Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

238 THE TRADITION Of
first * settlers on the Euphrates and Tigris," himself
" known to the first settlers;" he is called " the intelligent
guide, or, according to another interpretation, the
intelligent w* \^-*-"*" V fish," AJ.KJJ.*L 4 "the teacher of mankind," "the lord
of understanding;" " one of his emblems is the wedge
or arrow-head, the essential emblem of cuneiform writing,
which seems to be assigned to him as the inventor, or at
least the patron of the Chaldeean alphabet." In the
Vedic tradition as Satiavrata (vide Rawlinson's " Bampton
Lect.," lect. ii. 67), having been saved " from the
destroying waves " in " a large vessel" sent from heaven
for his use-which he entered accompanied " by pairs of
all brute animals "-he is thus addressed, " Then shalt
thou know my true greatness, rightly named the Supreme
Godhead; by my favour all thy questions shall be answered
and thy mind abundantly instructed;" and it is
added that " after the deluge had abated," Satiavrata
was " instructed in all human and divine knowledge."
In fine, if we recognise him as Hoa, we shall find his
benefactions to mankind thus summed up in Berosus.
( Vide the original in Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies,"
i. 154.)34
34 Layard (" Nineveh and Babylon," p. 343) says, " We can scarcely
hesitate to identify this mythic form (at Kosyundik) with the Cannes or
m ,n-fish, who, according to the traditions preserved by Berosus,
issued from the Erethrcean sea, instructed the Ckaldceans in all wisdom, in
the sciences and the fine arts, and was afterwards worshipped as a god in
the temples of Babylonia. . . . Five such monsters rose from the Persian
Gulf at fabulous intervals of time (Cory's " Fragments," p. 30). It has
been conjectured that this myth denotes the conquest of ChaldaBa at
some remote and pre-historic period by a comparatively civilised nation
coming in ships to the mouth of the Euphrates. . . . The Dagon of the
Philistines and of the inhabitants of the Phoenician coast was worshipped,
according to the united opinion of the Hebrew commentators on the Bible,
under the same form" The five apparitions at long intervals may have
been the confusion of the previous revelations to the patriarchs with those
made to Noah-or they may be reduplications (vide supra, p. 157).