Chapter 91: The last mythology!!

Thus, when God beheld the corruption of the earth and determined to destroy it, he gave Noah divine warning of the impending disaster and made a covenant with him, promising to save him and his family. Noah was instructed to build an ark, and in accordance with God's instructions he took into the ark male and female specimens of all the world's species of animals, from which the stocks might be replenished. Consequently, according to this narrative, the entire surviving human race descended from Noah's three sons and their wives.

The religious meaning of the Flood is conveyed after Noah's heroic survival, having safely landed on Mount Ararat. He then built an altar on which he offered burnt sacrifices to God, who then bound himself to a pact never again to curse the earth on humanity's account. God then set a rainbow in the sky as a visible guarantee of his promise in this covenant.

God also renewed his commands given at Creation but with two changes: humankind could now kill animals and eat meat, and murder would be punished by humans. Despite the tangible similarities of the Mesopotamian mythologies and the biblical Flood, the biblical story has a unique Hebraic perspective.

In the Babylonian stories the destruction of the flood was the result of a disagreement among the gods, while in Genesis it resulted from the moral corruption of human history. The primitive polytheism of the Mesopotamian versions is transformed in the biblical story into an affirmation of the omnipotence and benevolence of the one righteous God.

Xin smiled at Jia and told her about the other versions of Great flood mythologies. He started it from the Indian Mythologies where the Hindu version of Noah is named Manu. He is warned by an incarnation of Vishnu of the impending Great Flood, enabling him to build a boat and survive to repopulate the earth.

According to the texts Matsya Purana and Shatapatha Brahmana Manu was a minister to the king of pre-ancient Dravida. He was washing his hands in a river when a little fish swam into his hands and begged him to save its life. He put the fish in a jar, which it soon outgrew. He successively moved it to a tank, a river and then the ocean. The fish then warned him that a deluge would occur in a week that would destroy all life. It turned out that fish was none other than Matsya (Fish in Sanskrit) the first Avatara of Vishnu.

Manu therefore built a boat which Matsya towed to a mountaintop when the flood came, and thus he survived along with some "seeds of life" to re-establish life on earth.

Jumping onto the next one it was time for Greek Mythology.

Zeus, the king of the Gods, was displeased with the human population, or the Pelasgians, (which is a catch-all term for the indigenous people of the Agean region). Zeus told Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, to construct an ark for himself and his wife, Pyrrha, who also happened to be Deucalion's cousin. After nine days of flooding, the world was destroyed, and the ark rested on top of Mount Parnassus. When the waters receded, Deucalion and his cousin-wife offered a sacrifice to Zeus to learn how to repopulate the earth. Zeus told them to throw stones over their shoulders. The stones thrown by Deucalion became men, and those thrown behind Pyrrha became women. Which was a relatively tidy (and magical) way to explain the repopulation of the earth while skirting the whole incest issue.

Jia hadn't taken a breath of relief when Xin told her about the The Aztec flood. This story shares similarities with the story of Noah with some radical plot twists. In this story, Titlacauan warned the man named Note and his wife Nena, of a coming flood. Nata and Nena hollowed out a cypress tree, and Titlachahuan sealed them inside, telling them that they may only eat one ear of maize each. Here is where the story is wildly different from others.

The earth is flooded, but the people weren't killed, instead, they were turned into fish. After the flood Nata and Nena disobeyed Titlacauan and ate fish. So Titlacauan turned them into dogs. The story ends with the world essentially starting all over again only this time with a hearty fish population and a couple of dogs.

Xin didn't stop at that and continued to extend his lecture about the Ancient Mesopotamia.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Recorded on 12 stone tablets this was among the first pieces of literature in history.

According to the poem, Gilgamesh was a Sumerian king who reigned for 126 years. This might seem a bit hard to swallow, but Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, making Gilgamesh look like a toddler in the grand scheme of things. After the death of a friend, Gilgamesh began to search for immortality and met an immortal man named Utnapishtim, whose story is very much like the story of Noah.

Apparently, Utnapishtim had been granted immortality after building a ship called Preserver of Life and surviving the "great flood." Like Noah, Utnapishtim brought all of his relatives and all species of creatures aboard his ark to save mankind. Sounds kind of familiar. 

Some cultures' flood stories bear only a slight resemblance to the story of Noah. They maintain the themes of the ark and an angry God, but their repopulation stories are wildly different.

Jumping onto the next one it was turn of the Norse mythologies.

The Norse flood story is starkly different from the others in that the world was flooded, but not with water. When Odin and his brothers Villi and Ve killed the giant Ymir, the blood that poured from his body flooded the earth. That's right, the world was drowned in blood. In this literal bloodbath, a single frost giant named Bergelmir and his wife made an ark, were saved, and repopulated the earth. 

The last two on queue were the Buddhist and the Chinese mythologies. Same essence but different storyline.

Buddhists have an elaborate flood story called Samudda-vāṇija Jātaka. In an Indian village, there lived 1000 families of dishonest carpenters. These carpenters would tell people that they could build anything from houses to chairs and would take the money and never deliver any goods or do any work. Because of this they were, not surprisingly despised in the village and quickly needed to find a new place to live. 

They built a ship and sailed until they found a beautiful island. The island was populated by a  man who had been shipwrecked. The man told them that food was plentiful, life on the island was comfortable, and the carpenters were welcome to stay. The only catch was that the island was haunted by spirits.  The spirit's only rule was that every time a human needed to defecate or urinate, they needed to dig a hole and cover it up when they were finished. The spirits wanted to keep their island clean and who can blame them.

The carpenters loved the island and decided to have a big party to celebrate their new home. However, they became drunk on fermented sugar cane and quickly ignored the rules and pretty much defecated and urinated all over the island. The spirits were furious and decided to flood the island with a giant wave, on the full moon. While the spirits were angry they didn't want to kill the carpenters, they just wanted them gone. One spirit became a ball of light in the sky and told the people that because of their carelessness, the island would be flooded and that they should flee for their lives. 

Another spirit was angrier at the carpenters and wanted to trick them. So he appeared in the sky announcing that the previous warning about a flood had been a lie. He said there was nothing to worry about, everything's fine, keep on partying and there isn't going to be a flood. Just kidding!

These 1000 carpenter families were ruled by two men, one wise and one very foolish. The foolish carpenter believed the other spirit and told the people to stay, relax, and enjoy the party. The smart carpenter told his people to build a ship, just in case they weren't kidding. 

While the wise man built a ship, the foolish man stayed and proceeded to drink more. On the day of the full moon, as the spirits promised, a giant wave came up and flooded the whole island. The wise man set sail with his people while the foolish man and his people died.

The last and the most interesting one was the Chinese one. A mix of all the mythologies present on Earth.

The Chinese have many stories and myths about floods, gods, dragons, and spirits. Just as in other flood stories there are few survivors. But the Chinese flood story has a very complicated repopulation tale. 

One day a farmer managed to capture and imprison a thunder God. The farmer went into town but warned his children to stay far away from the caged deity.  The children took pity on the thunder god and released him. In gratitude the God warned them there was going to be a great flood. He gave the children a (presumably very large) gourd and told them that they would be safe from the waters as long as they are inside the gourd.

The rains came, the brother and sister got inside the gourd. They were the only people to survive the flood and having a brother and sister as the only survivors made the repopulation part of the story a little tricky since the incest taboo in almost every culture is very strong. There were a few different endings to this story. In one version, the brother and sister were given a special  "pass" from the heavens, like "It's okay just this one time."

In another version, the sister put her brother through many seemingly impossible physical challenges before agreeing to marry him. He completed the tasks, they married, and she had a child. The child was born damaged, without arms and legs. The brother killed the baby by cutting it up and throwing the pieces over the hill. The next day the brother and sister found that the pieces had turned into men and women.

In another form of the story, there is no incest at all: The brother wasn't able to meet the sister's challenges, and they didn't marry or procreate. Instead, they repopulated the human race by creating humans from clay.