istache
nut. As a punishment, he and all his posterity came under the power of
sin and death, and were subjected to toil and suffering.[174] A
tradition of the African Odshis, already named, relates that formerly
God was very near to men. But a woman, who had been pounding banana
fruit in a mortar, inadvertently entering His presence with a pestle in
her hands, aroused His anger, and He withdrew into the high heavens and
listened to men no more. Six rainless years brought famine and distress,
whereupon they besought Him to send one of His counsellors who should be
their daysman, and should undertake their cause and care for them. God
sent his chief minister, with a promise that He would give rain and
sunshine, and He directed that His rainbow should appear in the
sky.[175] The inhabitants of Tahiti have a tradition of a fall which is
very striking; and Humboldt, after careful study, reached the conclusion
that it had not been derived through any communication with Christian
lands, but was an old native legend. The Karens of Burmah had a story of
an early temptation of their ancestors by an evil being and their
consequent apostasy. Many other races who have no definite tradition of
this kind have still some vague notion of a golden age in the past.
There has been everywhere a mournful and pathetic sense of something
lost, of degeneracy from better days gone by, of Divine displeasure and
forfeited favor. The baffled gropings of all false religions seem to
have been so many devices to regain some squandered heritage of the
past. All this is strikingly true of China.

Still more clear and wellnigh universal are the traditions of a flood.
The Hindu Brahmanas and the Mahabharata of a later age present legends
of a deluge which strikingly resemble the story of Genesis. Vishnu
incarnate in a fish warned a great sage of a coming flood and directed
him to build an ark. A ship was built and the sage with seven others
entered. Attached to the horn of the fish the ship was towed over the
waters to a high mountain top.[176] The Chinese also have a story of a
flood, though it is not given in much detail. The Iranian tradition is
very fragmentary and seems to confound the survivor with the first man
of the creation. Yima, the Noah of the story, was warned by the
beginning of a great winter rain, by which the waters were raised 19,000
feet. Yima was commanded to prepare a place of safety for a number of
chosen men, birds, and beasts. It