tural religion. They are not primitive; they are
highly differentiated, highly complex, extremely enigmatic expressions
of fairly advanced and very peculiar religious thought. They are not
morally so very pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as
it is, seems the result of conscious reticence and wary selection rather
than of primeval innocence. Yet the bards or editors have by no means
wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage character.
These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on "Indo-Aryan Myths of the
Beginnings of Things," which follows.

CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.

Comparison of Vedic and savage myths--The metaphysical Vedic account of
the beginning of things--Opposite and savage fable of world made out
of fragments of a man--Discussion of this hymn--Absurdities of
Brahmanas--Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat--Evolutionary
myths--Marriage of heaven and earth--Myths of Puranas, their savage
parallels--Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas.

In discussing the savage myths of the origin of the world and of man, we
observed that they were as inconsistent as they were fanciful. Among the
fancies embodied in the myths was noted the theory that the world,
or various parts of it, had been formed out of the body of some
huge non-natural being, a god, or giant, or a member of some ancient
mysterious race. We also noted the myths of the original union of heaven
and earth, and their violent separation as displayed in the tales
of Greeks and Maoris, to which may be added the Acagchemem nation
in California.(1) Another feature of savage cosmogonies, illustrated
especially in some early Slavonic myths, in Australian legends, and in
the faith of the American races, was the creation of the world, or the
recovery of a drowned world by animals, as the raven, the dove and
the coyote. The hatching of all things out of an egg was another rude
conception, chiefly noted among the Finns. The Indian form occurs in the
Satapatha Brahmana.(2) The preservation of the human race in the Deluge,
or the creation of the race after the Deluge, was yet another detail
of savage mythology; and for many of these fancies we seemed to find a
satisfactory origin in the exceedingly credulous and confused state of
savage philosophy and savage imagination.

(1) Bancroft, v. 162.

(2) Sacred Books of the East, i. 216.

The question now to be asked is, do the tra