  How the Gods of India live only for a Kalpa, that is, for the Time between one World and another.—How the God Vishnu was One-eyed.—How Celts and Scandinavians believed in Metempsychosis, like the Indians.—How Odin, with his Emanations, came forth from the God Buddha.—About Mahabarata and Ramayana.—Chronology.—The World’s Age.—Comparative Tables.—Quotations.—Supporting Evidence.—A Cenotaph. My reader has had a lucky escape. Determined as I was to fathom in this chapter the true origin of the Scandinavian religion, and inspired by the zeal of a recent convert, I had collected and compared every document that could aid me in proving the Oriental descent of the priests of Odin as well as of the other Druids. I When I finished my chapter, which I thought was exceedingly well done, I read it to Doctor Rosahl, expecting, I must confess, to be warmly congratulated. “Why, my dear sir,” he said, when I had finished, “you have made great efforts to prove a thing which has been established long since. All the master minds of France and Germany, to say nothing of other nations, agree on that subject. I mean men like Fauriel, Lassen, Lenormand, Ampere, Eichhoff, Saint-Marc Girardin, Marmier, Klaproth, Ozanam, the two RÉmusats, the two Thierrys, the two Humboldts, the two Grimms, not to mention twenty others. “Why will you come to their assistance after they have won the victory? Do you merely wish to display your scholarship?” I indignantly denied the charge, and seizing my manuscript with both hands, I resolutely threw it into the fire. A remnant of paternal weakness induced me, however, to retain the summary of that famous chapter, and I have inserted it here in its regular place, so that it might bear evidence of my wasted labor. As the corpus delicti is no longer in existence, this summary may stand there like an inscription My VIIIth chapter is thus changed into a cenotaph. I—a scholar! Great God! Let the reader not be disturbed. My purpose in writing this work was nothing more than to try and collect along the banks of the Rhine all the curious myths which have survived the ancient creeds of Europe; for they have all come to the great river. There the traveller finds piled up, after the manner of alluvial layers, all the ancient fables, all the marvelous and often childish tales to which the credulity and lively imagination of our forefathers gave a ready welcome. With the exception of a very few cases, in which the grave nature of the subject lifts me necessarily into higher regions, I wish mainly to tell you once more Grandmamma’s Tales. That is what we are going to do next. The Edda itself has no other meaning, for Edda means the same as our grandmother. No, I am too great a lover of tales of a tub ever to have claimed the reputation of being a scholar; but at times I like to glean a little where scholars have reaped. I have been shown the best spots, and I pilfer as well as I can—that is all. An ignoramus and a pilferer, I resemble a bee which might fly into a botanical garden and, utterly
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