英语听书《白鲸记》第724期
Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;—Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? Even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?
这样，在我们团体的全部成员中，就不仅有英雄、圣人、神明和预言者了。我们还得举出我们的老祖师来；因为，如同古代的帝王一样，我们发现在我们的同道的来源中，就不乏许多大神。那个神奇的东方传说，那个现在还在经书上一再被传诵着的、可畏敬的毗湿奴，经书上就告诉我们，它是印度的三大神之一；这个神明的毗湿奴就是我们的上帝；——毗湿奴，作为尘世上的十大化身的第一个化身，就始终被单独奉为大鲸之神。据经书上说，当婆罗门，即众神之神决定要在这世界的一次定期毁灭后重造世界的时候，他生出了毗湿奴来主持这个大业，但是，那部《吠陀经》，或者叫做《禅经》，对于毗湿奴说来，却似乎是他在开始创造世界之前，非加探讨不可的东西。（因此它一定有些什么切合实际的东西，可供年轻的建筑师们借镜）可是，由于这部《吠陀经》一直就深藏在海里，所以毗湿奴不得不化身为大鲸，深潜到海底里，把这部圣书给捞了出来。这样说来，难道这个毗湿奴不是个捕鲸人么？岂不是正如我们把骑着马的人称为骑手一样吗？
Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?
柏修斯，圣乔治，海格立斯，约拿和毗湿奴！这就是你所看到的一份会员录！除了捕鲸人的团体以外，有哪个团体能够有这样源长流远呢。
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