{p. 238}

Then follows this statement:

"Seven months of summer are there; five months of winter were there.
The latter are cold as to water, cold as to earth, cold as to trees.
There is the heart of winter; then all around _falls deep snow_.
There is the worst of evils."

This signifies that once the people dwelled in a fair and pleasant
land. The evil-one sent a mighty serpent; the serpent brought a great
winter; there were but two months of summer; gradually this
ameliorated, until the winter was five months long and the summer
seven months long. The climate is still severe, cold and wet; deep
snows fell everywhere. It is an evil time.

The demonology of the Hindoos turns on the battles between the
Asuras, the irrational demons of the air, the comets, and the gods:

"They dwell beneath the three-pronged root of the world-mountain,
occupying the nadir, while their great enemy Indra," (the sun;) "the
highest Buddhist god, sits upon the pinnacle of the mountain, in the
zenith. The Meru, which stands between the earth and the heavens,
around which the heavenly bodies revolve, is the battlefield of the
Asuras and the Devas."[1]

That is to say, the land Meru--the same as the island Mero of the
ancient Egyptians, from which Egypt was first colonized; the Merou of
the Greeks, on which the Meropes, the first men, dwelt--was the scene
where this battle between the fiends of the air on one side, and the