Sir William Jones says:
“The Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly covered with water, which, in works of undisputed authenticity, they describe as flowing abundantly, then subsiding and separating the higher from the lower ages of mankind; that this division of time, from which their poetical history begins, just preceded the appearance of Fo-hi on the mountains of Chin.” (“Discourse on the Chinese; Asiatic Researches,” vol. ii., p.
376.)
The following history of this destruction of their ancestors vividly recalls to us the convulsion depicted in the Chaldean and American legends:
“The pillars of heaven were broken; the earth shook to its very foundations; the heavens sunk lower toward the north; the sun, the moon, and the stars changed their motions; the earth fell to pieces, and the waters enclosed within its bosom burst forth with violence and overflowed it. Man having rebelled against Heaven, the system of the universe was totally disordered. The sun was eclipsed, the planets altered their course, and the grand harmony of nature was disturbed.”
A learned Frenchman, M. Terrien de la Couperie, member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, has just published a work (1880) in which he demonstrates the astonishing fact that the Chinese language is clearly related to the Chaldean, and that both the Chinese characters and the cuneiform alphabet are degenerate descendants of an original hieroglyphical alphabet. The same signs exist for many words, while numerous words are very much alike. M. de la Couperie gives a table of some of these similarities, from which I quote as follows:
----------+----------+
| English. | Chinese. | Chaldee. |
----------+----------+ | To shine | Mut | Mul. |
----------+----------+ | To die | Mut | Mit. |
----------+----------+ | Book | King | Kin. |
----------+----------+ | Cloth | Sik | Sik. |
----------+----------+ | Right hand | Dzek | Zag. |
----------+----------+ | Hero | Tan | Dun. |
----------+----------+ | Earth | Kien-kai | Kiengi. |
----------+----------+ | Cow | Lub | Lu, lup. |
----------+----------+ | Brick | Ku | Ku. |
----------+----------+
This surprising discovery brings the Chinese civilization still nearer to the Mediterranean head-quarters of the races, and increases the probability that the arts of China were of Atlantean origin; and that the name of Nai Hoang-ti, or Nai Korti, the founder of Chinese civilization, may be a reminiscence of Nakhunta, the chief of the gods, as recorded in the Susian texts, and this, in turn, a recollection of the Deva-Nahusha of the Hindoos, the Dionysos of the Greeks, the king of Atlantis, whose great empire reached to the “farther parts of India,”
and embraced, according to Plato, “parts of the continent of America.”
Linguistic science achieved a great discovery when it established the fact that there was a continuous belt of languages from Iceland to Ceylon which were the variant forms of one mother-tongue, the Indo-European; but it must prepare itself for a still wider generalization. There is abundant proof—proof with which pages might be filled—that there was a still older mother-tongue, from which Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic were all derived—the language of Noah, the language of Atlantis, the language of the great “aggressive empire” of Plato, the language of the empire of the Titans.
The Arabic word bin, within, becomes, when it means interval, space, binnon; this is the German and Dutch binnen and Saxon binnon, signifying within. The Ethiopian word aorf, to fall asleep, is the root of the word Morpheus, the god of sleep. The Hebrew word chanah, to dwell, is the parent of the Anglo-Saxon inne and Icelandic inni, a house, and of our word inn, a hotel. The Hebrew word naval or nafal signifies to fall; from it is derived our word fall and fool (one who falls); the Chaldee word is nabal, to make foul, and the Arabic word nabala means to die, that is, to fall. From the last syllable of the Chaldee nasar, to saw, we can derive the Latin serra, the High German sagen, the Danish sauga, and our word to saw. The Arabic nafida, to fade, is the same as the Italian fado, the Latin fatuus (foolish, tasteless), the Dutch vadden, and our to fade. The Ethiopic word gaber, to make, to do, and the Arabic word jabara, to make strong, becomes the Welsh word goberu, to work, to operate, the Latin operor, and the English operate. The Arabic word abara signifies to prick, to sting; we see this root in the Welsh bar, a summit, and par, a spear, and per, a spit; whence our word spear. In the Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic zug means to join, to couple; from this the Greeks obtained zugos, the Romans jugum, and we the word yoke; while the Germans obtained jok or jog, the Dutch juk, the Swedes ok. The Sanscrit is juga. The Arabic sanna, to be old, reappears in the Latin senex, the Welsh hen, and our senile. The Hebrew banah, to build, is the Irish bun, foundation, and the Latin fundo, fundare, to found. The Arabic baraka, to bend the knee, to fall on the breast, is probably the Saxon brecau, the Danish braekke, the Swedish braecka, Welsh bregu, and our word to break. The Arabic baraka also signifies to rain violently; and from this we get the Saxon roegn, to rain, Dutch regen, to rain, Cimbric roekia, rain, Welsh rheg, rain. The Chaldee word braic, a branch, is the Irish braic or raigh, an arm, the Welsh braic, the Latin brachium, and the English brace, something which supports like an arm. The Chaldee frak, to rub, to tread out grain, is the same as the Latin frico, frio, and our word rake. The Arabic word to rub is fraka. The Chaldee rag, ragag, means to desire, to long for; it is the same as the Greek oregw, the Latin porrigere, the Saxon roeccan, the Icelandic rakna, the German reichen, and our to reach, to rage. The Arabic rauka, to strain or purify, as wine, is precisely our English word rack, to rack wine. The Hebrew word bara, to create, is our word to bear, as to bear children: a great number of words in all the European languages contain this root in its various modifications. The Hebrew word kafar, to cover, is our word to cover, and coffer, something which covers, and covert, a secret place; from this root also comes the Latin cooperio and the French couvrir, to cover. The Arabic word shakala, to bind under the belly, is our word to shackle. From the Arabic walada and Ethiopian walad, to beget, to bring forth, we get the Welsh llawd, a shooting out; and hence our word lad. Our word matter, or pus, is from the Arabic madda; our word mature is originally from the Chaldee mita. The Arabic word amida signifies to end, and from this comes the noun, a limit, a termination, Latin meta, and our words meet and mete.
I might continue this list, but I have given enough to show that all the Atlantean races once spoke the same language, and that the dispersion on the plains of Shinar signifies that breaking up of the tongues of one people under the operation of vast spaces of time. Philology is yet in its infancy, and the time is not far distant when the identity of the languages of all the Noachic races will be as clearly established and as universally acknowledged as is now the identity, of the languages of the Aryan family of nations.
