Fig. 26.—The Earth with Roots.
The Vedic priests asserted that the earth was supported on twelve columns, which they very ingeniously turned to their own account by asserting that these columns were supported by virtue of the sacrifices that were made to the gods, so that if these were not made the earth would collapse.
Fig. 27.—The Earth of the Vedic Priests.
These pillars were invented in order to account for the passing of the sun beneath the earth after his setting, for which at first they were obliged to imagine a system of tunnels, which gradually became enlarged to the intervals between the pillars.
The Hindoos made the hemispherical earth to be supported upon four elephants, and the four elephants to stand on the back of an immense tortoise, which itself floated on the surface of a universal ocean. We are not however to laugh at this as intended to be literal; the elephants symbolised, it may be, the four elements, or the four directions of the compass, and the tortoise was the symbol for strength and for eternity, which was also sometimes represented by a serpent.
Fig. 28.—Hindoo Earth.
The floating of the earth on water or some other liquid long held ground. It was adopted by Thales, and six centuries later Seneca adopts the same opinion, saying that the humid element that supports the earth's disc like a vessel may be either the ocean or some liquid more simple than water.