When "our first parents" were expelled from Paradise, Adam fell upon the
mountain in Ceylon which still retains his name ("Adam's Peak"), while
Eve descended at Júddah, which is the port of Mecca, in Arabia. Seated
on the pinnacle of the highest mountain in Ceylon, with the orisons of
the angelic choirs still vibrating in his ears, the fallen progenitor of
the human race had sufficient leisure to bewail his guilt, forbearing
all food and sustenance for the space of forty days.[112] But Allah,
whose mercy ever surpasses his indignation, and who sought not the death
of the wretched penitent, then despatched to his relief the angel
Gabriel, who presented him with a quantity of wheat, taken from that
fatal tree[113] for which he had defied the wrath of his Creator, with
the information that it was to be for food to him and to his children.
At the same time he was directed to set it in the earth, and afterwards
to grind it into flour. Adam obeyed, for it was part of his penalty that
he should toil for sustenance; and the same day the corn sprang up and
arrived at maturity, thus affording him an immediate resource against
the evils of hunger and famine. For the benevolent archangel did not
quit him until he had farther taught him how to construct a mill on the
side of the mountain, to grind his corn, and also how to convert the
flour into dough and bake it into bread.
[112] The number Forty occurs very frequently in the Bible
(especially the Old Testament) in connection with
important events, and also in Asiatic tales. It is, in
fact, regarded with peculiar veneration alike by Jews
and Muhammedans. See notes to my _Group of Eastern
Romances and Stories_ (1889), pp. 140 and 456.
[113] The "fruit of the forbidden tree" was not an apple, as
we Westerns fondly believe, but _wheat_, say the Muslim
doctors.
With regard to the forlorn associate of his guilt, from whom a long and
painful separation constituted another article in the punishment of his
disobedience, it is briefly related that, experiencing also for the
first time the craving of hunger, she instinctively dipped her hand into
the sea and brought out a fish, and laying it on a rock in the sun, thus
prepared her first meal in this her state of despair and destitution.
Adam continued to deplore his guilt on the mountain for a period of one
hundred years, and it is said that from his tears, with which he
moistened the earth during this interval of remorse, there grew up that
useful variety of plants and herbs which in after times by their
medicinal qualities served to alleviate the afflictions of the human
race; and to this circumstance is to be ascribed the fact that the most
useful drugs in the _materia medica_ continue to this day to be supplied
from the peninsula of India and the adjoining islands. The angel Gabriel
had now tamed the wild ox of the field, and Allah himself had discovered
to Adam in the caverns of the same mountain that most important of
minerals, iron, which he soon learned to fashion into a variety of
articles necessary to the successful prosecution of his increasing
labours. At the termination of one hundred years, consumed in toil and
sorrow, Adam having been instructed by the angel Gabriel in a
penitential formula by which he might hope yet to conciliate Allah, the
justice of Heaven was satisfied, and his repentance was finally accepted
by the Most High. The joy of Adam was now as intense as his previous
sorrow had been extreme, and another century passed, during which the
tears with which Adam--from very different emotions--now bedewed the
earth were not less effectual in producing every species of fragrant and
aromatic flower and shrub, to delight the eye and gratify the sense of
smell by their odours, than they were formerly in the generation of
medicinal plants to assuage the sufferings of humanity.
Tradition has ascribed to Adam a stature so stupendous that when he
stood or walked his forehead brushed the skies; and it is stated that he
thus partook in the converse of the angels, even after his fall. But
this, by perpetually holding to his view the happiness which he had
lost, instead of alleviating, contributed in a great degree to aggravate
his misery, and to deprive him of all repose upon earth. Allah,
therefore, in pity of his sufferings, shortened his stature to one
hundred cubits, so that the harmony of the celestial hosts should no
longer reach his ear.
Then Allah caused to be raised up for Adam a magnificent pavilion, or
temple, constructed entirely of rubies, on the spot which is now
occupied by the sacred Kaába at Mecca, and which is in the centre of the
earth and immediately beneath the throne of Allah. The forlorn Eve--whom
Adam had almost forgotten amidst his own sorrows--in the course of her
weary wanderings came to the palace of her spouse, and, once more
united, they returned to Ceylon. But Adam revisited the sacred pavilion
at Mecca every year until his death. And wherever he set his foot there
arose, and exists to this day, some city, town, or village, or other
place to indicate the presence of man and of human cultivation. The
spaces between his footsteps--three days' journey--long remained barren
wilderness.
On the twentieth day of that disorder which terminated the earthly
existence of Adam, the divine will was revealed to him through the angel
Gabriel, that he was to make an immediate bequest of his power as
Allah's vicegerent on earth to Shayth, or Seth, the discreetest and most
virtuous of all his sons, which having done, he resigned his soul to the
Angel of Death on the following day. Seth buried his venerable parent on
the summit of the mountain in Ceylon ("Adam's Peak"); but some writers
assert that he was buried under Mount Abú Kebyss, about three miles from
Mecca. Eve died a twelvemonth after her husband, and was buried in his
grave. Noah conveyed their remains in the ark, and afterwards interred
them in Jerusalem, at the spot afterwards known as Mount Calvary.
* * * * *
The foregoing is considerably abridged from _An Essay towards the
History of Arabia, antecedent to the Birth of Mahommed, arranged from
the 'Tarikh Tebry' and other authentic sources_, by Major David Price,
London, 1824, pp. 4, 11.--We miss in this curious legend the brief but
pathetic account of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of
Eden, as found in the last two verses of the 3rd chapter of Genesis,
which suggested to Milton the fine conclusion of his _Paradise Lost_:
how "some natural tears they dropped," as the unhappy pair went
arm-in-arm out of Paradise--and "the world was all before them, where to
choose." Adam's prolonged residence at the top of a high mountain in
Ceylon seems to be of purely Muhammedan invention; and assuredly the
Arabian Prophet did not obtain from the renegade Jew who is said to have
assisted him in the composition of the Kurán the "information" that
Allah taught Adam the mystery of working in iron, since in the Book of
Genesis (iv, 22) it is stated that Tubal-cain was "an instructor of
every artificer in brass and iron," as his brother Jubal was "the father
of all such as handle the harp and the organ" (21).--The disinterment of
the bones of Adam and Eve by Noah before the Flood began and their
subsequent burial at the spot on which Jerusalem was afterwards built,
as also the stature of Adam, are, of course, derived from Jewish
tradition.