The dawn of the day (Ushas), part of the sun-worship, became also a god: “She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by man, she made the light by striking down the darkness.”
As the Egyptians and the Greeks looked to a happy abode (an under-world) in the west, beyond the waters, so the Aryan’s paradise was the other side of some body of water. In the Veda (vii. 56, 24) we find a prayer to the Maruts, the storm-gods: “O, Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living ruler of men; through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the happy abode.” This happy abode is described as “where King Vaivasvata reigns; where the secret place of heaven is; where the mighty waters are . . . where there is food and rejoicing . . . where there is happiness and delight; where joy and pleasure reside.”
(Rig-Veda ix. 113, 7.) This is the paradise beyond the seas; the Elysion; the Elysian Fields of the Greek and the Egyptian, located upon an island in the Atlantic which was destroyed by water. One great chain of tradition binds together these widely separated races.
“The religion of the Veda knows no idols,” says Max Mueller; “the worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a degradation of the more primitive worship of ideal gods.”
It was pure sun-worship, such as prevailed in Peru on the arrival of the Spaniards. It accords with Plato’s description of the religion of Atlantis.
“The Dolphin’s Ridge,” at the bottom of the Atlantic, or the high land revealed by the soundings taken by the ship Challenger, is, as will be seen, of a three-pronged form—one prong pointing toward the west coast of Ireland, another connecting with the north-east coast of South America, and a third near or on the west coast of Africa. It does not follow that the island of Atlantis, at any time while inhabited by civilized people, actually reached these coasts; there is a strong probability that races of men may have found their way there from the three continents of Europe, America, and Africa; or the great continent which once filled the whole bed of the present Atlantic Ocean, and from whose debris geology tells us the Old and New Worlds were constructed, may have been the scene of the development, during immense periods of time, of diverse races of men, occupying different zones of climate.
There are many indications that there were three races of men dwelling on Atlantis. Noah, according to Genesis, had three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—who represented three different races of men of different colors. The Greek legends tell us of the rebellions inaugurated at different times in Olympus. One of these was a rebellion of the Giants, “a race of beings sprung from the blood of Uranos,” the great original progenitor of the stock. “Their king or leader was Porphyrion, their most powerful champion Alkyoneus.” Their mother was the earth: this probably meant that they represented the common people of a darker line.
They made a desperate struggle for supremacy, but were conquered by Zeus. There were also two rebellions of the Titans. The Titans seem to have had a government of their own, and the names of twelve of their kings are given in the Greek mythology (see Murray, p. 27). They also were of “the blood of Uranos,” the Adam of the people. We read, in fact, that Uranos married Gaea (the earth), and had three families: 1, the Titans; 2, the Hekatoncheires; and 3, the Kyklopes. We should conclude that the last two were maritime peoples, and I have shown that their mythical characteristics were probably derived from the appearance of their ships. Here we have, I think, a reference to the three races: 1, the red or sunburnt men, like the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Basques, and the Berber and Cushite stocks; 2, the sons of Shem, possibly the yellow or Turanian race; and 3, the whiter men, the Aryans, the Greeks, Kelts, Goths, Slavs, etc. If this view is correct, then we may suppose that colonies of the pale-faced stock may have been sent out from Atlantis to the northern coasts of Europe at different and perhaps widely separated periods of time, from some of which the Aryan families of Europe proceeded; hence the legend, which is found among them, that they were once forced to dwell in a country where the summers were only two months long.
From the earliest times two grand divisions are recognized in the Aryan family: “to the east those who specially called themselves Arians, whose descendants inhabited Persia, India, etc.; to the west, the Yavana, or the Young Ones, who first emigrated westward, and from whom have descended the various nations that have populated Europe. This is the name (Javan) found in the tenth chapter of Genesis.” (Lenormant and Chevallier, “Ancient History of the East,” vol. ii., p. 2.) But surely those who “first emigrated westward,” the earliest to leave the parent stock, could not be the “Young Ones;” they would be rather the elder brothers. But if we can suppose the Bactrian population to have left Atlantis at an early date, and the Greeks, Latins, and Celts to have left it at a later period, then they would indeed be the “Young Ones” of the family, following on the heels of the earlier migrations, and herein we would find the explanation of the resemblance between the Latin and Celtic tongues. Lenormant says the name of Erin (Ireland) is derived from Aryan; and yet we have seen this island populated and named Erin by races distinctly connected with Spain, Iberia, Africa, and Atlantis.
There is another reason for supposing that the Aryan nations came from Atlantis.
We find all Europe, except a small corner of Spain and a strip along the Arctic Circle, occupied by nations recognized as Aryan; but when we turn to Asia, there is but a corner of it, and that corner in the part nearest Europe, occupied by the Aryans. All the rest of that great continent has been filled from immemorial ages by non- Aryan races. There are seven branches of the Aryan family: 1. Germanic or Teutonic; 2.
Slavo-Lithuanic; 3. Celtic; 4. Italic; 5. Greek; 6. Iranian or Persian; 7. Sanscritic or Indian; and of these seven branches five dwell on the soil of Europe, and the other two are intrusive races in Asia from the direction of Europe. The Aryans in Europe have dwelt there apparently since the close of the Stone Age, if not before it, while the movements of the Aryans in Asia are within the Historical Period, and they appear as intrusive stocks, forming a high caste amid a vast population of a different race. The Vedas are supposed to date back to 2000 B.C., while there is every reason to believe that the Celt inhabited Western Europe 5000 B.C. If the Aryan race had originated in the heart of Asia, why would not its ramifications have extended into Siberia, China, and Japan, and all over Asia? And if the Aryans moved at a comparatively recent date into Europe from Bactria, where are the populations that then inhabited Europe—the men of the ages of stone and bronze? We should expect to find the western coasts of Europe filled with them, just as the eastern coasts of Asia and India are filled with Turanian populations. On the contrary, we know that the Aryans descended upon India from the Punjab, which lies to the north-west of that region; and that their traditions represent that they came there from the west, to wit, from the direction of Europe and Atlantis.
CHAPTER XI.
ATLANTIS RECONSTRUCTED.
The farther we go back in time toward the era of Atlantis, the more the evidences multiply that we are approaching the presence of a great, wise, civilized race. For instance, we find the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Israelites, from the earliest ages, refusing to eat the flesh of swine. The Western nations departed from this rule, and in these modern days we are beginning to realize the dangers of this article of food, on account of the trichina contained in it; and when we turn to the Talmud, we are told that it was forbidden to the Jews, “because of a small insect which infests it.”
The Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, and others of the ancient races, practised circumcision. It was probably resorted to in Atlantean days, and imposed as a religious duty, to arrest one of the most dreadful scourges of the human race-a scourge which continued to decimate the people of America, arrested their growth, and paralyzed their civilization. Circumcision stamped out the disease in Atlantis; we read of one
