ded by constant rains, when a large vessel was seen
coming floating shore-wards on the rising waters; into which the Prince
and the seven virtuous Nishis entered, with their wives, all laden with
plants and grain, and accompanied by the animals. During the deluge
Vishnu preserved the ark by again taking the form of a fish, and tying
it fast to himself; and when the waters had subsided, he communicated
the contents of the sacred books to the holy Satyavrata, after first
slaying the demon who had stolen them. It is added, however, that the
good man having, on one occasion long after, by "the act of destiny,"
drunk mead, he became senseless, and lay asleep naked, and that Charma,
one of three sons who had been born to him, finding him in that sad
state, called on his two brothers to witness the shame of their father,
and said to them, What has now befallen? In what state is this our sire?
But by the two brothers,--more dutiful than Charma,--he was hidden with
clothes, and recalled to his senses; and, having recovered his
intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Charma,
saying, "Thou shalt be a servant of servants." It would be difficult
certainly to produce a more curious legend, or one more strikingly
illustrative of the mixture of truth and fable which must ever be looked
for in that tradition which some are content to accept even in religion
as a trustworthy guide. In ever varying tradition, as in those difficult
problems in physical science which have to be wrought out from a
multitude of differing observations, it is, if I may so express myself,
the mean result of the whole that must be accepted as approximately the
true one. And the mean result of those dim and distorted recollections
of the various tribes of men which refer to the Flood is a result which
bears simply to this effect,--that in some early age of the world a
great deluge took place, in which well nigh the whole human family was
destroyed.

The ancient traditions which have come down to us embalmed in classic
literature form but a small portion of what seems once to have existed
in the wide region now overspread by Christianity and Mohammedanism. A
second deluge, more fatal to at least the productions of the human mind
than the first had been, overspread the earth during what are known as
the Middle Ages; and so signal was the wreck which it occasioned, that
of seven heathen writers[24] whose testimony regarding the Flood
Josephus cite