What do you think?
Rate this book
The Destruction of Atlantis: Ragnarok, or the Age of Fire & Gravel
This book had a tremendous impact on readers in the late 1800s. Written by Ignatius Donnelly, a farmer-politician with no scientific training, it developed a strikingly original theme—that a comet passed close to or struck Earth in ancient times, causing catastrophic changes that later were vaguely recalled in mythologies and biblical tales. Throughout most of the book, Donnelly supports his ideas with convincing geological, archeological, and astronomical arguments. This reprint presents Donnelly's theory of the comet that impacted Earth tens of thousands of years ago, producing layers of gravel (which contemporary scientists attributed to glaciation) and the destruction of an advanced civilization (Atlantis), followed by a years-long cloud cover and extreme cold. A remarkable concept that has also been mentioned in ancient Arabic writings, this theory—and the book in which it is presented—will appeal to readers in many areas of interest: occult enthusiasts, fantasy buffs, and perhaps even some members of the scientific community.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1883
55 people are currently reading
340 people want to read
About the author
Ignatius L. Donnelly
50 books37 followersU.S. Congressman, populist writer and science writer.
His most known theories are on Atlantis, Shakespearean authorship and Catastrophism.
Ignatius Loyola Donnelly ran in multiple elections for governor of Minnesota and was Republican congressman from 1863–1868.
In 1892, Donnelly wrote the preamble of the People's Party's Omaha Platform for the presidential campaign of that year. He was nominated for Vice President of the United States in 1900 by the People's Party.
His most known theories are on Atlantis, Shakespearean authorship and Catastrophism.
Ignatius Loyola Donnelly ran in multiple elections for governor of Minnesota and was Republican congressman from 1863–1868.
In 1892, Donnelly wrote the preamble of the People's Party's Omaha Platform for the presidential campaign of that year. He was nominated for Vice President of the United States in 1900 by the People's Party.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 24, 2022
Halcyon Press has, for some reason, issued an identical collection of books by Ignatius Donelly under three separate titles -
1. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and Other Works, by Ignatius L. Donnelly.
2. Ragnarok: The Age Of Fire And Gravel by Ignatius L. Donnelly, and
3. The Collected Works of Ignatius Donnelly, by Ignatius L. Donnelly
Contents, given at top of the first page, are identical.
Contents:
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth
We review them in the same order, regardless of the title.
*****
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
*****
Most of the book is a desperate effort by Donelly in his quest to establish Atlantis as the biblical origin of humanity, aided by and aiding the missionary efforts to convert India by lies.
It's not enough for Donelly to establish that Atlantis existed, indeed, or that it was exactly where Plato says it was.
He had to try to force it down the reader as not only the biblical origin of all but Africans, but also paint it more specifically as a globe- grilling empire.
***
Author gives details of deluge legends from various tribes of natives North of Mexico. He not only keeps using pejorative words for them, but also calling them Indian, knowing fully well they had nothing to do with India, and thereby using a tacit subconscious European presumption that the word defining people of India, Indian, was to be used to describe any people European migrants thought little of, an extension of Macaulay policy, of deliberately using falsehood against India, and deliberately, calling everything good of India bad.
" ... the civilization of Egypt at its first appearance was of a higher order than at any subsequent period of its history, thus testifying that it drew its greatness from a fountain higher than itself. It was in its early days that Egypt worshipped one only God; in the later ages this simple and sublime belief was buried under the corruptions of polytheism. ... "
There's the prejudice. Why "corruptions of polytheism"? Most horrors of genocide and massacres were committed by monotheistic when not by atheists, and between the two there's almost no difference - neither cares about perception of Reality, but each assumes authority to pronounce decisive judgement regarding matters that cannot be proved by logic.
" ... We are told that Deva-Nahusha visited his colonies in Farther India. An empire which reached from the Andes to Hindostan, if not to China, must have been magnificent indeed. ... "
The mistake he makes is in appropriating Sanskrit, Aaryans and all glorious literature thereof, denying India. For that's where the lie is exposed. Every bit of it, as far as related to India.
***
At the very outset, one wonders, as one reads the purpose of the book - as the first chapter is titled, if the author has evidence for any of it, or is it completely based on the theories and suppositions that were then prevalent in Europe, along with a few traditions Europe took for granted such as colonial expansion radiant outward from Europe.
One may suppose that there is merit in an investigation of a legend thought so much of by respected ones of Greece, and much has indeed come to light even during twentieth century from Schlieman's discovery of Troy and its gold, to truth of Indian legends of Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean.
But the author assumes Aryan invasion theory and that's proven fraudulent amply, moreover with the agenda behind the fraud exposed too, a colonial ruse to impose a belief on natives that they were just as much invaders as those known to be invaders during last millennium and half have been, and to impose guilt on innocent victims by propaganda of a fraudulent division of a nation, a land and a culture, for purposes set out explicitly by Macaulay - to break spirit of India so British can benefit by reducing India to slaves.
This assumption by the author, of a theory thst never had any truth in it at any level, makes one alert about the rest of his thesis, and question how much of his theory holds any truth at all, beyond the incontrovertible facts - yes, there us an astounding similarity between cultures, architecture et al, on two shores of southern Atlantic. Since there have been discoveries of other sites, for example one at Goebekliteppe, in a region in present day Turkey, once part of Greece.
Atlantis might have been fact, but was it an island? There have been satellite sightings of a city in Sahara that is now thought as the site of Atlantis.
On the other hand, why conclude that it was a single source? It is perfectly possible there was more than one.
Aryan civilisation and culture of India, by any name, and certainly knowledge possessed by India, predates India merging with Asia. There is evidence that Pacific islands had migrations and trade across the Pacific, and India has records of architect named Maya invited to create the palace at Indraprastha, which invoked deadly envy in others.
So there might have been more than one advanced civilisation, with relationship of trade rather than colonisation.
***
Then there are theories such as one proposed by Graham Hancock in his amazing Fingerprints of Gods.
And finally, there's India, reality being India has knowledge of having seen an ocean vanish, oceans churn and Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean; the river Sindhu, called Indus by Europe, and one that outsiders from Persia to Europe named the land after, is literally named "ocean" in India, as "Sindhu", in Sanskrit and in every Indian language, translates to ocean; no other river, not even the mighty Gangaa or far wider Brahmaputra, are ever referred to or thought of as anything but rivers. Goddesses, yes, but not ocean.
There's no denying the linguistic part of the bond, as said by Max Müller - "the Hindoos, the Persians, the Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, and Slavs" sharing a root language.
But there's also no denying that Hindus retain not a shred of memory of any other home or a journey to India, while Aarya literature in Sanskrit not only goes far back, it goes farther back than before the vanishing of an ocean between India and Asia, and seeing Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean.
A culture that retains memories reaching farther back than that would not likely forget an Atlantis that vanished only twenty thousand years ago, or a journey filled with travails from an idyllic homeland, finally reaching India, crossing Sindhu, if indeed the journey were after Sindhu river came to be in place of the ocean - Sindhu in Sanskrit - that had vanished as they watched.
It's either that Aarya were always in India and saw the cataclysmic churning of the oceans, vanishing of an ocean North of Vindhya and rising of Himaalayan ranges out of the ocean, or they came from elsewhere.
Truth must be ascribed to a memory retained so long and so firmly, about India and Himaalayan ranges, than the theory made up by Europe to explain the commonality of cultural heritage of "the Hindoos, the Persians, the Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, and Slavs". The latter is explained just as well by asking, did some Aryans migrate from India? Likely, that's the clue.
***
Early on begins a series of extremely racist comments, as author refers to India, by various persons he quotes, apart from himself.
"India affords us art account of the Deluge which, by its poverty, strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the Çatapatha Brâhmana of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the first time by Max Müller."
Here author gives a familiar version involving Manu, his name misspelled half the time as Mann, and then mentions another variation involving Satyavrata talked to Hythe ultimate Divine, God Vishnu himself, instead of the first Avataara of Vishnu, Matsyaavataara, referred by ignorant and uncomprehending guys here as Fish-God, before the next stupid and racist comment comes.
" ... Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised, though it be of recent date, and full of fantastic and often puerile details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of Brâhmana or than the Mahâbhârata; and, above all, it gives some circumstances omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a circumstance preserved, no doubt, by the oral tradition--popular, and not Brahmanic--with which the Purânas are so deeply imbued. ... "
His ignorance of India, and a lack of understanding of much more is on exhibition when he says "oral tradition--popular, and not Brahmanic".
The idiots are unable to see that, this is beginning of Dashaavataara, whereby evolution is portrayed as a series of Divine Descents (Avataara) or Manifestations, from Matsya (Fish), which here grows from tiny to humongous size, enough to guide and anchor a ship, to the ultimate Divine Avataara Krishna, and then final Avataara, yet to arrive.
But they proceed instead to make more asinine comments.
"The references to "the three worlds" and the "fish-god" in these legends point to Atlantis. The "three worlds" probably refers to the great empire of Atlantis, described by Plato, to wit, the western continent, America, the eastern continent, Europe and Africa, considered as one, and the island of Atlantis. ... "
No, the three worlds - the translation here of "Loka" as world is very inadequate, to say the least: former refers more to planes of existence, ours being the mortal and other two being one above, occupied by Gods, and a Nether.
" ... As we have seen, Poseidon, the founder of the civilization of Atlantis, is identical with Neptune, who is always represented riding a dolphin, bearing a trident, or three-pronged symbol, in his hand, emblematical probably of the triple kingdom. He is thus a sea-god, or fish-god, and he comes to save the representative of his country."
India is definitely NOT referring, to a god of either ocean or of Nether world, when speaking of Matsyaavataara (which is Vishnu appearing in the first form manifested on earth); even though Vishnu is portrayed as one resting on - not in - ocean, he's holding up the universe, he's holding up existence itself, and of course, earth; it's an ultimate form of Divine, supreme God, not a literal physical object, or something Europe can fit into a racist denigration comfortably. The first Avataara described here isn't as small as a dolphin, either, when grown to its full form.
***
Author gives details of deluge legends from various tribes of natives North of Mexico. He not only keeps using pejorative words for them, but also calling them Indian, knowing fully well they had nothing to do with India, and thereby using a tacit subconscious European presumption that the word defining people of India, Indian, was to be used to describe any people European migrants thought little of, an extension of Macaulay policy, of deliberately using falsehood against India, and deliberately, calling everything good of India bad.
When the author says Indian, he's referring to natives of continent across Atlantic; people of India he visually refers to as "Hindoo", or, at least equally often, as Aryan. Which is more correct than he realised.
***
Now, however, he gets completely muddled, chiefly due to racism equating India, Hindus and Aarya with caste system, and misconstruing very words from Sanskrit, which is entirely common in West.
"In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind into four races--the white, red, yellow, and black: the four castes of India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste. The red men, according to the Mahâbhârata, were the Kshatriyas--the warrior caste-who were afterward engaged in a fierce contest with the whites--the Brahmans--and were nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their stock Buddha was born. So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic or red stock. The great Manu was also of the red race."
This is so silly it's enough to make one speechless, giving up the hope that anyone thus determined to retain prejudice couldn't possibly be made to hear what are plain facts. For what it's worth, here they are.
First, castes in India were not separate races, never were, and still aren't. Marriages are usually arranged within caste because a daughter has grown up adjusted to a certain profession, vocation, especially that of males of the family, and would find it easier to adjust immediately and take charge when appropriate, if her new home and family aren't drastically different.
When European royals married other royals, or were considered not royal otherwise, that was caste system of not only inheritance but marriage as well, for those born of morganatic marriages were treated badly by others.
Hence Mountbatten partitioning India and leaving in a hurry, so he could make up for the humiliations of his father, in Germany by cousin Willie and later in England due to being German.
But even in ancient legends and epics of India we find people routinely marrying drastically across castes, even more, and not only their children not suffering, but no questions raised about their marriages by anyone. There are at least half a dozen such examples that come readily to mind, from Shantanu to Bheems, from parents of Raavana to parents of Bharata who the country is named Bhaarata after, from Raama and Sita (she was found by a king when he went to till a field as per ritual, and brought up by him as his own daughter), to Krishna and his second wife Satyabhama, daughter of Jaambuwanta who's usually in resemblance close to a bear, and was with Raama in the war against Raavana.
What's more, the caste changed if the work did, so Vaalmieki from being a born fisherman became a wayside looted and killer, but met a holy man and changed, so much so he became a revered holy man, a sage who eventually not only gave refuge to Sita and her sons, bringing them up, but wrote the earliest Raamaayana that survived, teaching the sons about their father.
At the other end of the spectrum, Raavana the son of a Brahmin became a king in his own right, while his mother was a Raakshasie, and he had characteristics inherited from both parents. Why his lower nature dominated is told in an interesting detail, but didn't affect his prospects until he abducted wife of another man - his own chief wife certainly was a princess from a kingdom in Rajasthan, and Jodhpur still has a garden bearing their names.
As for Bharata, or sons of Shantanu by the fisherman's daughter he married, they were kings, inheriting without any question the kingdoms of their respective fathers.
And the explanation Donelly gives about the word "Varna" meaning caste, is again complete nonsense. The word literally means colour, but isn't about skin colour, it's about mind, heart, spirit, ones whole inner being as transformed by one's work.
Brahmins are described as white because that's colour assigned to a life devoted to intellectual work, whereby one isn't allowed to charge for services rendered but must accept whatever is offered, whether one chose to become a Brahmin or was born thus to a family. One is also not allowed to lapse in for example rules regarding hygiene, beginning with freshly bathe every morning and freshly washed, not previously worn and unwashed, clothes worn, before beginning of day or partaking of any food. Its a whole lifestyle apart from learning the various things.
Brahmins aren't white race any more than any other Aryans, were mostly always poor or very poor, and can still be seen to be of a continuum of variety of skin hues, just as any other Indians are, of whatever caste.
Kshatriya are visualised as red, not because it was a skin colour, but because red is the colour that'd come to mind when one thinks of someone brought up bear arms to fight to protect weak, and carry out other prescribed duties of a warrior.
Raama, Krishna, and their clans were quintessential Aarya and Kshatriya, but both Raama and Krishna are described as "shadowed", not quite black but dark blue of a cloud, or shade of a tree amidst brilliant sunlight, darker than medium. Not red.
As for the war Donelly describes, there wasn't one, not between castes. One single Brahmin who's held as sixth Avataara of God Vishnu, Parashuraama, alone went to war, for personal reasons and his terrible wrath. But he was pacified down from his anger when he met Raama after, ironically, Raama had broken the bow Parashuraama had obtained from God Shiva, and given to Sita because she played with it as a child. Pacified after, not because - reason for pacification was rather a recognition of a higher manifestation of God in Raama.
Again, this is something West is unable, due to unwillingness, to see. Caste system has Brahmins do intellectual work, but spiritual life is open to everyone who hasn't bound oneself to another in responsibility; caste is no matter if one lives in renunciation of the world. Moreover, then one's only work is achieving union with Divine, and when so achieved - or whatever stage of achievement arrived at - people do recognise it, but not because there's any imposition thereof by any institution.
Brahmins have rights to priesthood, but becoming God is open to everyone to achieve, and when someone is in fact achieved, he's worshipped as God or whatever level he or she are at, regardless of which caste they began in.
Yellow obviously for traders because it's colour of gold, but the fourth colour isn't black, it's blue, for workers.
And given a free choice along with an understanding of the requirements and duties, one can't imagine anyone choosing not wealth, which is most with the third caste, trade. But not everyone would choose trade if otherwise inclined. An Alexander must choose being Kshatriya (although it's unclear if he did follow all duties of one, but then he wasn't properly taught so), an Einstein a Brahmin and a Raphael an artist. It's not hard to imagine someone loving weaving, if one sees the beauty and variety of fabrics of India. And so on.
***
Rest of the review, if not below, is at:-
https://reviews-booksiread-drjg.blogs...
Since goodreads is deleting comments immediately, so it cannot be posted below, as I used to. It might be just this particular book they are doing it to. I haven't checked others.
Perhaps this site is already going out.
1. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World and Other Works, by Ignatius L. Donnelly.
2. Ragnarok: The Age Of Fire And Gravel by Ignatius L. Donnelly, and
3. The Collected Works of Ignatius Donnelly, by Ignatius L. Donnelly
Contents, given at top of the first page, are identical.
Contents:
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth
We review them in the same order, regardless of the title.
*****
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
*****
Most of the book is a desperate effort by Donelly in his quest to establish Atlantis as the biblical origin of humanity, aided by and aiding the missionary efforts to convert India by lies.
It's not enough for Donelly to establish that Atlantis existed, indeed, or that it was exactly where Plato says it was.
He had to try to force it down the reader as not only the biblical origin of all but Africans, but also paint it more specifically as a globe- grilling empire.
***
Author gives details of deluge legends from various tribes of natives North of Mexico. He not only keeps using pejorative words for them, but also calling them Indian, knowing fully well they had nothing to do with India, and thereby using a tacit subconscious European presumption that the word defining people of India, Indian, was to be used to describe any people European migrants thought little of, an extension of Macaulay policy, of deliberately using falsehood against India, and deliberately, calling everything good of India bad.
" ... the civilization of Egypt at its first appearance was of a higher order than at any subsequent period of its history, thus testifying that it drew its greatness from a fountain higher than itself. It was in its early days that Egypt worshipped one only God; in the later ages this simple and sublime belief was buried under the corruptions of polytheism. ... "
There's the prejudice. Why "corruptions of polytheism"? Most horrors of genocide and massacres were committed by monotheistic when not by atheists, and between the two there's almost no difference - neither cares about perception of Reality, but each assumes authority to pronounce decisive judgement regarding matters that cannot be proved by logic.
" ... We are told that Deva-Nahusha visited his colonies in Farther India. An empire which reached from the Andes to Hindostan, if not to China, must have been magnificent indeed. ... "
The mistake he makes is in appropriating Sanskrit, Aaryans and all glorious literature thereof, denying India. For that's where the lie is exposed. Every bit of it, as far as related to India.
***
At the very outset, one wonders, as one reads the purpose of the book - as the first chapter is titled, if the author has evidence for any of it, or is it completely based on the theories and suppositions that were then prevalent in Europe, along with a few traditions Europe took for granted such as colonial expansion radiant outward from Europe.
One may suppose that there is merit in an investigation of a legend thought so much of by respected ones of Greece, and much has indeed come to light even during twentieth century from Schlieman's discovery of Troy and its gold, to truth of Indian legends of Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean.
But the author assumes Aryan invasion theory and that's proven fraudulent amply, moreover with the agenda behind the fraud exposed too, a colonial ruse to impose a belief on natives that they were just as much invaders as those known to be invaders during last millennium and half have been, and to impose guilt on innocent victims by propaganda of a fraudulent division of a nation, a land and a culture, for purposes set out explicitly by Macaulay - to break spirit of India so British can benefit by reducing India to slaves.
This assumption by the author, of a theory thst never had any truth in it at any level, makes one alert about the rest of his thesis, and question how much of his theory holds any truth at all, beyond the incontrovertible facts - yes, there us an astounding similarity between cultures, architecture et al, on two shores of southern Atlantic. Since there have been discoveries of other sites, for example one at Goebekliteppe, in a region in present day Turkey, once part of Greece.
Atlantis might have been fact, but was it an island? There have been satellite sightings of a city in Sahara that is now thought as the site of Atlantis.
On the other hand, why conclude that it was a single source? It is perfectly possible there was more than one.
Aryan civilisation and culture of India, by any name, and certainly knowledge possessed by India, predates India merging with Asia. There is evidence that Pacific islands had migrations and trade across the Pacific, and India has records of architect named Maya invited to create the palace at Indraprastha, which invoked deadly envy in others.
So there might have been more than one advanced civilisation, with relationship of trade rather than colonisation.
***
Then there are theories such as one proposed by Graham Hancock in his amazing Fingerprints of Gods.
And finally, there's India, reality being India has knowledge of having seen an ocean vanish, oceans churn and Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean; the river Sindhu, called Indus by Europe, and one that outsiders from Persia to Europe named the land after, is literally named "ocean" in India, as "Sindhu", in Sanskrit and in every Indian language, translates to ocean; no other river, not even the mighty Gangaa or far wider Brahmaputra, are ever referred to or thought of as anything but rivers. Goddesses, yes, but not ocean.
There's no denying the linguistic part of the bond, as said by Max Müller - "the Hindoos, the Persians, the Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, and Slavs" sharing a root language.
But there's also no denying that Hindus retain not a shred of memory of any other home or a journey to India, while Aarya literature in Sanskrit not only goes far back, it goes farther back than before the vanishing of an ocean between India and Asia, and seeing Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean.
A culture that retains memories reaching farther back than that would not likely forget an Atlantis that vanished only twenty thousand years ago, or a journey filled with travails from an idyllic homeland, finally reaching India, crossing Sindhu, if indeed the journey were after Sindhu river came to be in place of the ocean - Sindhu in Sanskrit - that had vanished as they watched.
It's either that Aarya were always in India and saw the cataclysmic churning of the oceans, vanishing of an ocean North of Vindhya and rising of Himaalayan ranges out of the ocean, or they came from elsewhere.
Truth must be ascribed to a memory retained so long and so firmly, about India and Himaalayan ranges, than the theory made up by Europe to explain the commonality of cultural heritage of "the Hindoos, the Persians, the Celts, Germans, Romans, Greeks, and Slavs". The latter is explained just as well by asking, did some Aryans migrate from India? Likely, that's the clue.
***
Early on begins a series of extremely racist comments, as author refers to India, by various persons he quotes, apart from himself.
"India affords us art account of the Deluge which, by its poverty, strikingly contrasts with that of the Bible and the Chaldeans. Its most simple and ancient form is found in the Çatapatha Brâhmana of the Rig-Veda. It has been translated for the first time by Max Müller."
Here author gives a familiar version involving Manu, his name misspelled half the time as Mann, and then mentions another variation involving Satyavrata talked to Hythe ultimate Divine, God Vishnu himself, instead of the first Avataara of Vishnu, Matsyaavataara, referred by ignorant and uncomprehending guys here as Fish-God, before the next stupid and racist comment comes.
" ... Nor is the Puranic version of the Legend of the Deluge to be despised, though it be of recent date, and full of fantastic and often puerile details. In certain aspects it is less Aryanized than that of Brâhmana or than the Mahâbhârata; and, above all, it gives some circumstances omitted in these earlier versions, which must yet have belonged to the original foundation, since they appear in the Babylonian legend; a circumstance preserved, no doubt, by the oral tradition--popular, and not Brahmanic--with which the Purânas are so deeply imbued. ... "
His ignorance of India, and a lack of understanding of much more is on exhibition when he says "oral tradition--popular, and not Brahmanic".
The idiots are unable to see that, this is beginning of Dashaavataara, whereby evolution is portrayed as a series of Divine Descents (Avataara) or Manifestations, from Matsya (Fish), which here grows from tiny to humongous size, enough to guide and anchor a ship, to the ultimate Divine Avataara Krishna, and then final Avataara, yet to arrive.
But they proceed instead to make more asinine comments.
"The references to "the three worlds" and the "fish-god" in these legends point to Atlantis. The "three worlds" probably refers to the great empire of Atlantis, described by Plato, to wit, the western continent, America, the eastern continent, Europe and Africa, considered as one, and the island of Atlantis. ... "
No, the three worlds - the translation here of "Loka" as world is very inadequate, to say the least: former refers more to planes of existence, ours being the mortal and other two being one above, occupied by Gods, and a Nether.
" ... As we have seen, Poseidon, the founder of the civilization of Atlantis, is identical with Neptune, who is always represented riding a dolphin, bearing a trident, or three-pronged symbol, in his hand, emblematical probably of the triple kingdom. He is thus a sea-god, or fish-god, and he comes to save the representative of his country."
India is definitely NOT referring, to a god of either ocean or of Nether world, when speaking of Matsyaavataara (which is Vishnu appearing in the first form manifested on earth); even though Vishnu is portrayed as one resting on - not in - ocean, he's holding up the universe, he's holding up existence itself, and of course, earth; it's an ultimate form of Divine, supreme God, not a literal physical object, or something Europe can fit into a racist denigration comfortably. The first Avataara described here isn't as small as a dolphin, either, when grown to its full form.
***
Author gives details of deluge legends from various tribes of natives North of Mexico. He not only keeps using pejorative words for them, but also calling them Indian, knowing fully well they had nothing to do with India, and thereby using a tacit subconscious European presumption that the word defining people of India, Indian, was to be used to describe any people European migrants thought little of, an extension of Macaulay policy, of deliberately using falsehood against India, and deliberately, calling everything good of India bad.
When the author says Indian, he's referring to natives of continent across Atlantic; people of India he visually refers to as "Hindoo", or, at least equally often, as Aryan. Which is more correct than he realised.
***
Now, however, he gets completely muddled, chiefly due to racism equating India, Hindus and Aarya with caste system, and misconstruing very words from Sanskrit, which is entirely common in West.
"In the same way we find that the ancient Aryan writings divided mankind into four races--the white, red, yellow, and black: the four castes of India were founded upon these distinctions in color; in fact, the word for color in Sanscrit (varna) means caste. The red men, according to the Mahâbhârata, were the Kshatriyas--the warrior caste-who were afterward engaged in a fierce contest with the whites--the Brahmans--and were nearly exterminated, although some of them survived, and from their stock Buddha was born. So that not only the Mohammedan and Christian but the Buddhistic religion seem to be derived from branches of the Hamitic or red stock. The great Manu was also of the red race."
This is so silly it's enough to make one speechless, giving up the hope that anyone thus determined to retain prejudice couldn't possibly be made to hear what are plain facts. For what it's worth, here they are.
First, castes in India were not separate races, never were, and still aren't. Marriages are usually arranged within caste because a daughter has grown up adjusted to a certain profession, vocation, especially that of males of the family, and would find it easier to adjust immediately and take charge when appropriate, if her new home and family aren't drastically different.
When European royals married other royals, or were considered not royal otherwise, that was caste system of not only inheritance but marriage as well, for those born of morganatic marriages were treated badly by others.
Hence Mountbatten partitioning India and leaving in a hurry, so he could make up for the humiliations of his father, in Germany by cousin Willie and later in England due to being German.
But even in ancient legends and epics of India we find people routinely marrying drastically across castes, even more, and not only their children not suffering, but no questions raised about their marriages by anyone. There are at least half a dozen such examples that come readily to mind, from Shantanu to Bheems, from parents of Raavana to parents of Bharata who the country is named Bhaarata after, from Raama and Sita (she was found by a king when he went to till a field as per ritual, and brought up by him as his own daughter), to Krishna and his second wife Satyabhama, daughter of Jaambuwanta who's usually in resemblance close to a bear, and was with Raama in the war against Raavana.
What's more, the caste changed if the work did, so Vaalmieki from being a born fisherman became a wayside looted and killer, but met a holy man and changed, so much so he became a revered holy man, a sage who eventually not only gave refuge to Sita and her sons, bringing them up, but wrote the earliest Raamaayana that survived, teaching the sons about their father.
At the other end of the spectrum, Raavana the son of a Brahmin became a king in his own right, while his mother was a Raakshasie, and he had characteristics inherited from both parents. Why his lower nature dominated is told in an interesting detail, but didn't affect his prospects until he abducted wife of another man - his own chief wife certainly was a princess from a kingdom in Rajasthan, and Jodhpur still has a garden bearing their names.
As for Bharata, or sons of Shantanu by the fisherman's daughter he married, they were kings, inheriting without any question the kingdoms of their respective fathers.
And the explanation Donelly gives about the word "Varna" meaning caste, is again complete nonsense. The word literally means colour, but isn't about skin colour, it's about mind, heart, spirit, ones whole inner being as transformed by one's work.
Brahmins are described as white because that's colour assigned to a life devoted to intellectual work, whereby one isn't allowed to charge for services rendered but must accept whatever is offered, whether one chose to become a Brahmin or was born thus to a family. One is also not allowed to lapse in for example rules regarding hygiene, beginning with freshly bathe every morning and freshly washed, not previously worn and unwashed, clothes worn, before beginning of day or partaking of any food. Its a whole lifestyle apart from learning the various things.
Brahmins aren't white race any more than any other Aryans, were mostly always poor or very poor, and can still be seen to be of a continuum of variety of skin hues, just as any other Indians are, of whatever caste.
Kshatriya are visualised as red, not because it was a skin colour, but because red is the colour that'd come to mind when one thinks of someone brought up bear arms to fight to protect weak, and carry out other prescribed duties of a warrior.
Raama, Krishna, and their clans were quintessential Aarya and Kshatriya, but both Raama and Krishna are described as "shadowed", not quite black but dark blue of a cloud, or shade of a tree amidst brilliant sunlight, darker than medium. Not red.
As for the war Donelly describes, there wasn't one, not between castes. One single Brahmin who's held as sixth Avataara of God Vishnu, Parashuraama, alone went to war, for personal reasons and his terrible wrath. But he was pacified down from his anger when he met Raama after, ironically, Raama had broken the bow Parashuraama had obtained from God Shiva, and given to Sita because she played with it as a child. Pacified after, not because - reason for pacification was rather a recognition of a higher manifestation of God in Raama.
Again, this is something West is unable, due to unwillingness, to see. Caste system has Brahmins do intellectual work, but spiritual life is open to everyone who hasn't bound oneself to another in responsibility; caste is no matter if one lives in renunciation of the world. Moreover, then one's only work is achieving union with Divine, and when so achieved - or whatever stage of achievement arrived at - people do recognise it, but not because there's any imposition thereof by any institution.
Brahmins have rights to priesthood, but becoming God is open to everyone to achieve, and when someone is in fact achieved, he's worshipped as God or whatever level he or she are at, regardless of which caste they began in.
Yellow obviously for traders because it's colour of gold, but the fourth colour isn't black, it's blue, for workers.
And given a free choice along with an understanding of the requirements and duties, one can't imagine anyone choosing not wealth, which is most with the third caste, trade. But not everyone would choose trade if otherwise inclined. An Alexander must choose being Kshatriya (although it's unclear if he did follow all duties of one, but then he wasn't properly taught so), an Einstein a Brahmin and a Raphael an artist. It's not hard to imagine someone loving weaving, if one sees the beauty and variety of fabrics of India. And so on.
***
Rest of the review, if not below, is at:-
https://reviews-booksiread-drjg.blogs...
Since goodreads is deleting comments immediately, so it cannot be posted below, as I used to. It might be just this particular book they are doing it to. I haven't checked others.
Perhaps this site is already going out.
November 14, 2014
Donnelly was a product of his time. This book is an exposition of what might have happened geologicly in the time before Atlantis. Keep in mind that he also wrote a book trying to show that Atlantis was real and linking all modern cultures to it. Here he looks at the Norse legends and links them to a time before time. He even goes so far as to link the Midgard Serpent to the underwater mountain chain that reaches from Japan around Africa and up to Norway. It is a very interesting read, but keep in mind that some of the science has moved forward since Donnelly's day.
March 24, 2022
One picks up these works of Ignatius donelly when one sees a reference, due to a vague possibility that it might actually have information about these islands that might have existed. That part, having finished his work on Atlantis, one now knows was over in less than one chapter, where he quotes Plato, his sources and legends thereof, all that's known.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
March 24, 2022
One picks up these works of Ignatius donelly when one sees a reference, due to a vague possibility that it might actually have information about these islands that might have existed. That part, having finished his work on Atlantis, one now knows was over in less than one chapter, where he quotes Plato, his sources and legends thereof, all that's known.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
Read
March 24, 2022One picks up these works of Ignatius donelly when one sees a reference, due to a vague possibility that it might actually have information about these islands that might have existed. That part, having finished his work on Atlantis, one now knows was over in less than one chapter, where he quotes Plato, his sources and legends thereof, all that's known.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
It's not that the next part, surmised due to Challenger ship having conducted research, is contradictory, but that the Rest, where Donelly tries to leap over all gaps in evidence to assert that all civilisations on earth stemmed from Atlantis, and that Atlantis was the biblical Eden, thereafter using lies routinely about India (and possibly also others), tgat one is put off majorly.
Looking at contents of this book, after having read first few chapters, one begins to get the drift. Here he's discussing the Drift, one wonders why, until one sees biblical mention in contents.
So it's more of the same.
Donelly is assuming that if certain parts of the earth now warmer were once shrouded in ice sheet, so must have been all that is now colder. And the rest. This is assuming the pattern now is what it always was, and no shifting of poles or precession of axis ever occurred, which is incorrect.
...............................................................................................
On the whole, this work is only a sequel to his thesis on Atlantis, where he argued Atlantis not only existed but was the source of all civilisation of every race except the Sub-Saharan Africans. He considers them not civilized enough to co-opt them, although he does everything of lies and frauds to claim civilisation of India as stemming from Atlantis and only incidentally existing in India due to migration. He doesn't bother considering why this civilisation didn't survive elsewhere after abrahmic onslaught, because he thinks physically forced victory proves superiority.
Here he continues with the same assault on India with lies and frauds, while attempting to prove that Atlantis survived a comet strike during which most other civilisations if any perished.
In this series of assaults against India he lies, or uses lies by missionaries from a publication titled "Bible in India", which he'd used also in the prior work, as a source.
But he crosses all possible limits of fraud here.
He claims several legends from ancient Sanskrit literature, one after a other, as really referring to comet strike suffered by earth, not what they are clearly written about, and understood by India for millennia.
He begins by coopting Varāha Avatāra as being about a comet, and lies several times in the process additionally - Brahma was only an earthly king, Mareechee and sons were genii, Varāha is a comet and not a boar, ...
Next he assaults the Samudra Manthana and claims Meru is battlefield in Atlantis where Asuras (which he says were fiends in air) were symbolical depiction of the comet battled by Gods.
His final lie is about Indra being the Sun battling Vritra who's comet, and he says Indra the Hindoo God is the supreme Buddhist God.
But the worst fraud is his third assault, which he repeats throughout the book, claiming Ramayana as depiction of sun battling comet, and the bridge the Atlantic ridge connecting lands across Atlantic to Atlantis and to one another.
He asserts that Hindus worship Rama as Sun, Ravana is comet who's stolen Sita whose name means earth so she represents earth assaulted by comet, the battle in Lanka is really over Atlantis, and it ends with Sun regaining earth and the couple loving happily ever after.
That has half a dozen whoppers. But it gets worse.
In the process of repeating this lie, he claims at one point that Krishna in Bhagawadgeeta told Arjuna the story of Adam and Heva, who he claims was Indian name of Eve, and the land connection was lost after they walked across to India, and he pretends that this wasn't a bridge built by Rāma.
He also reiterates various facts of these legends and claims they were lies made up after Aryans migrated from Atlantis to India. Rāma Setu is one such fact he categorically calls made up.
Racist arrogance is exhibited fully flagrant by Donelly, apart from antisemitism of claiming strenuously that Job wasn't a Jew because he was long before Moses.
................................................................................................
In PART III CHAPTER I, Donelly astounds one with this -
"But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals."
Amazing, because when one reads his earlier work on Atlantis, such understanding wasn't apparent except by its absence - he's all gung-ho therein to impose not only the fraudulent theory of Aryan migration into India, but also join missionaries in imposing bible on India, and ignore all of the wealth of treasures of Indian literature, especially those relating history of the land, as it does in legdnds, in what Europe brands myth, but has proved correct in several separate points.
"Civilization brings with it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepticism becomes the synonym for intelligence; men no longer repeat; they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. If the myth survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make it their stock in trade: they decorate it in a masquerade of frippery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in Tennyson—a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels, and laces."
"But he adds:
""Never was there a time in the history of philosophy when the character, customs, and beliefs of aboriginal man, and everything appertaining to him, were held in such high esteem by scholars as at present."
""It is now a recognized principle of philosophy that no religious belief, however crude, nor any historical tradition, however absurd, can be held by the majority of a people for any considerable time as true, without having had in the beginning some foundation in fact."[1]
"An universal myth points to two conclusions:
"First, that it is based on some fact.
"Secondly, that it dates back, in all probability, to the time when the ancestors of the races possessing it had not yet separated."
"In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. "
One wonders, but is soon confronted with the familiar Donelly, in the very next chapter when he proceeds to pick at a legend from India, and lie and tear it to shreds, because it's convenient to attack a non abrahmic faith, insult Hindus, be generally as racist as he pleases.
................................................................................................
As we go to PART III CHAPTER III, however, we see that Donelly remains the same colonial racist, in twisting and lying in interpretations of what he borrows from India. Here he borrows third chapter of Dashāvatāra, only to change everything to suit his purpose.
He changes Brahmā, the Creator God, to a mere king, and Varāha, the third Avatāra of Vishnu, into the comet to suit his purpose, instead of what it is, the third chapter of evolution, land animals appearing on Earth.
""By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma a being shaped like a boar, white and exceeding small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air."
"That is to say, it was an atmospheric, not a terrestrial creature.
""Brahma was astonished on beholding this figure, and discovered, by the force of internal penetration, that it could be nothing but the power of the Omnipotent which had assumed a body and become visible. He now felt that God is all in all, and all is from him, and all in him; {p. 133} and said to Mareechee and his sons (the attendant genii): 'A wonderful animal has emanated from my essence; at first of the smallest size, it has in one hour increased to this enormous bulk, and, without doubt, it is a portion of the almighty power.'" "
Mareechee wasn't a genii, there's no such thing in India, and donelly is fraudulently imposing an Arabian concept on India. Mareechee was a sage.
"Brahma, an earthly king, was at first frightened by the terrible spectacle in the air, and then claimed that he had produced it himself!"
There's another lie, "Brahma, an earthly king", from Donnelly who is gung-ho to impose conversion by missionaries on India, so he does not refrain from borrowing Hindu legends, but lies, and refuses to admit that Brahma was the Creator God, and instead calls him "an earthly king".
But then, he lied in Atlantis about Indian and Hindus having an Adam and Heva, a blatant lie, and about their walking over from Lanka before loss of the land bridge which is denying that Rāma had built it. That whole lie was quoted from "Bible in India", which is a missionary nanufacture of lies like that,obviously.
""They were engaged in this conversation when that vara, or 'boar-form,' suddenly uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe.""
Obviously a boar.
Donelly lies in saying "vara, or 'boar-form,'", when it's Varāha, nor vara. "Vara" means a blessing, or a bridegroom, in Sanskrit, where multiple meanings of a word are norm just as several names or epithets for a person or an object is norm too.
"The legend continues:
""But still, under this dreadful awe of heaven, a certain wonderful divine confidence secretly animated the hearts of Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii, who immediately began praises and thanksgiving. That vara (boar-form) figure, hearing the power of the Vedas and Mantras from their mouths, again made a loud noise, and became a dreadful spectacle. Shaking the full flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks; then, rolling about his wine-colored (red) eyes, and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged headforemost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domain and cry for mercy.[1]"
Again he lies in saying "Brahma, Mareechee, and the other genii,", since there's no word that translates in Sanskrit to genii, while he merely is bring derogatory towards a non abrahmic faith in demoting a Creator God to king and a sage to genii.
Donelly next proceeds to Persia, and its unclear if he has a little more respect for another non abrahmic faith due to racist regard, or other. But he does begin with a "man-bull" and promptly interpret it as a line of kings, so perhaps he thinks he does.
He proceeds thence to British legends and others.
Donelly goes extensively into the Greek legend, which does speak of destruction on earth. Donelly fails to notice that the legend he quotes from India has, if it's about the comet, the comet vanish into ocean. Clearly it speaks of a time when India had not yet joined Asia, and suffered no destruction of land whatsoever.
The least he could learn here from is that Aryan invasion theory by any name is a whopper of a lie, thst Aryans belonged to India and if the culture spread elsewhere it's from India via migrations from outlying lands of influence such as Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia, to West Asia, Greece and thence rest of the West. India retains memories of cataclysmic events that are unique to the land in the Sanskrit literature of Aryans.
................................................................................................
In next chapter, Ragnarok, Donelly goes extensively into the Scandinavian legend, interpreting it along the way. He comes to
""Then quivers the ash Ygdrasil, and all things in heaven and earth tremble.""
And here, for no reason except his racist need to trample on Hindus, he casually throws a lie.
"The ash Ygdrasil is the tree-of-life; the tree of the ancient tree-worship; the tree which stands on the top of the pyramid in the island-birth place of the Aztec race; the tree referred to in the Hindoo legends."
One, such a name doesn't connect to anything in Sanskrit, so if he thinks it does, he might mention the original Sanskrit name, at the very least. Two, there are famous trees in Sanskrit literature, apart from various trees and plants worshipped in India, whether as a species or as individual trees with an identity, but no concept of a tree of life as such. So he's making up a lie.
................................................................................................
Donelly continues with a blood-curdling account from the Eddas, the Norse legends, and it's easy enough for an outsider to see it as an interpretation of the comet strike on earth. But he hasn't seen this in perspective, when he appropriated the third chapter, Varāha Avatāra, of Dashāvatāra, for interpretation as comet strike.
The Norse Eddas account is quite graphic, and in comparison, the Hindu legend differs hugely. For one, if thus is about the comet, then obviously the Sanskrit account was by people who saw it at a distance and survived quite safe, with - even as Donelly tells- the comet plunging into the ocean after the Creatot God, Brahmā, along with Mariechi, and others, recited Veda-mantra-s, unlike the norse account of horrors.
This is true even in general. In the legends from India, that is, the Sanskrit legends, Gods always win eventually if not immediately, unlike the Norse and Gothic legends, where there are battles and Gods not only lose but die attempting to save earth from demons, wolves, serpents, et al. Also, serpents aren't demonized in India, another twist.
So - at the very least, this should tell Donelly and anyone else serious on the topic that Aryans belonged to India where humanity was safe unlike in Europe and Atlantic regions, and continent across Atlantic. That these accounts prove that Aryans and Sanskrit belonged to India, and the Aryan migration theory is a whopper of a lie by racists and invaders who sought to appropriate all that was good in India if they couldn't loot or destroy it.
For some reason, probably a negligence born of a racist disdain, it never occurred to Donelly to correlate the two legends of India that he quoted from ancient Sanskrit, and consider the order of the cataclysm her discussing in the two books, Atlantis and Ragnarok.
One he quoted in Atlantis is chronologically an earlier one, being first Avatāra of Vishnu, while one he quotes in Ragnarok is the third Avatāra of the same Vishnu.
At the very least, if one isn't so racist that one writes off all Sanskrit literature as imaginary, unrelated to logic or chronology - in which case, don't quote it! - it should occur to someone who quotes them extensively, that he's putting the biblical deluge before the comet strike.
That makes very little sense. There might have been several local and global deluges, but if there was a comet strike later, the prior deluge ought to get far less importance. Yet the bible and other legends he quotes in Atlantis don't refer to the cataclysm he describes here, and it only makes sense to assume the two were together, one leading to other.
In which case either the first Avatāra of Vishnu relates to another, very different event - very likely, since most ancient legends of Sanskrit are distinctly different from the western, Nordic ones Donelly refers to - or he's wrong assuming that the third one he quotes here is misinterpretation by him into coopting it into his comet related stories.
December 21, 2019
Donnelly traveled the world to get this information.
July 14, 2021
Eye opening look at ancient evidence for planet 9
Fascinating look at ancient people groups and their witness of the devastating results of the periodic visit to our solar system a planet that some believes is 5 to 10 times the mass of Earth that passes almost vertically through the plane of our solar system reeking havoc on the rocky inner planets including Earth.
Fascinating look at ancient people groups and their witness of the devastating results of the periodic visit to our solar system a planet that some believes is 5 to 10 times the mass of Earth that passes almost vertically through the plane of our solar system reeking havoc on the rocky inner planets including Earth.
June 6, 2022
Writing when he did, Donnelly had an astounding ability not only to research his topics, but also to synthesize the information he had at the time. Ragnarok is a fascinating exploration of an ancient catastrophe, as encoded in the geological record, religion, and, mythology. If you like World's in Collision and books about Atlantis civilization, this a good add.
July 7, 2013
This book is full of radical ideas and solid research. Of course there are some over the top claims, but there are also some quite plausible ones.
Want to read
March 20, 2015kindle
July 7, 2016
crazy ideas but very fun
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews