he
storm-god Rimmon,[146] represented in the Zodiac by the waterman.[147]

If that is so, we have surely a right to claim the same natural origin
for the story of the Deluge in India which we are bound to admit in
other countries. And even if it could be proved that in the form in
which these legends have reached us in India they show traces of
foreign influences,[148] the fact would still remain that such
influences have been perceived in comparatively modern treatises only,
and not in the ancient hymns of the Rig-Veda.

Other conjectures have been made with even less foundation than that
which would place the ancient poets of India under the influence of
Babylon. China has been appealed to, nay even Persia, Parthia, and
Bactria, countries beyond the reach of India at that early time of
which we are here speaking, and probably not even then consolidated
into independent nations or kingdoms. I only wonder that traces of the
lost Jewish tribes have not been discovered in the Vedas, considering
that Afghanistan has so often been pointed out as one of their
favorite retreats.

After having thus carefully examined all the traces of supposed
foreign influences that have been brought forward by various scholars,
I think I may say that there really is no trace whatever of any
foreign influence in the language, the religion, or the ceremonial of
the ancient Vedic literature of India. As it stands before us now, so
it has grown up, protected by the mountain ramparts in the north, the
Indus and the Desert in the west, the Indus or what was called the sea
in the south, and the Ganges in the east. It presents us with a
home-grown poetry and a home-grown religion; and history has preserved
to us at least this one relic, in order to teach us what the human
mind can achieve if left to itself, surrounded by a scenery and by
conditions of life that might have made man's life on earth a
paradise, if man did not possess the strange art of turning even a
paradise into a place of misery.[149]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 127: If we applied the name of literature to the cylinders
of Babylon and the papyri of Egypt, we should have to admit that some
of these documents are more ancient than any date we dare as yet
assign to the hymns collected in the ten books of the Rig-Veda.]

[Footnote 128: A na_h_ bhara vya_ng_anam gam a_s_vam abhya_ng_anam
Sa_k_a mana hira_n_yaya.]

[Footnote 129: Grassman translates, "Zugleich mit goldenem Geraeth;"