Page:Atlantis - The Antediluvian World (1882).djvu/481

Rh family, the Hindoos, we find that their gods are also the kings of Atlantis. The Hindoo god Varuna is conceded to be the Greek god Uranos, who was the founder of the royal family of Atlantis.

In the Veda we find a hymn to "King Varuna," in which occurs this passage:

"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky, with its ends far apart. The two seas are Varuna's loins; he is contained also in this drop of water."

Again in the Veda we find another hymn to King Varuna:

"He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the sky; who on the waters knows the ships. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is engendered afterward."

This verse would seem to furnish additional proof that the Vedas were written by a maritime people; and in the allusion to the twelve months we are reminded of the Peruvians, who also divided the year into twelve parts of thirty days each, and afterward added six days to complete the year. The Egyptians and Mexicans also had intercalary days for the same purpose.

But, above all, it must be remembered that the Greeks, an Aryan race, in their mythological traditions, show the closest relationship to Atlantis. At-tika and At-hens are reminiscences of Ad, and we are told that Poseidon, god and founder of Atlantis, founded Athens. We find in the "Eleusinian mysteries" an Atlantean institution; their influence during the whole period of Greek history down to the coming of Christianity was extraordinary; and even then this masonry of Pre-Christian days, in which kings and emperors begged to be initiated, was, it is claimed, continued to our own times in our own Freemasons, who trace their descent back to "a Dionysiac fraternity which originated in Attika." And just as we have seen the Saturnalian festivities of Italy descending from