Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

20 The Third Flight of Beelzebub to the Planet Earth

20.209

“This hunting was very difficult, because for the capture of these Pirmarals a great many of these hunter-beings were required; so these professional hunters always took their whole families with them for assistance.

“Once several of these hunter families joined together and set off to hunt the Pirmarals on a very remote continent then called ‘Iranan,’ which later, after having been changed owing to the second catastrophe, was called ‘the continent Ashhark.’

“This was the same continent your contemporary favorites now call Asia.’

20.209

“For my further tales concerning these three-brained beings who have taken your fancy, it will be very useful for you, I think, if I emphasize here that on account of various disturbances during the second terrestrial catastrophe, several parts of the continent Iranan entered within the planet, and other terra firmas emerged in their place and attached themselves to this continent, which in consequence became considerably changed and became in size almost what the continent Atlantis had been for the planet Earth before the catastrophe.

20.211

“Just before the second great catastrophe those genuine learned beings then existing on the continent Atlantis, who had organized that truly great learned society there, somehow became aware that something very serious had to happen in Nature, so they began to observe very carefully all the natural phenomena of their continent; but however hard they tried, they could in no way find out what precisely had to happen.

“A little later on and with the same aim, they sent some of their members to other continents and islands, in order, by means of these common observations, perhaps to be able to find out what was impending.

20.211

“The members sent were to observe not only Nature on the planet Earth, but also every kind of, as they then expressed themselves there, ‘heavenly-phenomena.’

“One of these members, namely, the mentioned important being, had chosen the continent Iranan for his observations and, having migrated there with his servants, had settled on the shores of the said water-space later called the Sea of Beneficence.

20.212

“A little later this group of hunters chose this learned being, as the cleverest, to be their chief, and still later… this member of the great society Akhaldan married the daughter named Rimala of one of the hunters, and afterwards shared fully in the lives of the founders of the beings of that second group of the continent Iranan, or, as it is called at the present time, Asia.’