long before the sun and moon were visible, and the day and night were clearly defined.  Creation proceeded in a certain order from vegetable to animal life, and from lower animals to higher, and last of all man appeared.  In heathen systems we find fragments of this traditional account, and, as a rule, they are more or less clear in proportion to their nearness to, or departure from, the great cradle of the human race.[167] Thus Professor Rawlinson quotes from an Assyrian account of the creation, as found upon the clay tablets discovered in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, a description of formlessness, emptiness, and darkness on the deep—­of a separation between the earth and sky—­and of the light as preceding the appearance of the sun.  That account also places the creation of animals before that of man, whom it represents as being formed of the dust of the earth, and as receiving a divine effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of 1,000 years each.  In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun, moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the sea; in the sixth, man.  According to a passage in the Persian Avesta, the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods or thousands of years:  in the first, the heavens with the stars; in the second, the water and the clouds; in the third, the earth and the mountains; in the fourth, the trees and the plants; in the fifth, the beasts which sprang from the primeval beast; in the sixth, man.[169]

As we get farther away from the supposed early home of the race, the traditions become more fragmentary and indistinct.  The Rig Veda, Mandala, x., 129, tells us that: 

“In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught; There was neither day nor night nor light nor darkness; Only the EXISTENT ONE breathed calmly.  Next came darkness, gloom on gloom.  Next all was water—­chaos indiscrete."[170]

Strikingly similar is the language quoted in a former lecture from the prayer of a Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty.  It runs thus:  “Of old, in the beginning, there was the great chaos without form and dark.  The five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine.  In the midst thereof there presented itself neither form nor sound.  Thou, O Spiritual Sovereign, didst divide the grosser parts from the purer.  Thou madest heaven:  Thou madest earth:  Thou madest man.”

There is a possibility that these conceptions may have come from Christian sources instead of primitive Chinese traditions, possibly from early Nestorian missionaries, though this is scarcely probable, as Chinese emperors have been slow to introduce foreign conceptions into their august temple service to Shangte; its chief glory lies in its antiquity and its purely national character.  Buddhism had already been in China more than a thousand years, and these prayers are far enough from its teachings.  May we not believe that the ideas here expressed had always existed in the minds of the more devout rulers of the empire?  In similar language, the Edda of the Icelandic Northmen describes the primeval chaos.