and supposing that the tradition of the number saved in the Flood had been preserved down to a certain date, we should then expect that the number would become rigid and fixed. But that if the tradition of the actual survivors had become indistinct, what more natural than that the eight principal characters of ante-diluvian, or even post-diluvian, history should be substituted for them, and that the same confusion and agglomeration of legend should take place as we shall see occurring in the tradition of Noah?] In the Persian or Iranian legend of Shâh-nâmeh, "the three sons of Ferêdûn--Ireg, Tur, and Selm--are mentioned as their patriarchs, and among them the _whole earth was divided_." But in the more ancient Gâthâs there is mention of "the _seven_-surfaced or _seven_-portioned earth." [_Query_--apportioned by _the eighth_?] _Vide_ Bunsen's "Egypt," iii. 478. For the Indian tradition compare the following from Hunter's "Bengal" (i. p. 151)--"Another coincidence--I do not venture to call it an analogy--is to be found in the number of children born to the first pair. As the Santal legend immediately divides the human species into _seven_ families, so the Sanscrit tradition assigns the propagation of _our race after the flood_ to _seven rishis_." I also find in F. Schlegel's "Philosophy of History" (p. 150, Robertson's trans.)--"The Indian traditions acknowledge and revere the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the holy patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the _seven great rishis_, or sages of hoary antiquity, though they invest their history with a cloud of fictions." [158] Syncellus, quoting Berosus (_vide_ Abbé de Tressan, "Mythology," p. 10), says that _Oannes_ (the mysterious fish, _vide ante_) left some _writings_ upon the origin of the world. These, no doubt, correspond to the "Liber Noachi." I do not disguise that this statement is probably derived from what is called the false Berosus. The reference, however, which I have made to these writings at p. 139 may raise doubt whether they did not embody true traditions. Here we seem to see what looks like the commencement of the legendary origin of the fish symbol; and here also we see it unmistakeably in connection with Noah. We have, moreover, seen the connection of Hoa with the fish.[159]