ngs 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