But let us pass beyond the Persian legend, carrying that and the biblical story together, for submission to the criticism of a Bráhman. He will tell us that this Ash-Mogh of the Parsi is merely the ancient Aèshma-daéva of the Avesta, which in turn is Ahi, the great Vedic Serpent-monster whom Indra 'prostrated beneath the feet' of the stream he had obstructed--every stream having its deity. He would remind us that the Vedas describe the earliest dragon-slayer, Indra, as 'crushing the head' of his enemy, and that this figure of the god with his heel on a Serpent's head has been familiar to his race from time immemorial. And he would then tell us to read the Rig-Veda, v. 32, and the Mahábhárata, and we would find all the elements of the story told in Genesis. In the hymn referred to we find a graphic account of how, when Ahi was sleeping on the waters he obstructed, Indra hurled at him his thunderbolt. It says that when Indra had 'annihilated the weapon of that mighty beast from him (Ahi), another, more powerful, conceiving himself one and unmatched, was generated,' This 'wrath-born son,' 'a walker in darkness,' had managed to get hold of the sacred Soma, the plant monopolised by the gods, and having drunk this juice, he lay slumbering and 'enveloping the world,' and then 'fierce Indra seized upon him,' and having previously discovered 'the vital part of him who thought, himself invulnerable,' struck that incarnation of many-formed Ahi, and he was 'made the lowest of all creatures'. But one who has perused the philological biography of Ahi already given, vol. i. p. 357, will not suppose that this was the end of him. We must now consider in further detail the great episode of the Mahábhárata, to which reference has been made in other connections. [29] During the Deluge the most precious treasure of the gods, the Amrita, the ambrosia that rendered them immortal, was lost, and the poem relates how the Devas and Asuras, otherwise gods and serpents, together churned the ocean for it. There were two great mountains,--Meru the golden and beautiful, adorned with healing plants, pleasant streams and trees, unapproachable by the sinful, guarded by serpents; Mandar, rocky, covered with rank vegetation, infested by savage beasts. The first is the abode of the gods, the last of demons. To find the submerged Amrita it was necessary to uproot Mandar and use it to churn the ocean. This was done by calling on the King Serpent Ananta, who called in the aid of another great serpent, Vásuki, the latter being used as a rope coiling and uncoiling to whirl the mountain. At last the Amrita appeared. But there also streamed forth from the ocean bed a terrible stench and venom, which was spreading through the universe when Siva swallowed it to save mankind,--the drug having stained his throat blue, whence his epithet 'Blue Neck.'