Spence Hardy, in speaking on this subject, describes a Buddhist legend of Ceylon which represents the original inhabitants of the world as having been once spotlessly pure, and as dwelling in ethereal bodies which moved at will through space.  They had no need of sun or moon.  They lived in perfect happiness and peace till, at last, one of their number tasted of a strange substance which he found lying on the surface of the earth.  He induced others to eat also, whereupon all knew good and evil, and their high estate was lost.  They now had perpetual need of food, which only made them more gross and earthly.  Wickedness abounded, and they were in darkness.  Assembling together, they fashioned for themselves a sun, but after a few hours it fell below the horizon, and they were compelled to create a moon.[173] An old Mongolian legend represents the first man as having transgressed by eating a pistache nut.  As a punishment, he and all his posterity came under the power of sin and death, and were subjected to toil and suffering.[174] A tradition of the African Odshis, already named, relates that formerly God was very near to men.  But a woman, who had been pounding banana fruit in a mortar, inadvertently entering His presence with a pestle in her hands, aroused His anger, and He withdrew into the high heavens and listened to men no more.  Six rainless years brought famine and distress, whereupon they besought Him to send one of His counsellors who should be their daysman, and should undertake their cause and care for them.  God sent his chief minister, with a promise that He would give rain and sunshine, and He directed that His rainbow should appear in the sky.[175] The inhabitants of Tahiti have a tradition of a fall which is very striking; and Humboldt, after careful study, reached the conclusion that it had not been derived through any communication with Christian lands, but was an old native legend.  The Karens of Burmah had a story of an early temptation of their ancestors by an evil being and their consequent apostasy.  Many other races who have no definite tradition of this kind have still some vague notion of a golden age in the past.  There has been everywhere a mournful and pathetic sense of something lost, of degeneracy from better days gone by, of Divine displeasure and forfeited favor.  The baffled gropings of all false religions seem to have been so many devices to regain some squandered heritage of the past.  All this is strikingly true of China.

Still more clear and wellnigh universal are the traditions of a flood.  The Hindu Brahmanas and the Mahabharata of a later age present legends of a deluge which strikingly resemble the story of Genesis.  Vishnu incarnate in a fish warned a great sage of a coming flood and directed him to build an ark.  A ship was built and the sage with seven others entered.  Attached to the horn of the fish the ship was towed over the waters to a high mountain top.[176] The Chinese also have a story of a flood, though it is not given in