In the first chapter of the Ordinances of Menù above alluded to, we meet with the following passages relating to former destructions and renovations of the world:—
"The Being, whose powers are incomprehensible, having created me (Menù) and this universe, again became absorbed in the supreme spirit, changing the time of energy for the hour of repose.
"When that Power awakes, then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away..... For while he reposes, as it were, embodied spirits endowed with principles of action depart from their several acts, and the mind itself becomes inert."
The absorption of all beings into the Supreme essence is then described, and the Divine soul itself is said to slumber, and to remain for a time immersed in "the first idea, or in darkness." After which the text thus proceeds (verse fifty-seven), "Thus that immutable power by waking and reposing alternately, revivifies and destroys, in eternal succession, this whole assemblage of locomotive and immovable creatures."
It is then declared that there has been a long succession of manwantaras, or periods, each of the duration of many thousand ages, and—
"There are creations also, and destructions of worlds innumerable: the Being, supremely exalted, performs all this with as much ease as if in sport, again and again, for the sake of conferring happiness."[2]
No part of the Eastern cosmogony, from which these extracts are made, is more interesting to the geologist than the doctrine, so frequently alluded to, of the reiterated submersion of the land beneath the waters of a universal ocean. In the beginning of things, we are told, the First Sole Cause "with a thought created the waters," and then moved upon their surface in the form of Brahma the creator, by whose agency the emergence of the dry land was effected, and the peopling of the earth with plants, animals, celestial creatures, and man. Afterwards, as often as a general conflagration at the close of each manwantara had annihilated every visible and existing thing, Brahma, on awaking from his sleep, finds the whole world a shapeless ocean. Accordingly, in the legendary poems called the Puranas, composed at a later date than the Vedas, the three first Avatars or descents of the Deity upon earth have for their object to recover the land from the waters. For this purpose Vishnu is made successively to assume the form of a fish, a tortoise, and a boar.
Extravagant as may be some of the conceits and fictions which disfigure these pretended revelations, we can by no means look upon them as a pure effort of the unassisted imagination, or believe them to have been composed without regard to opinions and theories founded on the observation of Nature. In astronomy, for instance, it is declared that, at the North Pole, the year was divided into a long day and night, and that their long day was the northern, and their night the southern course of the sun; and to the inhabitants of the moon, it is said one day is equal in length to one month of mortals.[3] If such statements cannot be resolved into mere conjectures, we have no right to refer to mere chance the prevailing notion that the earth and its inhabitants had formerly undergone a succession of revolutions and aqueous catastrophes interrupted by long intervals of tranquillity.
Now there are two sources in which such a theory may have originated. The marks of former convulsions on every part of the surface of our planet are obvious and striking. The remains of marine animals imbedded in the solid strata are so abundant, that they may be expected to force themselves on the attention of every people who have made some progress in refinement; and especially where one class of men are expressly set apart from the rest, like the ancient priesthoods of India and Egypt, for study and contemplation. If these appearances are once recognized, it seems natural that the mind should conclude in favor, not only of mighty changes in past ages, but of alternate periods of repose and disorder;—of repose, when the animals now fossil lived, grew, and multiplied—of disorder, when the strata in which they were buried became transferred from the sea to the interior of continents, and were uplifted so as to form part of high mountain-chains. Those modern writers, who are disposed to disparage the former intellectual advancement and civilization of Eastern nations, may concede some foundation of observed facts for the curious theories now under consideration, without indulging in exaggerated opinions of the progress of science; especially as universal catastrophes of the world, and exterminations of organic beings, in the sense in which they were understood by the Brahmins, are untenable doctrines.
We know that the Egyptian priests were aware, not only that the soil beneath the plains of the Nile, but that also the hills bounding the great valley, contained marine shells; and Herodotus inferred from these facts, that all lower Egypt, and even the high lands above Memphis, had once been covered by the sea.[4] As similar fossil remains occur in all parts of Asia hitherto explored, far in the interior of the continent as well as near the sea, they could hardly have escaped detection by some Eastern sages not less capable than the Greek historian of reasoning philosophically on natural phenomena.