIVAL.
“The Pongol Festival in Southern India,” by Charles E. Govat. “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,” new series, vol. v., part i. (1870.)
“I had seen the Pongol, the touching domestic festival it is now my chief object to describe. It had proved by its simple pathos that the Hindus were akin to the noblest nations of the world, and that in their antiquity they were worthy of the honour that has come to them of being the best and the least altered representatives of the ‘Juventus Mundi,’ which all nations count to have been the golden age.” He contrasts it with the worship in the great temple at Siringham near Trichinopoly, in which there “was ample justification for every epithet employed by Ward, Dubois, or Wilberforce.” “Yet the Pongol declared with equal force in favour of domestic love and chastity, of simple thanksgiving and rural contentment.... There is much reason to suppose that the Pongol is one of the most complete and interesting of these remnants of primitive life. That it is primitive is shown by the fact that the old Vedic deities are alone worshipped. Indra is the presiding deity. Agni is the main object of worship. A further proof of this point is given by the efforts that have constantly been made by the Brahmans to corrupt the ritual, and introduce Pauranic deities. Krishna is always declared by the Brahmans to be the Pongol god, but the tradition itself bears witness that the feast is older than the god. The tale is that when the great wave of Krishna worship passed over the Peninsula, the people were so enamoured of him that they ceased to perform the Pongol rites to Indra. This made the latter deity so angry that he poured down a flood upon the earth. The affrighted people ran to Krishna, who seized the great mountain Govardhanas, wrenched it from its place, and held it aloft on the tip of his little finger, like some huge umbrella. The people then ran beneath with their flocks and were saved.... The occasion of the festival is also primitive, for the Pongol is another feast of ingathering, the centre of Hebrew festivals, as this is of those of Southern India.... The Pongol is remarkable, as will be seen, for the strange combination of pastoral, hunting, and agricultural life. There are ‘harvest homes’ in almost every nation, but I do not know of any other example of the combination. The great days of the feast are two—one of these devoted to the new crops, the other to the cattle alone ... while the feast winds up with a grand hunt, first of the cattle themselves and next of a hare.” Compare [ch. vii].; compare Patagonian.