Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
great influence on the design of Islamic gardens, often created as earthly representations of
Paradise. Many Islamic gardens are laid out in four sections, divided by channels of water
fed from a pool or fountain at the garden's centre, but this four-part design with flowing
water playing a defining role actually predates Islam. Hence, it is probably not the layout
that reflects a specifically Muslim view of Paradise so much as the description of Paradise
that reflects a pre-existing expression of garden form.
Rivers are an important feature in some of the earliest Sanskrit texts from India. One of
the most prominent rivers mentioned in the Rig Veda, the first of four topics that form the
basis for the Hindu religion, is the Sarasvati, a river that is also personified as the goddess
Saravati. As a river, the Sarasvati is described as large and fast-flowing in the Rig Veda, but
later Hindu texts, including the Mahabharata, depict it as having been reduced to a series of
saline lakes. Contemporary interest in the Sarasvati River has led several scholars to equate
the mythical river with a number of ancient, dry river channels discovered with the aid of
satellite imagery in India's Thar Desert in recent years.
Flood legends
Stories of a great flood crop up with uncanny frequency in the mythology of innumerable
cultures, both ancient and modern. The deluge described in the Biblical book of Genesis is
well known to many people in the Judaeo-Christian world and has numerous similarities
with the flood described in the earlier Babylonian account of the Epic of Gilgamesh and
similar stories from Sumeria and Assyria, also in Mesopotamia. The flood is explained as
God's way of cleansing the Earth of wayward humanity, although one man and his family
manage to escape in a boat, or ark, with representatives of the planet's wildlife population
to keep them company. In all of the stories, the ark ends up on a mountain top and birds are
sent forth to see whether the floodwaters have receded. The great flood has considerable
symbolic significance, involving an obvious cleansing element as well as being a vehicle
for rebirth, marking a clear break between the antediluvial and postdiluvial worlds. The
event is effectively repeated at the personal level in various ceremonies of purification by
water, including the Christian sacrament of baptism, in which the initiate is cleansed of the
old ways in the waters of a river (or font) and is reborn in Christ. The ceremony mimics the
baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan.
A similar flood-induced divide between a previous world and a new cosmological order
appears in the written testimonies of several Maya groups from Central America. In a num-
ber of versions, the deluge occurs after a celestial caiman has been decapitated, interpreted
