Among the curious pieces of information very sparsely found aniid this stuff are notices of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and its traffic for gold with Inner Africa, of Taprobane or Sielediba (Ceylon), Male (Malabar), and the products and animals of those regions. But the most interesting geographical circumstance is the fact that Cosrnas is not only the first who mentions China by a name on which there can be no controversy, Tzinista, i.e., the Persian Chinistdn, but also that he had a very correct idea of its position as lying on tho extreme eastern coast of Asia, and "compassed by the ocean running round it to the left just as the same ocean encompasses Barbary (i.e., the Somali country beyond Abyssinia) round to the right." He knew also that a ship sailing to China, after running east for a long way, and leaving the Clove Country behind, had to tarn north at least as far as a ship bound for Chaldnea would have to run up the Persian Gulf, and thus it was intelligible how Tzinista by the overland route lay much nearer Persia than might have been thought from the length of the sea voyage thither.
The work lias been preserved in at least two MSS. One is in the Vatican, a very fine uncial MS. of the 8th century, with figures apparently from drawings by Cosmas himself; the other a parch ment MS. of the 10th century, is in the Medicean. This last alone contains the 12th book, and of that a leaf is lost. An account of the work is given in the Eibliotheca of Photius, who speaks con temptuously of the author. Some geographical extracts were first published in Thevenot s Collection of Travels (1696). The whole work was edited by Montfaucon in his Collectio nova Patrum et Script. Grcec., 1706 (vol. ii), and is republished iBill. Veterum Patrum of P. Andrea Gallandi (vol. xi., Venice, 1776). It appears from allusions in the book itself that Cosmas also wrote a more detailed Topography of the Earth, a work on the motions of the stars, and a Commentary on Canticles. The loss of the first is to be regretted.
COSMAS, of Prague (1045-1126), a Bohemian priest and historian, wrote a Chronicon Bohemorum, which con- t uns the history and traditions of his country up to nearly the time of his death. This work was printed in 1G02, and again among the Scriptores Rerum Bohemicarum (Prague, 1783).
COSMOGONY, a theory of the origin of the world and its inhabitants. Such a theory is never found on the lowest stage of human culture. Thus, " it never occurred to the Eskimos," says Dr Brinton, "that the earth had a begin ning; " and the Abipones of South America " never troubled themselves about what went on in the heavens" (Sir J. Lubbock). And even when a theory of the world s origin is formed, it is at first of the simplest character, Two ele ments, no more, are necessary. With regard to the first, there is a consensus of opinion among primitive races that, before the present order of things, water held all things in solution. Thus the Accadians, whose mythology passed into that of the Semitic Babylonians, " considered the humid ele ment as the vehicle of all life, the source of all generation " (Lenormant). To " make pregnant " this " vast abyss " a creator or organizer is necessary, who is educed, at least not unfrequently, from the abyss itself. Thus, in a Japanese myth reported by Mr Tylor (Jouni. of Anthropol. lust., July 1876), " while the earth is still soft like mud, or like oil floating on the surface of water, there arises out of the mass the flag or rush called asi, from which there springs the land-forming god." Some, content with throwing the speculative difficulty further back, imagine the^pre^nt creation to be rather a re-creation. Hence the notion of world-ages " rounded off by sweeping destruc tions," the last of which was the deluge. Thus, among the non-Aryan Santals of Bengal, "the tradition of the creation is mixed up with one of the deluge, if indeed the creation with these less gifted races does not begin with the flood .... The Santal legend describes rather the subsidence of waters than a creation " (Dr Hunter, Rural Bengal, pp. 150-1). Some simple-minded tribes suppose the earth to have been fished up from the depths of the sea, that is, from the transparent depths of their own Pacific (Waitz and Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, vi. 241). The egg is another common mythic element. It is "found in Phoenicia, Egypt, India, China, Polynesia, and Finland, associated with one or another of the ideas of mixture, generation, fragility, the dome-like appearance of the sky, and the form of the sun and the planets. The Creator himself assumes the most Protean shapes, ranging from the magnified man to the musk-rat. From this brief introduction we pass on to a few specimen cosmogonies of the more important races.
cosmogony were almost entirely confined to second-hand extracts from Berosus (1 280-260 B.C.) Many (Niebuhr was not among them) doubted their trustworthiness. But the reign of scepticism is over. The late talented decipherer, George Smith, has, it would seem, actually discovered some of the cuneiform tablets from which the priest of Bel compiled. N"o doubt Berosus was uncritical he was an Euhemerisfc, like his contemporaries. But he was honest and learned in cuneiform, and enjoyed access to unmutilated documents, whereas the tablets in our possession are fragmentary, and their interpretation is only inchoate. We cannot, therefore, yet afford to ignore the Berosian narratives, which Syncellus and others have pre served. (See Miiller s Fragmenta Histor. Grace., ii. 497, and with caution Cory s Ancient Fragments, by Hodges, pp. 58-60.) One of these contains a cosmogony, or rather two cosmogonies, the latter of which is fragmentary, and fitted rather awkwardly into the former. Its resemblances to Gen. i. are obvious, such as the primaeval flood, which Berosus calls Thauatth( = Tihavtu or Tihamtu),and. creation by cutting or dividing. But the divergences are equally striking e.g., Berosus tells of certain composite beings who dwelt in the dark primaeval water. This seems to indicate that the water means the tether, which is in fact one of its mythic senses, and that the monsters are the constellations. Mr G. Smith compares this narrative with a tablet derived from the city of Cutha (CJtaldcean Account, <L-c., pp. 102-3), but the parallel is fallacious. Tiamat, the primaeval flood, is only mentioned in the latter in cidentally, and the monsters are placed on the earth, not
in Tiamat.But there is a much more important cosmogony, for which we are indebted to the library of King Assurbanipal (673-626 B.C.). The tablets (probably twelve in number) are copies of much older originals, which Mr G. Smith would place near 2000 B.C., i.e., at the beginning of the literary period. This is perhaps too early, to judge from the absence of a statement in the colophon that the copy had an "old "original (Mr Sayce in Academy, ix. 4). But " late " in Babylonian history is still early from the point of view of Greek and Hebrew literary history. The frag ments have been arranged by Mr Smith on valid internal grounds in an order corresponding to the cosmogony in Gen. i. The Babylonian parallels are very striking, and would probably be still more so if the tablets were complete. They are (1) the general arrangement, (2) the introduc tion of a god speaking, (3) the notion of the primaeval flood, called tiamat (feminine) like the te/iom (masculine) of Gen. i., (4) the repeated eulogy on the previous creative work as " delightful," and (5) the mention of the stars as placed to determine the year. The chief differences arise from the polytheism of Babylonia, and yet some have seen a survival of polytheistic language in Gen. i. 26.
known, it seems, to Sanchoniathon, who found a translator^)
in Philo of Byblus (end of 1st century A.D. 1). The origin