Note Z — Chapter XX
J. V. (Jedediah Vincent) Huntington translation
It seems clear that this Indian mythology is a form of the primitive tradition obscured by symbol. The creation of man by the Supreme Divinity, but in an imperfect state ("his eyes not yet opened"), his deliverance from that condition by an inferior but more beneficent deity (the Satan of the Bible), and the progress of the emancipated and enlightened being, in the arts of industry, are clearly set forth. Thus the devil has his cosmogony as well as the Almighty, and his tradition in opposition to the divine.—ED.