FLOOD STORY RETOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 85, 11 April 1931, Page 7 (Supplement)

FLOOD STORY RETOLD.

PRIMITIVE TRIBE'S PICTOGRAPHS. DISCOVERY IN HZMAXAYAS. EQUIVALENTS OP BIBUCAE CHARACTERS. (Prom a Special Correspondent at [Washington.) To an isolated, primitive folk dwelling in a high Himalaya valley sometime and somehow came the story of a great flood back in the dawn of time, which is strikingly similar to the Babylonian flood story of the Bible. This story told in pictographs, probably the most primitive form of writing is one of the gems in the Nashi literature brought out of the mountains to the outside world by Dr. Joseph Rock of the National Geographic Society and now preserved at the Library of Conj grass. ] Whether there was any common origin for the two flood accounts, or whether each came independently to the minds of the ancient authors, is unknown. The Nashi pictographs, as they have been translated for the Library of Congress by Dr. Rock, give the following account:

j "Ndzu laa P'u (a god) said to Tso dze lug (a man): There will be a great flow when all the people will be drowned and I advise you to take a small needle and a large thread and make of yak skins a largo raft.' This flow came upon the people and all men perished except Tso. Later there was a rumbling in the earth which he could hear ae he floated on the waters and he said The earth must not be far.' There was lightning and thunder so he thought thei sky must be clearing. "So he opened his yak skin and looked out. He saw high mountains where there were plains and valleys. All had perished, men and animals, excepting flies. The grass had grown tall and he did not know whether he was looking on his former land ox a strange one. As he had nothing to do he made a bow and arrow to amuse himself. :

A Daughter of Heaven. Then Ndzu laa P'u called from heaven and said: 'If you want to buy a wife buy one who has eyes which are horizontal, not one with vertical eyes.' On© day he saw a girl on a stream bed washing hemp fibre. He went to her and they arranged to marry. But as he spoke to her she vanished, as she was the daughter of Ndzu. "One day he saw in the meadow a tree full of beautiful flowers and he went to see them. There came flying from the sky a crane on which the woman rode to see the flowers. When they met the man squeezed the crane's wing under his arm while the woman rode on the crane and both flew to the home of Ndzu. After three days Ndzu told him: 'Now you must return to earth. My daughter you cannot take to wife.' "The day he returned to earth on the crane it rained. He said to the girl: 'When the sky is clear come down and cook my food. If it rains come and make the ditches for the fields.' He called her, making a ladder of knives, to come down to him, saying he had made a house. After this the woman came and later her father came and said: 'There are nine mountains in your land. Cut all the trees and burn them and make fields, for there are none as yet.' "He did as required. Ndzu gave him grain and all he required, but not grain that could be pressed into oil nor seeds of the round turnip. The girl concealed some, however, under her fingernails. A cat also, which Ndzu would not give her, she concealed in her sleeve. When Ndzu saw that these things had sprouted he said: 'Where did you get them? I have not given them to you.' And he scolded them saying: "These turnips when you cook them shall turn to water and when you carry them from the fields they shall be heavy as rocks.' And this is the case, even to-day. Ancestors of Their Race.

"Of the oil seeds which gave delicious oil he said: This plant shall be everywhere for you like it.' To-day it is a most pestiferous weed and can be found everywhere. It is a pest and it stinks. Of the cat which could catch the rats he said: 'It shall now sit and purr and scare all rats away.'"

_ Tso and his heavenly bride, somewhat similar to the Biblical Eve, the Nashi regard as the ancestors of their race. The story presumably was passed down by mouth for centuries before it finally was set down in the form of pictures to aid the memory of the priests who recited.it. But this is not the story the Nashi tell of their strange literature. They have a pictograph book, now in the national library, telling of its origin. This has not been translated, but it is about a bat which flew to heaven and received all the books from one of the gods.

A curiosity observed by Dr. Rock is that this primitive people have a more advanced language, approaching that of the Chinese, in which a few of their books now in the national library are written. But these, it is believed, are for uneducated ? readers who never have been trained to read the difficult picture language. The educated—that is, the priests—use only the pictograph books.