Of all traditions relating to the history of primitive humanity, by far
the most universal is that of the Deluge. Our present purpose is to pass
under review the principal versions of it extant among the leading races
of men. The concordance of these with the Biblical narrative will bring
out their primary unity, and we shall thus be able to recognize the fact
of this tradition being one of those which date before the dispersion of
peoples, go back to the very dawn of the civilized world, and can only
refer to a real and definite event.
But we have previously to get rid of certain legendary recollections
erroneously associated with the Biblical Deluge, their essential
features forbidding sound criticism to assimilate them therewith. We
allude to such as refer to local phenomena, and are of historic and
comparatively recent date. Doubtless the tradition of the great
primitive cataclysm may have been confused with these, and thus have led
to an exaggeration of their importance; but the characteristic points of
the narrative admitted into the Book of Genesis are wanting, and even
under the legendary form it has assumed these events retain a decidedly
special and restricted character. To group recollections of this nature
with those that really relate to the Deluge would be to invalidate,
rather than confirm, the consequences we are entitled to draw from the
latter.
Take, for instance, the great inundation placed by the historic books of
China in the reign of Yao. This has no real relation, or even
resemblance, to the Biblical Deluge; it is a purely local event, the
date of which, spite of the uncertainty of Chinese chronology previous
to the eighth century B.C., we may yet determine as long subsequent to
the fully historic periods of Egypt and Babylon.[31] Chinese authors
describe Yu, minister and engineer of the day, as restoring the course
of rivers, raising dykes, digging canals, and regulating the taxation of
every province throughout China. A learned Sinologist, Edouard Biot, has
proved, in a treatise on the changes of the lower course of the
Hoang-ho, that it was to one of its frequent inundations the above
catastrophe was due, and that the early Chinese settlements on its banks
had had much to suffer from this cause. These works of Yu were but the
beginning of embankments necessary to contain its waters, carried on
further in following ages. A celebrated inscription graven on the rocky
face of one of the mountain peaks of Ho-nan passes for contemporaneous
with these works, and is consequently the most ancient specimen of
Chinese epigraphy extant. This inscription appears to present an
intrinsically authentic character, sufficient to dispel the doubts
suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather suspicious fact
connected with it, that we are only acquainted with it through ancient
copies, and that for many centuries past the minutest research has
failed to re-discover the original.
Nor is the character of a mere local event less conspicuous in the
legend of Botchica, such as we have it reported by the Muyscas, the
ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca, in South America,
although here mythological fable is mingled much more largely with the
fundamental historic element.
Huythaca, the wife of a divine man, or rather a god, called Botchica,
having practised abominable witchcraft in order to make the river Funzha
leave its bed, the whole plain of Bogota is devastated by its waters;
men and beasts perish in the inundation, and only a few escape by flight
to the loftiest mountains. The tradition adds that Botchica broke
asunder the rocks inclosing the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, in
order to facilitate the escape of the waters, next reassembled the
dispersed remnant of the Muyscas, taught them Sun-worship, and went up
to heaven, after having lived 500 years in Cundinamarca.