es are inevitable.(424)

(424) As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and embodying
ideas of the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants of the
neighboring country, see Forbiger, Alte Geographie, Hamburg, 1877, vol.
i, p. 563. For exaggerations concerning the Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i,
p. 575. For the sinking of Chiang Shui and other examples, see Denny's
Folklore of China, pp. 126 et seq. For the sinking of the Phrygian
region, the destruction of its inhabitants, and the saving of Philemon
and Baucis, see Ovid's Metamorphoses, book viii; also Botticher,
Baumcultus der Alten, etc. For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears
of Adam and Eve, see variants of the original legend in Mandeville and
in Jurgen Andersen, Reisebeschreibung, 1669, vol. ii, p. 132. For
the volcanic nature of the Dead Sea, see Daubeny, cited in Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Palestine. For lakes in Germany owing
their origin to human sin and various supernatural causes, see Karl
Bartsch, Sagen, Marche und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 et
seq. For lakes in America, see any good collection of Indian legends.
For lakes in Japan sunk supernaturally, see Braun's Japanesische Marche
und Sagen, Leipsic, 1885, pp. 350, 351.

To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical
geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly owe
the innumerable stories of the transformation of living beings, and
especially of men and women, into these natural features.

In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such
transformations--from that of the first Counsellor of the Han dynasty
to those of shepherds and sheep. In the Brahmanic mythology of India,
Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised as containing the body of
Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to Siva;
so, too, the nymph Ramba was changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of
sand; by the breath of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a
very touching myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released.
In the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing himself
into a grain of sand.

Among the Greeks such transformation myths come constantly before
us--both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to
stones. Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the
earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos
was ch