Five Years of Theosophy

by Unknown

PHILOSOPHICAL

True and False Personality

The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on the present occasion. The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of the highest philosophical capacity. We will not now inquire whether the difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle; the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the senses and understanding, with the consciousness—Ahankara—thereto appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem. It may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life—if that can be made apparent—will incline you to regard the latter rather as the Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of our phenomenal life. It may be that by the light of such reflections the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no guarantee of an eternal individuality.

It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth. This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.

Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne. True it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings. These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism to be regarded as a religion. Nevertheless, that slight estimate of individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists on the discovery of our mere psychic survival. The idealist may recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance. For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness—its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections—which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little. Thus utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of government and law. And it cannot, I think, be pretended that Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a relative for an absolute standard. Their "glad tidings of great joy" are not truly religious. They have regard to the perpetuation in time of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity are in time, and of time alone. Their glorious message is not essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health. Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our opportunities. As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief; but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours, and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only value is opportunity.

To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these might become the central, actuating focus of his being—his "ruling love," as Swedenborg would call it—displacing his mere egoism, or self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will. Just as the entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation. History shows approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive to have been Loyola; such another, possibly, is Bismarck. Now these men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns any value attaching to their own special individualities. They are devotees. A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere individuals they have become "representative" men. And we—the individuals—esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges—that is to say, as the dross of individualism is purged away—we accord them indulgence, respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a rest than living. Well, but in the above instances, even those most remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal in which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine personality. You are familiar with Swedenborg's distinction between discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man—the individual—may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti, to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort as a convenient figure. To transcend it, he must advance by the discrete degree. No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which leaves it alive, as the focus—the French word "foyer" is the more expressive—of his thoughts and actions; not even that identification with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his Divine ideal. This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception. It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree. It is a compromise with our dear old familiar selves. "And Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly." We know how little acceptable that compromise was to the God of Israel; and no illustration can be more apt than this narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather typical than historical. Typical of that indiscriminate and radical sacrifice, or "vastation," of our lower nature, which is insisted upon as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of the world. No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated. It is not denied that what was spared was good; there is no suggestion of a universal infection of physical or moral evil; it is simply that what is good and useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the latter is to make way for something better. And the illustration is the more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at metaphysical exposition. There is no question here of moral distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed. According to the highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person. According to the lowest, 'B' may be exactly the reverse. The moral interval between the two is within what I have called, following Swedenborg, the "continuous degree." And perhaps the distinction can be still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we theosophical students do not less regard, because we are disposed to protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems.

———— * Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the statement. ————

The good man who has, however, not yet attained his "son-ship of God" is "under the law"—that moral law which is educational and preparatory, "the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," our own Divine spirit, or higher personality. To conceive the difference between these two states is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word personality is here intended to be understood. We do not know whether, when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our lives has been accomplished—here or hereafter—we shall or shall not retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves. In philosophical parlance, the "matter" will have gone, and the very "form" will have been changed. Our transcendental identity with the 'A' or 'B' that now is** must depend on that question, already disclaimed in this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being "under the law" implies that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is, in willing obedience to another will.

———— * The "great work," so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the analogous spiritual conversion. There is also good reason to believe that the material process was a real one.

** "A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner self he was on earth, through eternity; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality."—Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316. —————

The will from which we should naturally act—our own will—is of course to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature—our "ruling love," which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the reverse. As "under the law," this nature is kept in suspension, and because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and by no means abrogated, is the law—the substitution of a foreign will— necessary for us. Our own will or nature is still central; that which we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or hypostatic. Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues that "explosion," as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has "the schoolmaster" brought us unto "Christ," and if by "Christ" we understand no historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of God in us—then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by Jesus. There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a reference to which I am indebted to our brother J.W. Farquhar. It is from Swedenborg, in the "Apocalypse Explained," No. 57:—"Every man has an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior. These two minds are altogether distinct. By the inferior mind man is in the natural world together with men there; but by the superior mind he is in the spiritual world with the angels there. These two minds are so distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is performing within himself in his superior mind; but when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is performing in his mind." The consciousness of the "superior mind," as the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under consideration.

What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the divine-human for the human-natural personality? Is it not the loss of individualism? (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.) There are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to themselves: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and those other disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect sympathy of our reverence. There is something awful and incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its most amiable relations. But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see this negation of all that we associate with individual life most emphatically and explicitly insisted on. It is, indeed, the impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the Hindu consummation to be regarded as the loss of individuality and conscious existence. It is just because we cannot easily dissociate individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power. It is not a mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana. Even in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained, perhaps infinitely intensified, but its "matter" is no longer personal. Only try to realize what "freedom from desire," the favourite phrase in which individualism is negated in these systems, implies. Even in that form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results.

Modern Spiritualism itself testifies to something of the same sort. Thus we are told by one of its most gifted and experienced champions, "Sometimes the evidence will come from an impersonal source, from some instructor who has passed through the plane on which individuality is demonstrable." (M.A. (Oxon.), "Spirit Identity," p. 7.) Again, "And if he" (the investigator) "penetrates far enough, he will find himself in a region for which his present embodied state unfits him: a region in which the very individuality is merged, and the highest and subtlest truths are not locked within one breast, but emanate from representative companies whose spheres of life are interblended." (Id., p. 15.) By this "interblending" is of course meant only a perfect sympathy and community of thought; and I should doubtless misrepresent the author quoted were I to claim an entire identity of the idea he wishes to convey, and that now under consideration. Yet what, after all, is sympathy but the loosening of that hard "astringent" quality (to use Bohme's phrase) wherein individualism consists? And just as in true sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual penthouse of an Ego—all, without exception or reserve—we may for the first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable privileges. Yet it is not on this ground that acceptance can be hoped for the conception of immortality here crudely and vaguely presented ill contrast to that bourgeois eternity of individualism and the family affections, which is probably the great charm of Spiritualism to the majority of its proselytes. It is doubtful whether the things that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," have ever taken stronghold of the imagination, or reconciled it to the loss of all that is definitely associated with the Joy and movement of living. Not as consummate bliss can the dweller on the lower plane presume to command that transcendent life. At the utmost he can but echo the revelation that came to the troubled mind in "Sartor Resartus," "A man may do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." It is no sublimation of hope, but the necessities of thought that compel us to seek the condition of true being and immortality elsewhere than in the satisfactions of individualism. True personality can only subsist in consciousness by participation of that of which we can only say that it is the very negation of individuality in any sense in which individuality can be conceived by us. What is the content or "matter" of consciousness we cannot define, save by vaguely calling it ideal. But we can say that in that region individual interests and concerns will find no place. Nay, more, we can affirm that only then has the influx of the new life a free channel when the obstructions of individualism are already removed. Hence the necessity of the mystic death, which is as truly a death as that which restores our physical body to the elements. "Neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist," a passage which has been well explained by a Hindu Theosophist (Peary Chand Mittra), as meaning "that when the spiritual state is arrived at, I and mine, which belong to the finite mind, cease, and the soul, living in the universum and participating in infinity with God, manifests its infinite state." I cannot refrain from quoting the following passage from the same instructive writer:—

Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient soul, but when regenerated or spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine essence. It rises above all phenomenal states—joy, sorrow, grief, fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational, emotional, phenomenal, and impressional. It constitutes the natural life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two landmarks. What is non-soul is prakriti, or created. It is not the lot of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to the soul state. In proportion as one's soul is emancipated from prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to the soul state is attained; and it is this that constitutes disparities in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and their consequent approximation to God.—Spiritual Stray Leaves, Calcutta, 1879.

He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: "The real spirit which comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an impersonal pneuma—universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself; and the good of man's whole development, therefore, can be no other than to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness."

That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states, or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood. The aim of this paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the immortalized consciousness; negatively it is true, but it is on this very account more suggestive of practical applications. The connection of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out without offence. It is that immortality cannot be phenomenally demonstrated. What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably is. But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the very negation of phenomenal existence. Another consequence refers to the direction our culture should take. We have to compose ourselves to death. Nothing less. We are each of us a complex of desires, passions, interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private. These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal of impersonal being—saving consciousness, the manifestation of being. In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our sympathies and affections. We cannot be sure even of this. Only people unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it. These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most dogmatic in their opinionative utterances. In some coarse, rude fashion they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation. We have to strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless tranquillity. Then we may hope to die. Meditation, if it be deep, and long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana. One infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be, or even recognizably like it. And he is a very average moral specimen. I have heard it said, "The world's life and business would come to an end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga, which is pretty much what your ideal comes to." And the criticism is perfectly just and true. Only I believe it does not go quite far enough. Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new, more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a superior state. Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of the late James Hinton, "Man and his Dwelling-place," especially if they have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will not think this suggestion extravagant. If all the world were Yogis, the world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them. Enough of that.

Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in individual consciousness as an unverified dream. Our sense and impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and insuperable. Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo—judgments, of the prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed seem myself? Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being, pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its phantasms, falsities, and half-truths; who has nothing personal in the sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which I can at present form no conception; whose activities are unimpeded by intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value. I look up to him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to be without love. Yet I know that this is not so; only that his love is diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only true, in a word, my immortal self.

—C.C. Massey

Chastity

Ideal woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our days she is very often only a beautiful work of art). A beautiful woman is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can imagine. I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman. Only a profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women; a hero and a man admires woman, and is admired by her.

Women's love belongs to a complete man. Then she smiles on him his human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to satisfy their hunger. His whole soul flies towards the lovely being, which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him, his soul follows the temptations of his physical body. Once again the animal nature has subdued the divine. Woman rejoices in her victory, and man is ashamed of his weakness; and instead of being a representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity.

To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment lose it. To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal nature; to restrain his desires and retain his power, is to assert his divine right, and to become more than a man—a god.

Eliphas Levi says: "To be an object of attraction for all women, you must desire none;" and every one who has had a little experience of his own must know that he is right. Woman wants what she cannot get, and what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says: "To him who has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little shall be taken away."

To become perfect it is not required that we should be born without any animal desires. Such a person would not be much above an idiot; he would be rightly despised and laughed at by every true man and woman; but we must obtain the power to control our desires, instead of being controlled by them; and here lies the true philosophy of temptation.

If a man has no higher aim in life than to eat and drink and propagate his species; if all his aspirations and desires are centred in a wish of living a happy life in the bosom of his family; there can be no wrong if he follows the dictates of his nature and is satisfied with his lot. When he dies, his family will mourn, his friends will say he was a good fellow; they will give him a first-class funeral, and they will perhaps write on his tombstone something like what I once saw in a certain churchyard:

Here is the grave of John McBride,
He lived, got married, and died.

And that will be the end of Mr. John McBride, until in another incarnation he will wake up again perhaps as Mr. John Smith, or Ramchandra Row, or Patrick O'Flannegan, to find himself on much the same level as he was before.

But if a man has higher aims and objects in life, if he wants to avoid an endless cycle of re-incarnations, if he wants to become a master of his destiny, then must he first become a master of himself. How can he expect to be able to control the external forces of Nature, if he cannot control the few little natural forces that reside within his own insignificant body?

To do this, it is not necessary that a man should run away from his wife and family, and leave them uncared for. Such a man would commence his spiritual career with an act of injustice,—an act that like Banquo's ghost would always haunt him and hinder him in his further progress. If a man has taken upon himself responsibilities, he is bound to fulfill them, and an act of cowardice would be a bad beginning for a work that requires courage.

A celibate, who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study. Being away from all irritating influences, he can lead what may be called a selfish life; because he looks out only for his own spiritual interest; but he has little opportunity to develop his will-power by resisting temptations of every kind. But the man who is surrounded by the latter, and is every day and every hour under the necessity of exercising his will-power to resist their surging violence, will, if he rightly uses these powers, become strong; he may not have as much opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material cares; but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation, his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession of the password, which is CONTINENCE.

A slave cannot become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal nature of others. A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows strong by exercise; and this is the use of temptations. To have strong passions and to overcome them, makes man a hero. The sexual instinct is the strongest of all, and he who vanquishes it, becomes a god.

The human soul admires a beautiful form, and is therefore an idolater.

The human spirit adores a principle, and is the true worshiper.

Marriage is the union of the male spirit with the female soul for the purpose of propagating the species; but if in its place there is only a union of a male and a female body, then marriage becomes merely a brutal act, which lowers man and woman, not to the level of animals but below them; because animals are restricted to certain seasons for the exercise of their procreative powers; while man, being a reasonable being, has it in his power to use or abuse them at all times.

But how many marriages do we find that are really spiritual and not based on beauty of form or other considerations? How soon after the wedding-day do they become disgusted with each other? What is the cause of this? A man and a woman may marry and their characters may differ widely. They may have different tastes, different opinions and different inclinations. All those differences may disappear, and will probably disappear; because by living together they become accustomed to each other, and become equalized in time. Each influences the other, and as a man may grow fond of a pet snake, whose presence at first horrified him, so a man may put up with a disagreeable partner and become fond of her in course of time.

But if the man allows full liberty to his animal passions, and exercises his "legal rights" without restraint, these animal cravings which first called so piteously for gratification, will soon be gorged, and flying away laugh at the poor fool who nursed them in his breast. The wife will come to know that her husband is a coward, because she sees him squirm under the lash of his animal passions; and as woman loves strength and power, so in proportion as he loses his love, will she lose her confidence. He will look upon her as a burden, and she will look upon him in disgust as a brute. Conjugal happiness will have departed, and misery, divorce or death will be the end.

The remedy for all these evils is continence, and it has been our object to show its necessity, for it was the object of this article.

—F. Hartmann

Zoroastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man

Many of the esoteric doctrines given out through the Theosophical Society reveal a spirit akin to that of the older religions of the East, especially the Vedic and the Zendic. Leaving aside the former, I propose to point out by a few instances the close resemblance which the doctrines of the old Zendic Scriptures, as far as they are now preserved, bear to these recent teachings.

Any ordinary Parsi, while reciting his daily Niyashes, Gehs and Yashts, provided he yields to the curiosity of looking into the meanings of what he recites, will, with a little exertion, perceive how the same ideas, only clothed in a more intelligible and comprehensive garb, are reflected in these teachings. The description of the septenary constitution of man found in the 54th chapter of the Yasna, one of the most authoritative books of the Mazdiasnian religion, shows the identity of the doctrines of Avesta and the esoteric philosophy. Indeed, as a Mazdiasnian, I felt quite ashamed that, having such undeniable and unmistakable evidence before their eyes, the Zoroastrians of the present day should not avail themselves of the opportunity offered of throwing light upon their now entirely misunderstood and misinterpreted Scriptures by the assistance and under the guidance of the Theosophical Society. If Zend scholars and students of Avesta would only care to study and search for themselves, they would, perhaps, find to assist them, men who are in possession of the right and only key to the true esoteric wisdom; men, who would be willing to guide and help them to reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion. Who knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of; and exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi. Our Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's conversion, is a well-known historical fact, requiring no proof.

I will first of all quote side by side the two passages referring to the septenary nature of man as I find them in our Scriptures and the THEOSOPHIST—

Sub-divisions of septenary Sub-divisions of septenary man according to the man according to Yasna Occultists. (chap.54, para. I).

1. The Physical body, com- 1. Tanwas-i.e., body(the posed wholly of matter in its self ) that consists of bones grossest and most tangible -grossest form of matter. form.

2. The Vital principle-(or Jiva)- 2. Ushtanas-Vital heat a form of force indestructible, (or force). and when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others.

3. The Astral body (Linga- 3. Keherpas Aerial form, sharira) composed of highly the airy mould, (Per. Kaleb). etherealized matter; in its habitual passive state, the perfect but very shadowy duplicate of the body; its activity, consolidation and form depending entirely on the Kama-rupa.

4. The Astral shape (Kama- 4. Tevishis-Will, or where rupa or body of desire, a sentient consciousness is principle defining the con- formed, also fore-knowledge. figuration of—

5. The animal or Physical 5. Baodhas (in Sanskrit, intelligence or Conscious- Buddhi)-Body of physical ness or Ego, analogous to, consciousness, perception by though proportionally higher the senses or animal soul. in the senses or the animal degree than the reason, instinct, memory, imagination &c., existing in the higher animals.

6. The Higher or Spiritual 6. Urawanem (Per. Rawan) intelligence or consciousness, -Soul, that which gets its spiritual Ego, in which or reward or punishment mainly resides the sense of after death. consciousness in the perfect man, though the lower dimmer animal consciousness co-exists in No. 5.

7. The Spirit-an emanation from 7. Frawashem or Farohar-
the ABSOLUTE uncreated; eternal; Spirit (the guiding energy
a state rather than a being. which is with every man,
is absolutely independent,
and, without mixing with
any worldly object, leads
man to good. The spark
of divinity in every being).

The above is given in the Avesta as follows:—

"We declare and positively make known this (that) we offer (our) entire property (which is) the body (the self consisting of) bones (tanwas), vital heat (ushtanas), aerial form (keherpas), knowledge (tevishis), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem), to the prosperous, truth-coherent (and) pure Gathas (prayers)."

The ordinary Gujarathi translation differs from Spiegel's, and this latter differs very slightly from what is here given. Yet in the present translation there has been made no addition to, or omission from, the original wording of the Zend text. The grammatical construction also has been preserved intact. The only difference, therefore, between the current translations and the one here given is that ours is in accordance with the modern corrections of philological research which make it more intelligible, and the idea perfectly clear to the reader.

The word translated "aerial form" has come down to us without undergoing any change in the meaning. It is the modern Persian word kaleb, which means a mould, a shape into which a thing is cast, to take a certain form and features. The next word is one about which there is a great difference of opinion. It is by some called strength, durability, i.e., that power which gives tenacity to and sustains the nerves. Others explain it as that quality in a man of rank and position which makes him perceive the result of certain events (causes), and thus helps him in being prepared to meet them. This meaning is suggestive, though we translate it as knowledge, or foreknowledge rather, with the greatest diffidence. The eighth word is quite clear. That inward feeling which tells a man that he knows this or that, that he has or can do certain things—is perception and consciousness. It is the inner conviction, knowledge and its possession. The ninth word is again one which has retained its meaning and has been in use up to the present day. The reader will at once recognize that it is the origin of the modern word Rawan. It is (metaphorically) the king, the conscious motor or agent in man. It is that something which depends upon and is benefited or injured by the foregoing attributes. We say depends upon, because its progress entirely consists in the development of those attributes. If they are neglected, it becomes weak and degenerated, and disappears. If they ascend on the moral and spiritual scale, it gains strength and vigour and becomes more blended than ever to the Divine essence—the seventh principle. But how does it become attracted toward its monad? The tenth word answers the question. This is the Divine essence in man. But this is only the irresponsible minister (this completes the metaphor). The real master is the king, the spiritual soul. It must have the willingness and power to see and follow the course pointed out by the pure spirit. The vizir's business is only to represent a point of attraction, towards which the king should turn. It is for the king to see and act accordingly for the glory of his own self. The minister or spirit can neither compel nor constrain. It inspires and electrifies into action; but to benefit by the inspiration, to take advantage of it, is left to the option of the spiritual soul.

If, then, the Avesta contains such a passage, it must fairly be admitted that its writers knew the whole doctrine concerning spiritual man. We cannot suppose that the ancient Mazdiasnians, the Magi, wrote this short passage, without inferring from it, at the same time, that they were thoroughly conversant with the whole of the occult theory about man. And it looks very strange indeed, that modern Theosophists should now preach to us the very same doctrines that must have been known and taught thousands of years ago by the Mazdiasnians,—the passage is quoted from one of their oldest writings. And since they propound the very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them, and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we listen to what they have to tell us about them.

To show that the above is not a solitary instance, but that the Avesta contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than the one just given. Let the Parsi reader turn to Yasna, chapter 26, and read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows:—

We praise the life (ahum), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who were the protectors of purity here (in this world).

Here the whole man is spoken of as composed of five parts, as under:—

1. The Physical Body. 1. Ahum-Existence, Life. 2. The Vital Principle. It includes: 3. The Astral Body.

2. Daenam-Knowledge. 4. The Astral shape or body of desire.

3. Baodhas-Consciousness. 5. The Animal or physical intelligence or consciousness or Ego.

4. Urwanem-Soul. 6. The Higher or Spiritual intelligence or consciousness, or Spiritual Ego.

5. Frawashem-Spirit. 7. The Spirit.

In this description the first triple group—viz., the bones (or the gross matter), the vital force which keeps them together, and the ethereal body, are included in one and called Existence, Life. The second part stands for the fourth principle of the septenary man, as denoting the configuration of his knowledge or desires.* Then the three, consciousness (or animal soul), (spiritual) soul, and the pure Spirit are the same as in the first quoted passage. Why are these four mentioned as distinct from each other and not consolidated like the first part? The sacred writings explain this by saying that on death the first of these five parts disappears and perishes sooner or later in the earth's atmosphere. The gross elementary matter (the shell) has to run within the earth's attraction; so the ahum separates from the higher portions and is lost.

————- * Modern science also teaches that certain characteristics of features indicate the possession of certain qualities in a man. The whole science of physiognomy is founded on it. One can predict the disposition of a man from his features,—i.e., the features develop in accordance with the idiosyncrasies, qualities and vices, knowledge or the ignorance of man. ————-

The second (i.e., the fourth of the septenary group) remains, but not with the spiritual soul. It continues to hold its place in the vast storehouse of the universe. And it is this second daenam which stands before the (spiritual) soul in the form of a beautiful maiden or an ugly hag. That which brings this daenam within the sight of the (spiritual) soul is the third part (i.e., the fifth of the septenary group), the baodhas. Or in other words, the (spiritual) soul has with it, or in it, the true consciousness by which it can view the experiences of its physical career. So this consciousness, this power or faculty which brings the recollection, is always with, in other words, is a part and parcel of, the soul itself; hence, its not mixing with any other part, and hence its existence after the physical death of man.*

—A Parsi F.T.S.

————- * Our Brother has but to look into the oldest sacred hooks of China— namely, the YI KING. or Book of Changes (translated by James Legge) written 1,200 B.C., to find that same Septenary division of man mentioned in that system of Divination. Zhing, which is translated correctly enough "essence," is the more subtle and pure part of matter— the grosser form of the elementary ether; Khi, or "spirit," is the breath, still material but purer than the zhing, and is made of the finer and more active form of ether. In the hwun, or soul (animus) the Khi predominates and the zhing (or zing) in the pho or animal soul. At death the hwun (Or spiritual soul) wanders away, ascending, and the pho (the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a ghostly shade (the shell). Dr. Medhurst thinks that "the Kwei Shans" (see "Theology of the Chinese," pp. 10-12) are "the expanding and contracting principles of human life!" "The Kwei Shans" are brought about by the dissolution of the human frame—and consist of the expanding and ascending Shan which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled Kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity. Therefore, the Kwei is the physical body; the Shan is the vital principle the Kwei Shan the linga-sariram, or the vital soul; Zhing the fourth principle or Kama Rupa, the essence of will; pho, the animal soul; Khi, the spiritual soul; and Hwun the pure spirit—the seven principles of our occult doctrine!—Ed. Theos. ————-

Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man

It is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Aryan doctrine. If an inquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis and comparison of all the various systems of esotericism prevailing in India, he will soon be lost in a maze of obscurity and uncertainty. No comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that so-called "Aryan doctrine," and fully comprehends the whole range of the ancient Aryan philosophy. Kapila's "Sankhya," Patanjali's "Yog philosophy," the different systems of "Saktaya" philosophy, the various Agamas and Tantras are but branches of it. There is a doctrine, though, which is their real foundation, and which is sufficient to explain the secrets of these various systems of philosophy and harmonize their teachings. It probably existed long before the Vedas were compiled, and it was studied by our ancient Rishis in connection with the Hindu scriptures. It is attributed to one mysterious personage called Maha.*…..

—————
* The very title of the present chief of the esoteric Himalayan
Brotherhood.—Ed. Theos.
—————

The Upanishads and such portions of the Vedas as are not chiefly devoted to the public ceremonials of the ancient Aryans are hardly intelligible without some knowledge of that doctrine. Even the real significance of the grand ceremonials referred to in the Vedas will not be perfectly apprehended without its light being throw upon them. The Vedas were perhaps compiled mainly for the use of the priests assisting at public ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are therein mentioned. I am informed by persons competent to judge of the matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning—one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas. Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets.

Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient Brahrnans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet; or, again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the same doctrine and derived it from a common source.* If you were to go to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were composed by Rakshasas** or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived their secret knowledge from them.***

————- * See Appendix, Note I.

** A kind of demons-devil.

*** And so would the Christian padris. But they would never admit that their "fallen angels" were borrowed from the Rakshasas; that their "devil" is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon; or that the "war in heaven" of the Apocalypse—the foundation of the Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels" was copied from the Hindu story about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical Shastras. ————-

Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis—the continent that once occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the Pacific oceans? The assertion in "Isis Unveiled," that Sanskrit was the language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.* But the real esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be— perchance from the divine inhabitants (gods) of the sacred island which once existed in the sea that covered in days of old the sandy tract now called Gobi Desert. However that may be, the knowledge of the occult powers of Nature possessed by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was learnt by the ancient adepts of India, and was appended by them to the esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred island.** The Tibetan adepts, however, have not accepted this addition to their esoteric doctrine; and it is in this respect that one should expect to find a difference between the two doctrines.***

—————
* Not necessarily. (See Appendix, Note II.) It is generally held by
Occultists that Sanskrit has been spoken in Java and adjacent islands
from remote antiquity.—Ed. Theos.

** A locality which is spoken of to this day by the Tibetans, and called by them "Scham-bha-la," the Happy Land. (See Appendix, Note III.)

*** To comprehend this passage fully, the reader must turn to vol. I. pp. 589-594 of "Isis Unveiled." ————

The Brahmanical occult doctrine probably contains everything that was taught about the powers of Nature and their laws, either in the mysterious island of the North or in the equally mysterious continent of the South. And if you mean to compare the Aryan and the Tibetan doctrines as regards their teachings about the occult powers of Nature, you must beforehand examine all the classifications of these powers, their laws and manifestations, and the real connotations of the various names assigned to them in the Aryan doctrine. Here are some of the classifications contained in the Brahmanical system:

I. As appertaining to Parabrahmam and existing in the MACROCOSM.

II. As appertaining to man and existing in the MICROCOSM.

III. For the purposes of d Taraka Yog or Pranava Yog.

IV. For the purposes of Sankhya Yog (where they are, as it were, the inherent attributes of Prakriti).

V. For the purposes of Hata Yog.

VI. For the purposes of Koula Agama.

VII. For the purposes of Sakta Agama.

VIII. For the purposes of Siva Aqama.

IX. For the purposes of Sreechakram (the Sreechakram referred to in "Isis Unveiled" is not the real esoteric Sreechakram of the ancient adepts of Aryavarta).*

———— * Very true. But who would be allowed to give out the "real" esoteric one?—Ed. Theos. ————

X. In Atharvena Veda, &c.

In all these classifications subdivisions have been multiplied indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in different proportions. But I must now drop this subject, and proceed to consider the "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in "Esoteric Buddhism").

I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in the Buddhist doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in form. I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though, following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles constituting man which is adopted in the "Fragments." The questions raised for discussion are (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the seance-rooms and elsewhere; and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are produced wholly or partly through their agency.

It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression "disembodied spirits of human beings" be accurately defined. The words spiritualism and spirit are very misleading. Unless English writers in general, and Spiritualists in particular, first ascertain clearly the connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit, there will be no end of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined. Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man—the body, and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them). European philosophers generally speak of body and mind, and argue that soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion that any belief in lingasariram* is entirely unphilosophical. These views are certainly incorrect, and are based on unwarranted assumptions as to the possibilities of Nature, and on an imperfect understanding of its laws. I shall now examine (from the standpoint of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine) the spiritual constitution of man, the various entities or principles existing in him, and ascertain whether either of those entities entering into his composition can appear on earth after his death, and if so, what it is that so appears.

———— * The astral body, so called. ————

Professor Tyndall in his excellent papers on what he calls the "Germ Theory," comes to the following conclusions as the result of a series of well-planned experiments:—Even in a very small volume of space there are myriads of protoplasmic germs floating in ether. If, for instance, say water (clear water) is exposed to them, and if they fall into it, some form of life or other will be evolved out of them. Now, what are the agencies for the bringing of this life into existence? Evidently—

I. The water, which is the field, so to say, for the growth of life.

II. The protoplasmic germ, out of which life or a living organism is to be evolved or developed. And lastly—

III. The power, energy, force, or tendency which springs into activity at the touch or combination of the protoplasmic germ and the water, and which evolves or develops life and its natural attributes.

Similarly, there are three primary causes which bring the human being into existence. I shall call them, for the purpose of discussion, by the following names

(1) Parabrahmam, the Universal Spirit.

(2) Sakti, the crown of the astral light, combining in itself all the powers of Nature.

(3) Prakriti, which in its original or primary shape is represented by Akasa. (Really every form of matter is finally reducible to Akasa.)*

It is ordinarily stated that Prakriti or Akasa is the Kshetram, or the basis which corresponds to water in the example we have taken Brahmam the germ, and Sakti, the power or energy that comes into existence at their union or contact.**

———— * The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced; and Akasa, that same cosmic matter, but still more subjective—its spirit, as it were. Prakriti being the body or substance, and Akasa Sakti its soul or energy.

** Or, in other words, "Prakriti, Swabhavat, or Akasa, is SPACE, as the Tibetans have it; Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all—i.e., with substance so imperceptible as to be only metaphysically conceivable. Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahat of Tibet, FOHAT. That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which we call space (sunyata)…. Space is not different from form. Form is the same as space; space is the same as form. And so with the other skandhas, whether vedana, or sanjna, or sanskara, or vijnana, they are each the same as their opposite." …. (Book of Sin-king, or the "Heart Sutra." Chinese translation of the "Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra," chapter on the "Avalokiteshwara," or the manifested Buddha.) So that the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance, differing but in names given and the way of putting it. ————-

But this is not the view which the Upanishads take of the question. According to them, Brahamam* is the Kshetram or basis, Akasa or Prakriti, the germ or seed, and Sakti, the power evolved by their union or contact. And this is the real scientific, philosophical mode of stating the case.

———— * See Appendix, Note IV. ————

Now, according to the adepts of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and so forth = 2(n)-1.

Applying this formula to the present case, the number of entities evolved from different combinations of these three primary causes amounts to 2(3)-1 = 8-1 = 7.

As a general rule, whenever seven entities are mentioned in the ancient occult science of India, in any connection whatsoever, you must suppose that those seven entities came into existence from three primary entities; and that these three entities, again, are evolved out of a single entity or MONAD. To take a familiar example, the seven coloured rays in the solar ray are evolved out of three primary coloured rays; and the three primary colours coexist with the four secondary colours in the solar rays. Similarly, the three primary entities which brought man into existence co-exist in him with the four secondary entities which arose from different combinations of the three primary entities.

Now these seven entities, which in their totality constitute man, are as follows. I shall enumerate them in the order adopted in the "Fragments," as far as the two orders (the Brahmanical and the Tibetan) coincide:—

Corresponding names in
Esoteric Buddhism.

I. Prakriti. Sthulasariram
(Physical Body).

II. The entity evolved out of the combination Sukshmasariram or Lingasariram of Prakriti and Sakti. (Astral Body).

III. Sakti. Kamarupa (the Perispirit).

IV. The entity evolved out
of the combination of Jiva (Life-Soul).
Brahmam, Sakti and
Prakriti.

V. The entity evolved out of the combination of Physical Intelligence (or Brahmam and Prakriti. animal soul).

VI. The entity evolved out of the combination of Spiritual Intelligence (or Soul). Brahmam and Sakti.

VII. Brahmam. The emanation from the ABSOLUTE,
&c. (or pure spirit.)

Before proceeding to examine these nature of these seven entities, a few general explanations are indispensably necessary.

I. The secondary principles arising out of the combination of primary principles are quite different in their nature from the entities out of whose combination they came into existence. The combinations in question are not of the nature of mere mechanical juxtapositions, as it were. They do not even correspond to chemical combinations. Consequently no valid inferences as regards the nature of the combinations in question can be drawn by analogy from the nature [variety?] of these combinations.

II. The general proposition, that when once a cause is removed its effect vanishes, is not universally applicable. Take, for instance, the following example:—If you once communicate a certain amount of momentum to a ball, velocity of a particular degree in a particular direction is the result. Now, the cause of this motion ceases to exist when the instantaneous sudden impact or blow which conveyed the momentum is completed; but according to Newton's first law of motion, the ball will continue to move on for ever and ever, with undiminished velocity in the same direction, unless the said motion is altered, diminished, neutralized, or counteracted by extraneous causes. Thus, if the ball stop, it will not be on account of the absence of the cause of its motion, but in consequence of the existence of extraneous causes which produce the said result.

Again, take the instance of subjective phenomena.

Now the presence of this ink-bottle before me is producing in me, or in my mind, a mental representation of its form, volume, colour and so forth.

The bottle in question may be removed, but still its mental picture may continue to exist. Here, again, you see, the effect survives the cause. Moreover, the effect may at any subsequent time be called into conscious existence, whether the original cause be present or not.

Now, in the ease of the filth principle above mentioned-the entity that came into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti—if the general proposition (in the "Fragments of Occult Truth") is correct, this principle, which corresponds to the physical intelligence, must cease to exist whenever the Brahmam or the seventh Principle should cease to exist for the particular individual; but the fact is certainly otherwise. The general proposition under consideration is adduced in the "Fragments" in support of the assertion that whenever the seventh principle ceases to exist for any particular individual, the sixth principle also ceases to exist for him. The assertion is undoubtedly true, though the mode of stating it and the reasons assigned for it, are to my mind objectionable.

It is said that in cases where tendencies of a man's mind are entirely material, and all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether absent from his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or at the time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it. Here, the very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual's mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there is no spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him, it should then have been said that, whenever spiritual intelligence ceases to exist in any particular individual, the seventh principle ceases to exist for that particular individual for all purposes. Of course, it does not fly off anywhere. There can never be any thing like a change of position in the case of Brahmam.* The assertion merely means that when there is no recognition whatever of Brahmam, or spirit, or spiritual life, or spiritual consciousness, the seventh principle has ceased to exercise any influence or control over the individual's destinies.

———— * True—from the standpoint of Aryan Exotericism and the Upanishads, not quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan esoteric doctrine; and it is only on this one solitary point that the two teachings disagree, as far as we know. The difference is very trifling, though, resting as it does solely upon the two various methods of viewing the one and the same thing from two different aspects. (See Appendix, Note IV.) ————

I shall now state what is meant (in the Aryan doctrine) by the seven principles above enumerated.

I. Prakriti. This is the basis of Sthulasariram, and represents it in the above-mentioned classification.

II. Prakriti and Sakti. This is the Lingasariram, or astral body.

III. Sukti. This principle corresponds to your Kamarupa. This power or force is placed by ancient occultists in the Nabhichakram. This power can gather akasa or prakriti, and mould it into any desired shape. It has very great sympathy with the fifth principle, and can be made to act by its influence or control.

IV. Brahmam and Sakti, and Prakriti. This again corresponds to your second principle, Jiva.

This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in Nature. Its seat is the Anahatachakram (heart). It is a force or power which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say, indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of death to another set of atoms, to form another organism.

V. Brahma and Prakriti. This, in our Aryan philosophy, corresponds to your fifth principle, called the physical intelligence. According to our philosophers, this is the entity in which what is called mind has its seat or basis. This is the most difficult principle of all to explain, and the present discussion entirely turns upon the view we take of it.

Now, what is mind? It is a mysterious something, which is considered to be the seat of consciousness—of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts. Psychological analysis shows it to be apparently a congeries of mental states, and possibilities of mental states, connected by what is called memory, and considered to have a distinct existence apart from any of its particular states or ideas. Now in what entity has this mysterious something its potential or actual existence? Memory and expectation, which form, as it were, the real foundation of what is called individuality, or Ahankaram, must have their seat of existence somewhere. Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the material substance of brain is the seat of mind; and that past subjective experiences, which can he recalled by memory, and which in their totality constitute what is called individuality, exist therein in the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres. Consequently, they say, the mind—the individual mind—is destroyed when the body is destroyed; so there is no possible existence after death.

But there are a few facts among those admitted by these philosophers which are sufficient for us to demolish their theory. In every portion of the human body a constant change goes on without intermission. Every tissue, every muscular fibre and nerve-tube, and every ganglionic centre in the brain, is undergoing an incessant change. In the course of a man's lifetime there may be a series of complete tranformations of the substance of his brain. Nevertheless, the memory of his past mental states remains unaltered. There may be additions of new subjective experiences and some mental states may be altogether forgotten, but no individual mental state is altered. The person's sense of personal identity remains the same throughout these constant alterations in the brain substance.* It is able to survive all these changes, and it can survive also the complete destruction of the material substance of the brain.

———— * This is also sound Buddhist philosophy, the transformation in question being known as the change of the skandhas.—Ed. Theos. ————

This individuality arising from mental consciousness has its seat of existence, according to our philosophers, in an occult power or force, which keeps a registry, as it were, of all our mental impressions. The power itself is indestructible, though by the operation of certain antagonistic causes its impressions may in course of time be effaced, in part or wholly.

I may mention in this connection that our philosophers have associated seven occult powers with the seven principles or entities above-mentioned. These seven occult powers in the microcosm correspond with, or are the counterparts of, the occult powers in the macrocosm. The mental and spiritual consciousness of the individual becomes the general consciousness of Brahmam, when the barrier of individuality is wholly removed, and when the seven powers in the microcosm are placed en rapport with the seven powers in the macrocosm.

There is nothing very strange in a power, or force, or sakti, carrying with it impressions of sensations, ideas, thoughts, or other subjective experiences. It is now a well-known fact, that an electric or magnetic current can convey in some mysterious manner impressions of sound or speech, with all their individual peculiarities; similarly, I can convey my thoughts to you by a transmission of energy or power.

Now, this fifth principle represents in our philosophy the mind, or, to speak more correctly, the power or force above described, the impressions of the mental states therein, and the notion of self-identity or Ahankaram generated by their collective operation. This principle is called merely physical intelligence in the "Fragments." I do not know what is really meant by this expression. It may be taken to mean that intelligence which exists in a very low state of development in the lower animals. Mind may exist in different stages of development, from the very lowest forms of organic life, where the signs of its existence or operation can hardly be distinctly realized, up to man, in whom it reaches its highest state of development.

In fact, from the first appearance of life* up to Tureeya Avastha, or the state of Nirvana, the progress is, as it were, continuous.

———— * In the Aryan doctrine, which blends Brahmam, Sakti, and Prakriti in one, it is the fourth principle then, in the Buddhist esotericisms the second in combination with the first. ————

We ascend from that principle up to the seventh by almost imperceptible gradations. But four stages are recognized in the progress where the change is of a peculiar kind, and is such as to arrest an observer's attention. These four stages are as follows:—

(1) Where life (fourth principle) makes its appearance.

(2) Where the existence of mind becomes perceptible in conjunction with life.

(3) Where the highest state of mental abstraction ends, and spiritual consciousness commences.

(4) Where spiritual consciousness disappears, leaving the seventh principle in a complete state of Nirvana, or nakedness.

According to our philosophers, the fifth principle under consideration is intended to represent the mind in every possible state of development, from the second stage up to the third stage.

IV. Brahmam and Sakti. This principle corresponds to your "spiritual intelligence." It is, in fact, Buddhi (I use the word Buddhi not in the ordinary sense, but in the sense in which it is used by our ancient philosophers); in other words, it is the seat of Bodha or Atmabodha. One who has Atmabodha in its completeness is a Buddha. Buddhists know very well what this term signifies. This principle is described in the "Fragments" as an entity coming into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti. I do not again know in what particular sense the word Prakriti is used in this connection. According to our philosophers it is an entity arising from the union of Brahmam and Sakti. I have already explained the connotation attached by our philosophers to the words Prakriti and Sakti.

I stated that Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa.*

If Akasa be considered to be Sakti or power** then my statement as regards the ultimate state of Prakriti is likely to give rise to confusion and misapprehension unless I explain the distinction between Akasa and Sakti. Akasa is not, properly speaking, the crown of the astral light, nor does it by itself constitute any of the six primary forces. But, generally speaking, whenever any phenomenal result is produced, Sakti acts in conjunction with Akasa. And, moreover, Akasa serves as a basis or Adhishthanum for the transmission of force currents and for the formation or generation of force or power correlations.***

———— * According to the Buddhists, in Akasa lies that eternal, potential energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself.—Ed. Theos.

** It was never so considered, as we have shown it. But as the "Fragments" are written in English, a language lacking such an abundance of metaphysical terms to express ever minute change of form, substance and state as are found in the Sanskrit, it was deemed useless to confuse the Western reader, untrained in the methods of Eastern expression, more than is necessary, with a too nice distinctions of proper technical terms. As "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," and Sakti "is an attribute AKASA," it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all one. Indeed, to speak of the "union of Brahmam and Prakriti" instead of "Brahmam and Sakti" is no worse than for a theist to write that "That man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter," whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read "man is a living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter."

*** That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE (in its metaphysical meaning).—Ed. Theos. ————-

In Mantrasastra the letter Ha represents Akasa, and you will find that this syllable enters into most of the sacred formula intended to be used in producing phenomenal results. But by itself it does not represent any Sakti. You may, if you please, call Sakti an attribute of Akasa.

I do not think that, as regards the nature of this principle, there can in reality exist any difference of opinion between the Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophers.

Buddhist and Brahmanical initiates know very well that mysterious circular mirror composed of two hemispheres which reflects as it were the rays emanating from the "burning bush" and the blazing star—the spiritual sun Shining in CHIDAKASAM.

The spiritual impressions constituting this principle have their existence in an occult power associated with the entity in question. The successive incarnations of Buddha, in fact, mean the successive transfers of this mysterious power, or the impressions thereof. The transfer is only possible when the Mahatma* who transfers it has completely identified himself with his seventh principle, has annihilated his Ahankaram, and reduced it to ashes in CHIDAGNIKUNDUM, and has succeeded in making his thoughts correspond with the eternal laws of Nature and in becoming a co-worker with Nature. Or, to put the same thing in other words, when he has attained the state of Nirvana, the condition of final negation, negation of individual, or separate existence.**

————- * The highest adept.

* In the words of Agatha in the "Maha-pari-Nirvana Sutra,"
"We reach a condition of rest
Beyond the limit of any human knowledge"
—Ed. Theos.
————-

VII. Atma.—The emanation from the absolute, corresponding to the seventh principle. As regards this entity there exists positively no real difference of opinion between the Tibetan Buddhist adepts and our ancient Rishis.

We must now consider which of these entities can appear after the individual's death in seance-rooms and produce the so-called spiritualistic phenomena.

Now, the assertion of the Spiritualists, that the "disembodied spirits" of particular human beings appear in seance-rooms, necessarily implies that the entity that so appears bears the stamp of some particular personality.

So, we have to ascertain beforehand in what entity or entities personality has its seat of existence. Apparently it exists in the person's particular formation of body, and in his subjective experiences (called his mind in their totality). On the death of the individual his body is destroyed; his lingasariram being decomposed, the power associated with it becomes mingled in the current of the corresponding power in the macrocosm. Similarly, the third and fourth principles are mingled with their corresponding powers. These entities may again enter into the composition of other organisms. As these entities bear no impression of personality, the Spiritualists have no right to say that the disembodied spirit of the human being has appeared in the seance-room whenever any of these entities may appear there. In fact, they have no means of ascertaining that they belonged to any particular individual.

Therefore, we must only consider whether any of the last three entities appear in seance-rooms to amuse or to instruct Spiritualists. Let us take three particular examples of individuals, and see what becomes of these three principles after death.

I. One in whom spiritual attachments have greater force than terrestrial attachments.

II. One in whom spiritual aspirations do exist, but are merely of secondary importance to him, his terrestrial interests occupying the greater share of his attention.

III. One in whom there exists no spiritual aspirations whatsoever, one whose spiritual Ego is dead or non-existent to his apprehension.

We need not consider the case of a complete adept in this connection. In the first two cases, according to our supposition, spiritual and mental experiences exist together; when spiritual consciousness exists, the existence of the seventh principle being recognized, it maintains its connection with the fifth and sixth principles. But the existence of terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of Punarjanmam (re-birth), the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of surrounding circumstances, or, in other words, a new world. The period between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences. During the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear.

There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of subjective experiences to objective phenomena, and the evolution of the former from the latter. This is otherwise called "cyclic necessity." Man is subjected to this law if he do not check and counterbalance the usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing all his terrestrial attachments completely. The new combination of circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived; but in his progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to have a look at his spiritualistic friends.

In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirits; so they are non-existing so far as he is concerned. The case is similar to that of an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time. It then practically ceases to exist.

These entities, as it were, remain his, or in his possession, when they are stamped with the stamp of recognition. When such is not the case, the whole of his individuality is centred in his fifth principle. And after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the individual in question.

By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no punarjanmam. It is such an entity that can appear in seance-rooms; but it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the individual into whose composition it originally entered. It sometimes summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some particular ethereal form (not necessarily human).

———— * It is especially on this point that the Aryan and Arahat doctrines quite agree. The teaching and argument that follow are in every respect those of the Buddhist Himalayan Brotherhood.—Ed. Theos. ————

Its tendencies of action will be similar to those of the individual's mind when he was living. This entity maintains its existence so long as the impressions on the power associated with the fifth principle remain intact. In course of time they are effaced, and the power in question is then mixed up in the current of its corresponding power in the MACROCOSM, as the river loses itself in the sea. Entities like these may afford signs of there having been considerable intellectual power in the individuals to which they belonged; because very high intellectual power may co-exist with utter absence of spiritual consciousness. But from this circumstance it cannot be argued that either the spirits or the spiritual Egos of deceased individuals appear in seance-rooms.

There are some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of such entities (called Pisacham). I do not know much about them experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting, profitless, and dangerous branch of investigation.

The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing. Their investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.*

———— * We share entirely in this idea.—Ed. Theos. ————

The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our ancient writers by comparing the course of a man's life or existence to the orbital motion of a planet round the sun. Centripetal force is spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction. As the centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun—the individual reaches a higher plane of existence. If, on the other hand, the centrifugal force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that distance—the individual comes to a lower level of existence. These are illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above.

We have only to consider the two extreme cases.

When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where the centripetal and centrifugal force completely neutralize each other, and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the mass of the sun's body. This is the case of a complete adept.

Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space. When it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms. This cold mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to the sixth and seventh principles.

Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never intersect each other.

This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient Brahmanical theory on the subject. It is merely a branch of what is called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics.

—T. Subba Row

Appendix

Note I.

In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages. According to these records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of Wisdom" and the "Brothers of the Sun." The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207 B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him—for he was the first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal authority—from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians and the Chaldees; that which we know to have existed in the Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet—namely, all the learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present. They practice the Bhon religion, their sect is a pre-and anti-Buddhistic one, and they are to be found mostly in the province of Kam. That is all that is known of them. But even that would justify the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their rites—now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship—remind one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality), as alleged by some. Generally, little or no difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And when we remember that the Vedas came, agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as having proceeded from one and the same source; and to thus call it the "Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. "Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet," was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.

Note II.

Not necessarily, we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered by them as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost "Atlantis" formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.

Note III.

To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and historical records—a people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate, and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science were anticipated—such as the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.—known and practiced thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans, ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts. In the "Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese," by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which our opponents ought to read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K'hae, called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads "That which relates to the one garment (seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school of the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics of the school of the "Haimavatas," or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in the general census records of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule relating to "the great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote from men," the Aranyakas, or hermits.

So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the people of Tibet. The fair island is no more, but the country where it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of the "great teachers of the Snowy Mountains," however much convulsed and changed its topography by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh year these teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the "Happy Land." According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions, inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China, west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur Nur and the Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island.

In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern geologists-that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?

Note IV.

We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle—the pure and per se unconscious spirit—it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of existence—(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life)—makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism." The ONE LIFE is either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara, and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti; guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or "Fan, Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness," is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the Abyss.") The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can develop active conscious life; and that to the question "how can unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be: "Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?"

Note V.

To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God. The Upanishads—the Vedanta Scriptures—mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness, the one Life and the only Reality.

—H.P. Blavatsky

Septenary Division in Different Indian Systems

We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by
Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man:—

Classification in Vedantic Classification in
Esoteric Buddhism Classification Taraka Raja Yoga

(1.) Sthula sarira Annamaya kosa Sthulopadhi

(2.) Prana
Pranamaya kosa
(3.)The Vehicle
of Prana

(4.) Kama rupa
(a) Volitions Manomaya kosa
(5.) Mind/& feelings &c. Sukshmopadhi
(b) Vignanam Vignanamayakosa

(6.) Spiritual Soul Anandamayakosa Karanopadhi

(7.) Atma Atma Atma

From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division as it is merely the vehicle of prana. It will also be seen that the fourth principle is included in the third kosa (sheath), as the said principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamayakosa is considered to be distinct from the Manomayakosa, as a division is made after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.

We may also here point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last column is for all practical purposes connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though there are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These three Upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution.

—T.S.

The Septenary Principle in Esotericism

Since the exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society with propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic propaganda. We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of the East. It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and show that they too support our position. Even in their crude exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold division is apparent. Passage after passage may be cited in proof. And not only can the mysterious number be found traced on every page of the oldest Aryan Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well; in the rescued cylindrical tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in the "Book of the Dead" and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt, and even in the Mosaic books—without mentioning the secret Jewish works, such as the Kabala.

The limited space at command forces us to allow a few brief quotations to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations. It is no exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the cited Slokas a thick volume might be written.

From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (xix. 53):

"Time, like a brilliant steed with seven rays,
Full of fecundity, bears all things onward.

"Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on,
His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle
Is immortality…."

—down to Manu, "the first and the seventh man," the Vedas, the Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions to this number. Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or "interval from creation to creation" (read interval from one minor "Pralaya" to another) and that "in the present divine age there have been as yet seven Manus." Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the fourth; and who are taught that there are seven dawns and seven twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on and between the planets, there is "an awakening to illusive life," and "an awakening to real life," and that, moreover, there are "root-Manus," and what we have to clumsily translate as the "seed-Manus"—the seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged but to those who have passed the 3rd degree in initiation); those who have learned all that, will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that "the first Manu produced six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus" (Bhrigu I. 61-63),* the production of the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round Humanity—must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and that there is a root-Manu on globe A and a seed-Manu on globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a "Root-Manu" (Dhyan-Chohan) and closes with a "Seed-Manu," so a root-and a seed-Manu appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human period on any particular planet.

———- * The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Menus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I. 33-36), relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain. ————-

It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyan-Chohans: and hence a minor Manu-antara is the duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major Manu-antara is the period of one human round along the planetary chain. Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven planets during each Round, then every root-race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called "Vaivasvata," and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who represents in India the Babylonian Xisusthrus and the Jewish Noah. But in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our fifth race—who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated the fourth (Atlantean)—is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root, or primitive Manus, but one of the 49 "emanated from this 'root'—Manu."

For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in their respective order and relation to each Round:—

1st 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A.-Swayambhuva Round. 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G.-Swarochi (or)Swarotisha

2nd 2nd (R.) M. on Planet A.-Uttama Round 2nd (S.) M. " " G.-Thamasa

3rd 3rd (R.) M. " " A.-Raivata Round 3rd (S.) M. " " G.-Chackchuska

4th 4th (R.) M. " " A.-Vaivasvata (our progenitor) Round 4th (S.) M. " " G.-Savarni

5th 5th (R.) M. " " A.-Daksha Savarni Round 5th (S.) M. " " G.-Brahma Savarni

6th 6th (R.) M. on Planet A.-Dharma Savarni Round 6th (S.) M. " " G.-Rudra Savarni

7th 7th (R.) M. " " A.-Rouchya Round 7th (S.) M. " " G.-Bhoutya

Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Manu of our fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven races of this our planet. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water in turn) that close the cycle of every root-race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisusthrus, Deukalion, Noah, and by other names—who is the allegorical man who rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its temporary obscuration.

The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory comparison of the 11th Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends of the Chaldean account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number seven plays a most prominent part. The clean beasts are taken by sevens, the fowls by sevens also; in seven days, it is promised Noah, to rain upon the earth; thus he stays "yet other seven days," and again seven days; while in the Chaldean. account of the Deluge, on the seventh day the rain abated. On the seventh day the dove is sent out; by sevens, Xisusthrus takes "jugs of wine" for the altar, &c. Why such coincidence? And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian and Aryan chronology they call them "extravagant and fanciful!" Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever noticed, as far as we know, the strange identity in the totals of the Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive. While the period of the reign of the 10 Babylonian antediluvian kings is given as 432,000 years,* the duration of the postdiluvian Kali-yug is also given as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yug, yield in their totality 4,320,000 years. Why should they, if fanciful and "extravagant," give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other! We invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given—4 standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal and the seven individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras.

———— * See "Babylonia," by George Smith, p. 36. Here again, as with the Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers— they dwindle down to seven! ————

It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for the best corroborations of the occult teachings. In the mystical doctrine the Rahasya, or the Upanishads—"the only Veda of all thoughtful Hindus in the present day," as Monier Williams is made to confess, every word, as its very name implies,* has a secret meaning underlying it. This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, "the nave to which are attached the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel." (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda, XI. 4.)

Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to the human body: (a) an exterior or gross body (sthula-sarira); (b) an inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two cemented with—(c), life (jiv or Karana sarira, "causal body").** These the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, farther adding to these—kama, manas, buddhi and atman. The Nyaya philosophy when treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Praman are to be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven "root principles" (see IXth Sutra), which are 1, soul (atman), and 2 its superior spirit Jivatman; 3, body (sarira); 4, senses (indriya); 5, activity or will (pravritti); 6, mind (manas); 7, Intellection (Buddhi). The seven Padarthas (inquiries or predicates of existing things) of Kanada in the Vaiseshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles. Thus: 1, substance (dravya) refers to body or sthula-sarira; 2, quality or property (guna) to the life principle, jiv; 3, action or act (karman) to the Linga, sarira; 4, Community or commingling of properties (Samanya) to Kamarupa; 5, personality or conscious individuality (Visesha) to Manas; 6, co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation (Samuvuya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman; 7, non-existence or non-being in the sense of, and as separate from, objectivity or substance (abhava)—to the highest monad or Atman.

———- * Upa-ni-shad means, according to Brahminical authority, "to conquer ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge." According to Monier Williams, the title is derived from the root sad with the prepositions upa and ni, and implies "something mystical that underlies or is beneath the surface."

** This Karana-sarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or latent embryo of the body, confounded with it. But the Occultists regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death; is withdrawn—leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and return to their elements. —————

Thus, whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neuter) the "all-expanding essence;" or as the universal spirit, the "light of lights" (jyotisham jyotih) the TOTAL independent of all relation, of the Upanishads; or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta; or again as Kanada's Adrishta, "the unseen Force," or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the "eternally existing essence," of Kapila—we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves "six rays" (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer of "seven things, which produced by it, become also producers," has a purely occult meaning.

What are the "producers" evoluted from this universal root-principle, Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves out of itself consciousness and mind, and is generally called "Prakriti" and amulam mulam, "the rootless root," and Aryakta, the "unevolved evolver," &c.? This primordial tattwa or "eternally existing 'that,'" the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi— "intellect"—whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or microcosmic principle. This first produced produces in its turn (or is the source of) Ahankara, "self-consciousness" and manas "mind." The reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of these two internal faculties, "Buddhi" per se, can have neither self-consciousness nor mind; viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve an essence of personal self-consciousness or "personal individuality" only by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that finite faculty; for Ahankara, that is the perception of "I," or the sense of one's personal individuality, justly represented by the term "Ego-ism," belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas. It is the latter which draws "as the web issues from the spider" along the thread of Prakriti, the "root principle," the four following subtle elementary principles or particles—Tanmatras, out of which "third class," the Mahabhutas or the gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved— the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira. The three gunas of "Prakriti"—the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity, and ignorance or darkness)—spun into a triple-stranded cord or "rope," pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles.

It depends on the 5th—Manas or Ahankara, the "I"—to thin the guna, "rope," into one thread—the sattwa; and thus by becoming one with the "unevolved evolver," win immortality or eternal conscious existence. Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence; so long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles "like an animal" (purusha pasu). The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th and 6th principles), whether of the macro-or microcosm, though bound by these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is yet nirguna—i.e., entirely free from them. Out of the three producers or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal. The "divine monad" is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is gunavat—endowed with qualities. With the latter, Purusha or Atman can have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its gunuvatic state); with the former—or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated cosmic essence—it has, since it is one with it and identical.

The Atma Bodha, or "knowledge of soul," a tract written by the great Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see 14th verse). They are called therein the five sheaths (panchakosa) in which is enclosed the divine monad—the Atman, and Buddhi, the 7th and 6th principles, or the individuated soul when made distinct (through avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul—Parabrahm. The 1st sheath, called Ananda-maya—the "illusion of supreme bliss"—is the manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united with Buddhi; the 2nd sheath is Vjnana-maya-kosa, the case or "envelope of self-delusion," the manas when self-deluded into the belief of the personal "I," or ego, with its vehicle. The 3rd, the Mano-maya sheath, composed of "illusionary mind" associated with the organs of action and will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-sarira combined, producing an illusive "I" or Mayavi-rupa. The 4th sheath is called Prana-maya, "illusionary life," our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the "breathing" sheath. The 5th kosa is called Anna-maya, or the sheath supported by food—our gross material body. All these sheaths produce other smaller sheaths, or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh being always the root sheath; and the Atman or spirit passing through all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the "thread-soul" or sutratman.

We may conclude with the above demonstration. Verily the Esoteric doctrine may well be called in its turn the "thread-doctrine," since, like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and, what is more, reconciles and explains them. For though seeming so unlike externally, they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and nature are known to those who have become, like the "Wise Men of the East," adepts in Occult Science.

—H.P. Blavatsky

Personal and Impersonal God

At the outset I shall request my readers (such of them at least as are not acquainted with the Cosmological theories of the Idealistic thinkers of Europe) to examine John Stuart Mill's Cosmological speculations as contained in his examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, before attempting to understand the Adwaita doctrine; and I beg to inform them beforehand that in explaining the main principles of the said doctrine, I am going to use, as far as it is convenient to do so, the phraseology adopted by English psychologists of the Idealistic school of thought. In dealing with the phenomena of our present plane of existence John Stuart Mill ultimately came to the conclusion that matter, or the so-called external phenomena, are but the creation of our mind; they are the mere appearances of a particular phase of our subjective self, and of our thoughts, volitions, sensations and emotions which in their totality constitute the basis of that Ego. Matter then is the permanent possibility of sensations, and the so-called Laws of matter are, properly speaking, the Laws which govern the succession and coexistence of our states of consciousness. Mill further holds that properly speaking there is no noumenal Ego. The very idea of a mind existing separately as an entity, distinct from the states of consciousness which are supposed to inhere in it, is in his opinion illusory, as the idea of an external object, which is supposed to be perceived by our senses.

Thus the ideas of mind and matter, of subject and object, of the Ego and external world, are really evolved from the aggregation of our mental states which are the only realities so far as we are concerned.

The chain of our mental states or states of consciousness is "a double-headed monster," according to Professor Bain, which has two distinct aspects, one objective and the other subjective. Mr. Mill has paused here, confessing that psychological analysis did not go any further; the mysterious link which connects together the train of our states of consciousness and gives rise to our Ahankaram in this condition of existence, still remains an incomprehensible mystery to Western psychologists, though its existence is but dimly perceived in the subjective phenomena of memory and expectation.

On the other hand, the great physicists of Europe are gradually coming to the conclusion* that mind is the product of matter, or that it is one of the attributes of matter in some of its conditions. It would appear, therefore, from the speculations of Western psychologists that matter is evolved from mind and that mind is evolved from matter. These two propositions are apparently irreconcilable.

———— * See Tyndall's Belfast Address.—S.R. ————

Mill and Tyndall have admitted that Western science is yet unable to go deeper into the question. Nor is it likely to solve the mystery hereafter, unless it calls Eastern occult science to its aid and takes a more comprehensive view of the capabilities of the real subjective self of man and the various aspects of the great objective universe. The great Adwaitee philosophers of ancient Aryavarta have examined the relationship between subject and object in every condition of existence in this solar system in which this differentiation is presented. Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions. These different states of matter do not all come within the range of our present objective consciousness. But they can be objectively perceived by the spiritual Ego in man. To the liberated spiritual monad of man, or to the Dhyan Chohans, every thing that is material in every condition of matter is an object of perception. Further, Pragna or the capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter. Strictly speaking, there are but six states of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of cosmic matter in its original undifferentiated condition. Similarly there are six states of differentiated Pragna, the seventh state being a condition of perfect unconsciousness. By differentiated Pragna, I mean the condition in which Pragna is split up into various states of consciousness. Thus we have six states of consciousness, either objective or subjective for the time being, as the case may be, and a perfect state of unconsciousness, which is the beginning and the end of all conceivable states of consciousness, corresponding to the states of differentiated matter and its original undifferentiated basis which is the beginning and the end of all cosmic evolutions. It will be easily seen that the existence of consciousness is necessary for the differentiation between subject and object. Hence these two phases are presented in six different conditions, and in the last state there being no consciousness as above stated, the differentiation in question ceases to exist. The number of these various conditions is different in different systems of philosophy. But whatever may be the number of divisions, they all lie between perfect unconsciousness at one end of the line and our present state of consciousness or Bahipragna at the other end. To understand the real nature of these different states of consciousness, I shall request my readers to compare the consciousness of the ordinary man with the consciousness of the astral man, and again compare the latter with the consciousness of the spiritual Ego in man. In these three conditions the objective universe is not the same. But the difference between the Ego and the non-Ego is common to all these conditions. Consequently, admitting the correctness of Mill's reasoning as regards the subject and object of our present plane of consciousness, the great Adwaitee thinkers of India have extended the same reasoning to other states of consciousness, and came to the conclusion that the various conditions of the Ego and the non-Ego were but the appearances of one and the same entity—the ultimate state of unconsciousness. This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject. In the language of Hindu philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti. As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush is the only reality; it is the one existence which remains eternal in this universe of Ideas. This entity then is the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees. Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material Upadhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence as there would be in the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity, as these states are constantly changing and as cosmic idealism ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the universe which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (field of consciousness) in fact.

When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees.

The idea of a God, Deity, Iswar, or an impersonal God (if consciousness is one of his attributes) involves the idea of Ego or non-Ego in some shape or other, and as every conceivable Ego or non-Ego is evolved from this primitive element (I use this word for want of a better one) the existence of an extra-cosmic god possessing such attributes prior to this condition is absolutely inconceivable. Though I have been speaking of this element as the condition of unconsciousness, it is, properly speaking, the Chidakasam or Chinmatra of the Hindu philosophers which contains within itself the potentiality of every condition of "Pragna," and which results as consciousness on the one hand and the objective universe on the other, by the operation of its latent Chichakti (the power which generates thought).

Before proceeding to discuss the nature of Parabrahmam. It is to be stated that in the opinion of Adwaitees, the Upanishads and the Brahmasutras fully support their views on the subject. It is distinctly affirmed in the Upanishads that Parabrahmam, which is but the bare potentiality of Pragna,* is not an aspect of Pragna or Ego in any shape, and that it has neither life nor consciousness. The reader will be able to ascertain that such is really the case on examining the Mundaka and Mandukya Upanishads. The language used here and there in the Upanishads is apt to mislead one into the belief that such language points to the existence of a conscious Iswar. But the necessity for such language will perhaps be rendered clear from the following considerations.

———— * The power or the capacity that gives rise to perception. ————

From a close examination of Mill's cosmological theory the difficulty will be clearly seen referred to above, of satisfactorily accounting for the generation of conscious states in any human being from the standpoint of the said theory. It is generally stated that sensations arise in us from the action of the external objects around us: they are the effects of impressions made on our senses by the objective world in which we exist. This is simple enough to an ordinary mind, however difficult it may be to account for the transformation of a cerebral nerve-current into a state of consciousness.

But from the standpoint of Mill's theory we have no proof of the existence of any external object; even the objective existence of our own senses is not a matter of certainty to us. How, then, are we to account for and explain the origin of our mental states, if they are the only entities existing in this world? No explanation is really given by saying that one mental state gives rise to another mental state, to a certain extent at all events, under the operation of the so-called psychological "Laws of Association." Western psychology honestly admits that its analysis has not gone any further. It may be inferred, however, from the said theory that there would be no reason for saying that a material Upadhi (basis) is necessary for the existence of mind or states of consciousness.

As is already indicated, the Aryan psychologists have traced this current of mental states to its source—the eternal Chinmatra existing everywhere. When the time for evolution comes this germ of Pragna unfolds itself and results ultimately as Cosmic ideation. Cosmic ideas are the conceptions of all the conditions of existence in the Cosmos existing in what may be called the universal mind (the demiurgic mind of the Western Kabalists).

This Chinmatra exists as it were at every geometrical point of the infinite Chidakasam. This principle then has two general aspects. Considered as something objective it is the eternal Asath—Mulaprakriti or Undifferentiated Cosmic matter. From a subjective point of view it may be looked upon in two ways. It is Chidakasam when considered as the field of Cosmic ideation; and it is Chinmatra when considered as the germ of Cosmic ideation. These three aspects constitute the highest Trinity of the Aryan Adwaitee philosophers. It will be readily seen that the last-mentioned aspect of the principle in question is far more important to us than the other two aspects; for, when looked upon in this aspect the principle under consideration seems to embody within itself the great Law of Cosmic Evolution. And therefore the Adwaitee philosophers have chiefly considered it in this light, and explained their cosmogony from a subjective point of view. In doing so, however, they cannot avoid the necessity of speaking of a universal mind (and this is Brahma, the Creator) and its ideation. But it ought not to be inferred therefrom that this universal mind necessarily belongs to an Omnipresent living conscious Creator, simply because in ordinary parlance a mind is always spoken of in connection with a particular living being. It cannot be contended that a material Uphadi is indispensable for the existence of mind or mental states when the objective universe itself is, so far as we are concerned, the result of our states of consciousness. Expressions implying the existence of a conscious Iswar which are to be found here and there in the Upanishads should not therefore be literally construed.

It now remains to be seen how Adwaitees account for the origin of mental states in a particular individual. Apparently the mind of a particular human being is not the universal mind. Nevertheless Cosmic ideation is the real source of the states of consciousness in every individual. Cosmic ideation exists everywhere; but when placed under restrictions by a material Upadhi it results as the consciousness of the individual inhering in such Upadhi. Strictly speaking, an Adwaitee will not admit the objective existence of this material Upadhi. From his standpoint it is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language; and to enable my readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted. Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it. The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the curtain. If several such curtains are thus successively placed around the light, it will have to penetrate through all of them; and a person standing outside will only perceive as much light as is not intercepted by all the curtains. The central light becomes dimmer and dimmer as curtain after curtain is placed before the observer; and as curtain after curtain is removed the light becomes brighter and brighter until it reaches its natural brilliancy. Similarly, universal mind or Cosmic ideation becomes more and more limited and modified by the various Upadhis of which a human being is composed; and when the action or influence of these various Upadhis is successively controlled, the mind of the individual human being is placed en rapport with the universal mind and his ideation is lost in Cosmic ideation.

As I have already said, these Upadhis are strictly speaking the conditions of the gradual development or evolution of Bahipragna—or consciousness in the present plane of our existence—from the original and eternal Chinmatra, which is the seventh principle in man, and the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees.

This then is the purport of the Adwaitee philosophy on the subject under consideration, and it is, in my humble opinion, in harmony with the Arhat doctrine relating to the same subject. The latter doctrine postulates the existence of Cosmic matter in an undifferentiated condition throughout the infinite expanse of space. Space and time are but its aspects, and Purush, the seventh principle of the universe, has its latent life in this ocean of Cosmic matter. The doctrine in question explains Cosmogony from an objective point of view.

When the period of activity arrives, portions of the whole differentiate according to the latent law. When this differentiation has commenced, the concealed wisdom or latent Chichakti acts in the universal mind, and Cosmic energy or Fohat forms the manifested universe in accordance with the conceptions generated in the universal mind out of the differentiated principles of Cosmic matter. This manifested universe constitutes a solar system. When the period of Pralaya comes, the process of differentiation stops and Cosmic ideation ceases to exist; and at the time of Brahmapralaya or Mahapralaya the particles of matter lose all differentiation, and the matter that exists in the solar system returns to its original undifferentiated condition. The latent design exists in the one unborn eternal atom, the centre which exists everywhere and nowhere; and this is the one life that exists everywhere. Now, it will be easily seen that the undifferentiated Cosmic matter, Purush, and the ONE LIFE of the Arhat philosophers, are the Mulaprakriti, Chidakasam, and Chinmatra of the Adwaitee philosophers. As regards Cosmogony, the Arhat standpoint is objective, and the Adwaitee standpoint is subjective. The Arhat Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of the manifested solar system from undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra. As the different conditions of differentiated C osmic matter are but the different aspects of the various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the complement of the Arhat Cosmogony. The eternal principle is precisely the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the existence of an extra-Cosmic God.

The Arhats call themselves Atheists, and they are justified in doing so if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the universe by his will-power. Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it would be better not to use them in connection with any system of philosophy.

—T. Subba Row

Prakriti and Parusha

Prakriti may be looked upon either as Maya when considered as the Upadhi of Parabrahmam or as Avidya when considered as the Upadhi of Jivatma (7th principle in man).* Avidya is ignorance or illusion arising from Maya. The term Maya, though sometimes used as a synonym for Avidya, is, properly speaking, applicable to Prakriti only. There is no difference between Prakriti, Maya and Sakti; and the ancient Hindu philosophers made no distinction whatsoever between Matter and Force. In support of these assertions I may refer the learned hermit to "Swetaswatara Upanishad" and its commentary by Sankaracharya. In case we adopt the fourfold division of the Adwaitee philosophers, it will be clearly seen that Jagrata,* Swapna* and Sushupti Avasthas* are the results of Avidya, and that Vyswanara,* Hiranyagarbha* and Sutratma* are the manifestations of Parabrahmam in Maya or Prakriti. In drawing a distinction between Avidya and Prakriti, I am merely following the authority of all the great Adwaitee philosophers of Aryavarta. It will be sufficient for me to refer to the first chapter of the celebrated Vidantic treatise, the Panchadasi.

————— * Upadhi—vehicle.

Jagrata—waking state, or a condition of external perception.

Swapna—dreamy state, or a condition of clairvoyance in the astral plane.

Sushupti—a state of extasis; and Avastas—states or conditions of
Pragna.

Vyswanara—the magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system— the root objective aspect of the ONE LIFE.

Hiranyagarbha—the one life as manifested in the plane of astral Light.

Sutratma—the Eternal germ of the manifested universe existing in the field of Mulaprakriti. ————-

In truth, Prakriti and Purusha are but the two aspects of the same ONE REALITY. As our great Sankaracharya truly observes at the close of his commentary on the 23rd Sutra of the first chapter of the Brahma sutras, "Parabrahmam is Karta (Purush), as there is no other Adhishtatha,* and Parabrahmam is Prakriti, there being no other Upadanam." This sentence clearly indicates the relation between "the One Life" and "the One Element" of the Arha-philosophers. This will elucidate the meaning of the statement so often quoted by Adwaitees—"Sarvam Khalvitham Brahma" ** and also of what is meant by saying that Brahmam is the Upadanakarnam (material cause) of the Universe.

—T Subba Row

————- * Adishtatha—that which inheres in another principle—the active agent working in Prakriti.

** Everything in the universe is Brahma. ————-

Morality and Pantheism

Questions have been raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of
Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee
Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis
of morality.

The philosophical assimilation of meum and teum, it is urged, must of necessity be followed by their practical confusion, resulting in the sanction of cruelty, robbery, &c. This line of argument points, however, most unmistakably to the co-existence of the objection with an all but utter ignorance of the systems objected to, in the critic's mind, as we shall show by-and-by. The ultimate sanction of morality, as is well known, is derived from a desire for the attainment of happiness and escape from misery. But schools differ in their estimate of happiness. Exoteric religions base their morality on the hope of reward and fear of punishment at the hands of an Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the obedience of his helpless subjects; in some cases, however, religions of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received. The worthlessness, not to speak of the mischievousness, of such systems of morality is almost self-evident. As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall take an instance from the Christian Bible: "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." The duty of supporting the poor is here made to depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the "giver to the poor" will be incapable of taking care of himself. But the Mahabharata says that "He that desireth a return for his good deeds loseth all merit; he is like a merchant bartering his goods." The true springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such criminal selfishness; all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from it in disgust.

To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of gratitude to the Lord. But it requires no deep consideration to find that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless. A man has to do what is represented to be a thing "dear unto the Lord" out of gratitude for the many blessings He has heaped upon him. But as a matter of fact he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings. A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good. With equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to believe that under the apparent blessings of the "Merciful" Father there lurks the serpent of evil.

The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow, have sterner logic in their teachings. That which tends to a man's happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as evil. So far so good. But the practical application of the doctrine is fraught with mischief. Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the Utilitarians' scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.

The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The starting-point of the "pantheistic" (we use the word for want of a better one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.

Now knowledge or jnanam is divided into two classes by Adwaitee philosophers—Paroksha and Aparoksha. The former kind of knowledge consists in intellectual assent to a stated proposition, the latter in the actual realization of it. The object which a Buddhist or Adwaitee Yogi sets before himself is the realization of the oneness of existence, and the practice of morality is the most powerful means to that end, as we proceed to show. The principal obstacle to the realization of this oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the Universe. Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure. This, as will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual from filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is exactly in place and no other individual is. The realization of this harmony is the practical or objective aspect of the GRAND PROBLEM. And the practice of morality is the effort to find out this sphere; morality, indeed, is the Ariadne's clue in the Cretan labyrinth in which man is placed. From the study of the sacred philosophy preached by Lord Buddha or Sri Sankara, paroksha knowledge (or shall we say belief?), in the unity of existence is derived, but without the practice of morality that knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti. It availeth naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life. To confuse meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot be one with all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the onward march of Nature. What is meant by the Brahmajnani being beyond the reach of Karma, can be fully realized only by a man who has found out his exact position in harmony with the One Life in Nature; that man sees how a Brahmajnani can act only in unison with Nature, and never in discord with it: to use the phraseology of ancient writers on Occultism, a Brahmajnani is a real "co-worker with Nature." Not only European Sanskritists, but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual planes. Sri Sankara has very conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion. The great teacher shows there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not free one from vasana or vritti—the inherent inclination of the mind to work. There is a tendency, in every department of Nature, for an act to repeat itself; the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to continued material existence;—and this tendency can only be counteracted by unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in which a person is born; such a course alone can produce chitta suddhi, (purification of the mind), without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual truths can never be acquired.

A few words must here be said about the physical inactivity of the Yogi or the Mahatma. Inactivity of the physical body (sthula sarira) does not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the spiritual plane of action. The human spirit is in its highest state of activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed, in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence. When an Adept has placed himself en rapport with the universal mind he becomes a real power in Nature. Even on the objective plane of existence the difference between brain and muscular energy, in their capacity of producing widespread and far-reaching results, can he very easily perceived. The amount of physical energy expended by the discoverer of the steam-engine might not have been more than that expended by a hardworking day-labourer. But the practical results of the labourer's work can never be compared with the results achieved by the discovery of the steam-engine. Similarly, the ultimate effects of spiritual energy are infinitely greater than those of intellectual energy.

From the above considerations it is abundantly clear that the initiatory training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred, however, to the higher astral and spiritual planes as his development proceeds. In course of time, as the Truth becomes realized, the situation is rendered quite clear to the Yogi, and he is placed beyond the criticism of any ordinary man. The Mahanirvan Tantra says:—

Charanti trigunatite ko vidhir ko ishedhava.

"For one, walking beyond the three gunas—Satva (feeling of gratification), Rajas (passional activity) and Tamas (inertness)—what injunction or what restriction is there?"—in the consideration of men, walled in on all sides by the objective plane of existence. This does not mean that a Mahatma can or will ever neglect the laws of morality, but that he, having unified his individual nature with Great Nature herself, is constitutionally incapable of violating any one of the laws of nature, and no man can constitute himself a judge of the conduct of the Great one without knowing the laws of all the planes of Nature's activity. (As honest men are honest without the least consideration of the) criminal law, so a Mahatma is moral without reference to the laws of morality.

These are, however, sublime topics: we shall before conclusion notice some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the true foundation of morality. Happiness has been defined by John Stuart Mill as the state of absence of opposition. Manu gives the definition in more forcible terms:

Sarvam paravasam duhkham
Sarva matmavasam sukham
Idam jnayo samasena
Lakshanam sukhaduhkhayo.

"Every kind of subjugation to another is pain, and subjugation to one's self is happiness: in brief, this is to be known as the characteristic marks of the two." Now, it is universally admitted that the whole system of Nature is moving in a particular direction, and this direction, we are taught, is determined by the composition of two forces—namely, the one acting from that pole of existence ordinarily called "matter" towards the other pole called "spirit," and the other in the opposite direction. The very fact that Nature is moving shows that these two forces are not equal in magnitude. The plane on which the activity of the first force predominates is called in occult treatises the "ascending arc," and the corresponding plane of the activity of the other force is styled the "descending arc." A little reflection will show that the work of evolution begins on the descending arc and works its way upwards through the ascending arc. From this it follows that the force directed towards spirit is the one which must, though not without hard struggle, ultimately prevail. This is the great directing energy of Nature, and, although disturbed by the operation of the antagonistic force, it is this that gives the law to her; the other is merely its negative aspect, for convenience regarded as a separate agent. If an individual attempts to move in a direction other than that in which Nature is moving, that individual is sure to be crushed, sooner or later, by the enormous pressure of the opposing force. We need not say that such a result would be the very reverse of pleasurable. The only way, therefore, in which happiness might be attained is by merging one's nature in great Mother Nature, and following the direction in which she herself is moving: this again can only be accomplished by assimilating men's individual conduct with the triumphant force of Nature, the other force being always overcome with terrific catastrophes. The effort to assimilate the individual with the universal law is popularly known as the practice of morality. Obedience to this universal law, after ascertaining it, is true religion, which has been defined by Lord Buddha "as the realization of the True."

An example will serve to illustrate the position. Can a practical pantheist, or, in other words, an occultist, utter a falsehood? Now, it will be readily admitted that life manifests itself by the power of acquiring sensation, temporary dormancy of that power being suspended animation. If a man receives a particular series of sensations and pretends they are other than they really are, the result is that he exercises his will-power in opposition to a law of Nature on which, as we have shown, life depends, and thereby becomes suicide on a minor scale. Space prevents further discussion, but all the ten deadly sins mentioned by Manu and Buddha can be satisfactorily dealt with in the light sought to be focused here.

—Mohini M. Chatterji

Occult Study

The practical bearing of occult teaching on ordinary life is very variously interpreted by different students of the subject. For many Western readers of recent books on the esoteric doctrine, it even seems doubtful whether the teaching has any bearing on practical life at all. The proposal which it is supposed sometimes to convey, that all earnest inquirers should put themselves under the severe ascetic regimen followed by its regular Oriental disciples, is felt to embody a strain on the habits of modern civilization which only a few enthusiasts will be prepared to encounter. The mere intellectual charm of an intricate philosophy may indeed be enough to recommend the study to some minds, but a scheme of teaching that offers itself as a substitute for religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those who adopt it. Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all other objects in life? In that case it would indeed be useless to bring it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons capable of heroic self-devotion. Assuredly it does not discourage efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress, if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them; but it is important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of possibilities connected with humbler aspirations.

I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who render it—causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a future state of existence. Any one who has sufficiently examined the doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth. I will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme development of Adeptship; an achievement which means that the person reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages. At the other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just alluded—a result which may rather be said to establish a tendency in the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement. But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation in the character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits. As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze of the highest perfection human nature can attain. Without assuming that the course of Nature which prescribes for each human Ego successive physical lives and successive periods of spiritual refreshment—without supposing that this course is altered by such moderate devotion to occult study as is compatible with the ordinary conditions of European life, it will nevertheless be seen how vast the consequences may ultimately be of impressing on that career of evolution a distinct tendency in the direction of supreme enlightenment, of that result which is described as the union of the individual soul with universal spirit.

The explanations of the esoteric doctrine which have been publicly given, have shown that humanity in the mass has now attained a stage in the great evolutionary cycle from which it has the opportunity of growing upward towards final perfection. In the mass it is, of course, unlikely that it will travel that road: final perfection is not a gift to be bestowed upon all, but to be worked for by those who desire it. It may be put within the theoretical reach of all; there may be no human creature living at this moment, of whom it can be said that the highest possibilities of Nature are impossible of attainment, but it does not follow by any means that every individual will attain the highest possibilities. Regarding each individual as one of the seeds of a great flower which throws out thousands of seeds, it is manifest that only a few, relatively to the great number, will become fully developed flowers in their turn. No unjust neglect awaits the majority. For each and every one the consequences of the remote future will be precisely proportioned to the aptitudes he develops, but only those can reach the goal who, with persistent effort carried out through a long series of lives, differentiate themselves in a marked degree from the general multitude. Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable. Within our own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in proportion to the difficulty of their commencement. For a moment it may be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from each other by a total oblivion of their details; but it really applies as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights. The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma, must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of those that have gone before. Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the same. The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself and leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence; and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of the thousand seeds. Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect as a stronger one; so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over the so called accidents of Nature.

This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter with the pursuit of occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true occultism—a candidate for satanic evolution instead of perfection. But at the same time the physical habits of life may be quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences. Some misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts. It is supposed that what is practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils. Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism. As we saw just now, there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of intensity—so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma. But, broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual application. All that is asserted in regard to the opening now offered to those who have taken notice of the present opportunity, is, that they may now give their own evolution an impulse which they may not again have an opportunity of giving it with the same advantage to themselves if the present opportunity is thrown aside. True, it is most unlikely that any one advancing through Nature, life after life, under the direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants. So that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous.

He only says that those who listen to them must necessarily derive advantage from so doing in exact proportion to the zeal with which they undertake the study and the purity of motive with which they promote it in others.

Nor must it be supposed that those which have here been described as the lower range of possibilities in connection with occult study, are a mere fringe upon the higher possibilities, to be regarded as a relatively poor compensation accorded to those who do not feel equal to offering themselves for probation as regular chelas. It would be a grave misconception of the purpose with which the present stream of occult teaching has been poured into the world, if we were to think it a universal incitement to that course of action. It may be hazardous for any of us who are not initiates to speak with entire confidence of the intention of the Adepts, but all the external facts concerned with the growth and development of the Theosophical Society, show its purpose to be more directly related to the cultivation of spiritual aspirations over a wide area, than to the excitement of these with supreme intensity in individuals. There are considerations, indeed, which may almost be said to debar the Adepts from ever doing anything to encourage persons in whom this supreme intensity of excitement is possible, to take the very serious step of offering themselves as chelas. Directly that by doing this a man renders himself a candidate for something more than the maximum advantages that can flow to him through the operation of natural laws—directly that in this way he claims to anticipate the most favourable course of Nature and to approach high perfection by violent and artificial processes, he at once puts himself in presence of many dangers which would never beset him if he contented himself with a favourable natural growth. It appears to be always a matter of grave consideration with the Adepts whether they will take the responsibility of encouraging any person who may not have it in him to succeed, to expose himself to these dangers. For any one who is determined to face them and is permitted to do so, the considerations put forward above in regard to the optional character of personal physical training fall to the ground. Those ascetic practices which a candidate for nothing more than the best natural evolution may undertake if he chooses, with the view of emphasizing his spiritual Karma to the utmost, become a sine qua non in regard to the very first step of his progress. But with such progress the present explanation is not specially concerned. Its purpose has been to show the beneficial effects which may flow to ordinary people living ordinary lives, from even that moderate devotion to occult philosophy which is compatible with such ordinary lives, and to guard against the very erroneous belief that occult science is a pursuit in which it is not worth while to engage, unless Adeptship is held out to the student as its ultimate result.

—Lay Chela

Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism"

The object of the following paper is to submit certain questions which have occurred to some English readers of "Esoteric Buddhism." We have had the great advantage of hearing Mr. Sinnett himself explain many points which perplexed us; and it is with his sanction that we now venture to ask that such light as is permissible may be thrown upon some difficulties which, so far as we can discover, remain as yet unsolved. We have refrained from asking questions on subjects on which we understand that the Adepts forbid inquiry, and we respectfully hope that, as we approach the subject with a genuine wish to arrive at all the truth possible to us, our perplexities may be thought worthy of an authorized solution.

We begin, then, with some obvious scientific difficulties.

1. Is the Nebular Theory, as generally held, denied by the Adepts? It seems hard to conceive of the alternate evolution from the sun's central mass of planets, some of them visible and heavy, others invisible,—and apparently without weight, as they have no influence on the movements of the visible planets.

2. And, further, the time necessary for the manvantara even of one planetary chain, much more of all seven, seems largely to exceed the probable time during which the sun can retain heat, if it is merely a cooling mass, which derives no important accession of heat from without. Is some other view as regards the maintenance of the sun's heat held by the Adepts?

3. The different races which succeed each other on the earth are said to be separated by catastrophes, among which continental subsidences occupy a prominent place. Is it meant that these subsidences are so sudden and unforeseen as to sweep away great nations in an hour? Or, if not, how is it that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the past? Is it supposed that our present European civilization, with its offshoots all over the globe, can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration which leaves life still existing on the earth? Are our existing arts and languages doomed to perish? or was it only the earlier races who were thus profoundly disjoined from one another?

4. The moon is said to be the scene of a life even more immersed in matter than the life on earth. Are there then material organizations living there? If so, how do they dispense with air and water, and how is it that our telescopes discern no trace of their works? We should much like a fuller account of the Adepts' view of the moon, as so much is already known of her material conditions that further knowledge could be more easily adjusted than in the case (for instance) of planets wholly invisible.

5. Is the expression "a mineral monad" authorized by the Adepts? If so, what relation does the monad bear to the atom, or the molecule, of ordinary scientific hypothesis? And does each mineral monad eventually become a vegetable monad, and then at last a human being? Turning now to some historical difficulties, we would ask as follows:—

6. Is there not some confusion in the letter quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," where "the old Greeks and Romans" are said to have been Atlanteans? The Greeks and Romans were surely Aryans, like the Adepts and ourselves: their language being, as one may say, intermediate between Sanscrit and modern European dialects.

7. Buddha's birth is placed (on p. 141) in the year 643 B.C.. Is this date given by the Adepts as undoubtedly correct? Have they any view as to the new inscriptions of Asoka (as given by General A. Cunningham, "Corpus Inscriptionum Indicanum," vol. I. pp. 20-23), on the strength of which Buddha's Nirvana is placed by Barth ("Religions of India," p. 106), &c., about 476 B.C., and his birth therefore at about 556 B.C.? It would be exceedingly interesting if the Adepts would give a sketch however brief of the history of India in those centuries with authentic dates.

8. Sankaracharya's date is variously given by Orientalists, but always after Christ. Barth, for instance, places him about 788 A.D. In "Esoteric Buddhism" he is made to succeed Buddha almost immediately (p. 149). Can this discrepancy be explained? Has not Sankaracharya been usually classed as Vishnuite in his teaching? And similarly has not Gaudapada been accounted a Sivite? and placed much later than "Esoteric Buddhism" (p.147) places him? We would willingly pursue this line of inquiry, but think it best to wait and see to what extent the Adepts may be willing to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history on which, as it would seem, they must surely possess knowledge which might be communicated to lay students without indiscretion.

We pass on to some points beyond the ordinary range of science or history on which we should be very glad to hear more, if possible.

9. We should like to understand more clearly the nature of the subjective intercourse with beloved souls enjoyed in Devachan. Say, for instance, that I die and leave on earth some young children. Are these children present to my consciousness in Devachan still as children? Do I imagine that they have died when I died? or do I merely imagine them as adult without knowing their life-history? or do I miss them from Devachan until they do actually die, and then hear from them their life-history as it has proceeded between my death and theirs?

10. We do not quite understand the amount of reminiscence attained at various points in the soul's progress. Do the Adepts, who, we presume, are equivalent to sixth rounders, recollect their previous incarnations? Do all souls which live on into the sixth round attain this power of remembrance? or does the Devachan, at the end of each round bring a recollection of all the Devachans, or of all the incarnations, which have formed a part of that particular round? And does reminiscence carry with it the power of so arranging future incarnations as still to remain in company with some chosen soul or group of souls?

We have many more questions to ask, but we scruple to intrude further. And I will conclude here by repeating the remark with which we are most often met when we speak of the Adepts to English friends. We find that our friends do not often ask for so-called miracles or marvels to prove the genuineness of the Adepts' powers. But they ask why the Adepts will not give some proof—not necessarily that they are far beyond us, but that their knowledge does at least equal our own in the familiar and definite tracks which Western science has worn for itself. A few pregnant remarks on Chemistry,—the announcement of a new electrical law, capable of experimental verification—some such communication as this (our interlocutors say), would arrest attention, command respect, and give a weight and prestige to the higher teaching which, so long as it remains in a region wholly unverifiable, it can scarcely acquire.

We gratefully recognize the very acceptable choice which the Adepts have made in selecting Mr. Sinnett as the intermediary between us and them. They could hardly have chosen any one more congenial to our Western minds:—whether we consider the clearness of his written style, the urbanity of his verbal expositions, or the earnest sincerity of his convictions. Since they have thus far met our peculiar needs with such considerate judgment, we cannot but hope that they may find themselves able yet further to adapt their modes of teaching to the requirements of Occidental thought.

—An English F.T.S.
London, July 1883.

Reply to an English F.T.S

Answers

It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic evolution as now seems expected. A distinct promise was made, as Mr. Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of Esoteric doctrines and—no more. A good deal would be given, much more kept back.

This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature's secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from causes quite different from the one generally assigned. It is not SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth. Wrong and unjust are those who think so; who attribute to indifference for other people's welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing universal philanthropy; who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding them high above the people's heads. In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely with the seekers. Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical sciences—is to be sought elsewhere.* It rests entirely on the impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present stage of the world's development, beyond the comprehension of the would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically trained may be the latter. This tremendous difficulty is now explained to the few, who, besides having read "Esoteric Buddhism," have studied and understood the several occult axioms approached in it. It is safe to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader, but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse. Nay, it has already.

———- * Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units—men. Secrets of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many years' standing and during his successive initiations; mankind as a whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen but toward the beginning of its sixth race—before such mysteries can be safely revealed to it. The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some chelas and even "lay" chelas know. ————-

It is simply that the gradual development of man's seven principles and physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds and Root-races. Our fifth race has so far developed but its five senses. Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the "Fourth-rounders" has already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood and youth, instead of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being—the Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it. As to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the soil of its materiality. It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth—let alone the seventh race—i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present limited senses. The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally precocious individual evolutions; or, in such, where by early training and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer cases their seventh, sense. As an instance of the former class may be cited the Seeress of Prevorst; a creature born out of time, a rare precocious growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her, hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly. As an example of the other, the Count St. Germain may be mentioned. Apace with the anthropological and physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution. To the latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a help. An instance: radiant stuff—"the fourth state of matter"—has been hardly discovered, and no one—the eminent discoverer himself not excepted—has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities, its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the most puzzling scientific problems. How then can any "Adept" attempt to prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense— consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate? Is not this plain?

Thus, the obstacle is not that the "Adepts" would "forbid inquiry," but rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average, and even of the scientific man. To undertake the explanation of that which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature. It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of physical phenomena—save in exceptional cases—is strictly forbidden.

And now, "Adepts" are asked to meddle with astronomy—a science which, of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud! It is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet. In this particular, Esoteric Psychology may be useful. But who of the men of science would consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced. However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that their major propositions may not always be correct, although the predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn—spectrum analysis will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research. Nor, before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. At present the "Adepts" do not see any help for it. Were these invisible and unknown profanes to interfere with—not to say openly contradict—the dicta of the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be their only reward; while those who would lend an ear to their "vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild lunatics" of the age. Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the F.R.S.'s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense, the Adepts fear the task would be profitless. The latter have given quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first trial. The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never been once broken; and the long list of known and unknown sufferers, headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zollner. Is the world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death? When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful posterity. But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly charged with lunacy.

Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the heavenly bodies, and—no more. So far, it has been unable to discover with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun, stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old Chaldea and Egypt—namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction. But let the modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted with; or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the world's perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen. The essence of cometary matter must be—and the "Adepts" say is—totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar— all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding. It is to be feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or extra radiant state; et seq.

Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of their inner constitution. His science has led him no farther towards a reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer shell, or Sthula Sarira. Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations, the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and the matter of our own planet. Verily and indeed, no microscopes, spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to physical inquiry. The methods of spiritual research and psychological observation are the only efficient agencies to employ. We have to proceed by analogy in everything to be sure. Yet the candid men of science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a few stars—a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the shoreless, cosmic ocean—to conclude that these stars are the same as all other stars—our earth included; that, because they have attained a certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have, therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within even that limited space. For, in truth, they have done nothing of the kind. They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of their vision. And even though it were helped by telescopes of a hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick Observatory, the case would not alter. No physical instrument will ever help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella, with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away, can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea. For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral shape) the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that, far stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the great Shamo desert. The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.

————
* The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric
Western astronomy. Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day.
————

Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the material constitution, of star and planet, since European science, knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not—and this is more than sufficient for all present purposes. The next best thing to learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.

Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered. The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western science to afford some useful hints at least.

Question 1.—Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?

Answer:—No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance: while denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged to remote worlds in the process of formation; and agreeing with modern science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed; they yet add that many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds. The astronomer has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M. Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others. Before an emphatic contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a single trace behind? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed? In the great cosmic deep—we say. The bright "brick" is caught by the hand of the mason—directed by that Universal Architect which destroys but to rebuild. It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.

Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry worlds. There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all the physicist knows. The "Adept" affirms in this connection that orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word "infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance; rather as a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious Reality. When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space—in its septenary completeness. "The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted "properties of the nature of things—of two subjective negatives converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space. As an absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above." When demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround—say, a fly, but which, in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the transparent atmosphere. This is no psychology, but simply occult physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force," to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya. In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an etheroscope.

It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that "An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law. To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system), why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets are directly in opposition to this theory? How long shall we see even great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident hiatus! The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only "about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth," should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be "twenty-seven times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth," should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth's equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the "Adepts" are aware.

Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos.

What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much of the rest)? But these do not prove the solidity of the "central mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing "a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?" We say that there is indeed a "prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical, mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will consider the next interrogatory.

Question II.—Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?

Such is the accepted theory of modern science: it is not what the "Adepts" teach. The former says—the sun "derives no important accession of heat from without:"—the latter answer—"the sun needs it not." He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical textbooks of Missionary Schools—namely, that "the sun has an orbital journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General Readers.")

The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion, in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly speaking, though the body of the sun—a body that was never yet reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented—cannot be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or, properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had? The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun—an invisible orb of which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing—has in him the spirit of every element that exists in the solar system; and his "Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our planet having to await its further growth and development before any of its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya …. "hiding behind his Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;" the ascetic's dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man's blood—the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere. The "rose-coloured region!" How little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of matter.

————- * There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject. The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth (Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so. The visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem. ————-

If the "Adepts" are asked: "What then, in your views, is the nature of our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"—they answer: beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible.*

————- * If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, …. "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic …. As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it …. in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God himself, and how he is visible, how invisible," The italics are the author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words which had a double meaning in their code. Here "God himself" visible and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum—Nature's seventh principle. —————

And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame, no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the "protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.; to this the only answer that can be given is the following: the appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes. Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities—Sir W. Herschel—says the following: "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of the sun through the transparent ones." The underlined words, written nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived. And what the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas, the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!

———— * Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of the question." —————

The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W. Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps metaphorically!" It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid bodies revolving near the sun's surface. "They have been conjectured to be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter…. They have been taken for clouds …. explained to be opaque masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun…." When all his anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all astronomers comes near the truth—far nearer than any of those modern astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his "imaginative and fanciful theories." His only mistake, now shared by most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun itself. When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory—"the definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity one to another…. all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature"—his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable knowledge of physical science. When he adds: "Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes…. having some sort of solidity…. Be they what they may, they are evidently the immediate sources of the solar light and heat"—he utters a grander physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And when, furthermore, we find him postulating—"looked at in this point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a much as it gives out. Were the astronomers to be asked—what definite and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory—what knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere—they might, perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present theories. For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:—

Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction? They have no means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of determining, the sun's physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter, such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly surpassing in velocity …. enormously exceeding even the inconceivable velocity of many meteors;" (c) confessedly—they "have no means of learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous spectrum"…. hence no means of determining how great a depth of the solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light "may come from the surface layers only;" and, "it may be but a shell" …. (truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion, properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;" and "whether these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only processes of combustion which can actually take place there." Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible characteristic of the light of the glowing gas." Thus, the whole basis of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they, the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz., that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages, prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the authorities of the age in physical science—Professor Tyndall—saying that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—would be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and again:—"…. multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store …."—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation …. the flux of power is eternally the same." Mr. Tyndall speaks here as though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori—"the sun is cooling …. it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds as loud as it ever did.

No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will not be extinguished. Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and—died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them—to die themselves for their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun: he will have unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"—the mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana "borrowed from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from the Gospel—in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the same source! When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders, then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the historical truths of the West vindicated!

Question III.—Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?

No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism" (page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm—the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.

That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability, and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible—for what criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some 20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature, popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word— superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and "folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius, mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end—the dawn of pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae—at the nearest. The latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately— Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy— hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation—Western scholars got early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be, most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into which most have slipped.

The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists—so long will Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient Judaism and modern Christianity.

So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time, that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient relics—Babylonia and Assyria—there are other sites where it could profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces" under its beds of sand.

Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon "heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory—thus obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations—still, despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not scrupled to deny one to others—whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige.

No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the Pelasgi—the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus? What about the Etruscans—the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people described as are the Pelasgi—a highly intellectual, receptive, active people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary, though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else, subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from which all European alphabets are derived—who were they? Could they be shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg (Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to 2247 "B.C.." And who were the Etruscans?

Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say—prehistoric) Tursenoi of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their northern latitudes"—only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology, accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but "a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"? Or, that the Trojan war could not have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle, Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has access to quite different—and we make bold to say, more trustworthy— materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend Western historical infallibility? He believes—on the strength of the documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement. That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And, having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the Normans and Saxons—two thousand years before they could build their medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans; and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness—since they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of this age—about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii, their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi; so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."

When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—as proved by their inscriptions—than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the Past?"

"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its offshoots …. can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?" More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments, to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences. What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the hand of Time—lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm—the question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of "Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which, following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in enunciating, you are not the first to explain them." We learn more easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which is now simply improving upon details.

Question IV.—Is the Moon immersed in matter?

No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela" his "views of the moon," for publication. With Selenography, modern science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and 105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature. Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to—

Question V.—About the mineral monad.

Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is "authorized by the Adepts." Why not? The term "monad" applies to the latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to the term and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it "unscientific." What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short, the mineral monad is one—the higher animal and human monads are countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression.

It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the "Mineral Monad" is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The "Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad—not the atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.

And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage of the differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree—i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"— considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side—these are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana—the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple diagram will aid us:—

[Diagram here]

The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion (a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the spiritual impulse (through the elementals—of which little is permitted to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis—matter; and this idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line, d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.

The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god, like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp. 205-6). The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its lowest and most concrete terrestrial state; in man the monad is fully developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state—but one degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*

————— * The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness. —————

Question VIII.—Sri Sankaracharya's Date

It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any particular event in the ancient history of India; and this difficulty is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists, whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy. The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based. The writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of Hindu writers and pundits. Very often, facts and dates are taken by these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries on the assumption that they are correct without any further investigation by themselves. Even when a writer gives a date with an expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will be convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of Sankaracharya.

I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old. We do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously think of defending the said doctrine. Nevertheless, it had exercised a considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology. If an antiquity of five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding the truth of the statement.

II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial investigator untainted by Christian prejudices. The maximum limit of Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament; and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other, should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.

III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era. Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin, in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five thousand years.

IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha. For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ. This is indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.

V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of different writers. By this process of reasoning they have discovered two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis. We do not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to identity of personality. But we cannot but protest against such assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them, merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or establishing a favourite hypothesis.

VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language and Indian literature. The time required for this growth is often estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the time required for the gradual development of the various strata composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a proper method in making these calculations. It will be wrong to assume that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of another within the same limits. The peculiar characteristics of the nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into consideration in attempting to make any such calculation. The history of the said nation is equally important. Any one who examines Max Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to these considerations. The time allotted to the growth of these four "strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.

We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers regarding the dates of ancient Indian history.

In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya's date, special care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very first Sankaracharya who established the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams (temples) established by him and his successors. Many of the Adwaitee Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during their time. They are often referred to under the general name of Sankaracharya. Consequently, any reference made to any one of these Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first Sankaracharya himself.

Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara's date is quoted by "An English F.T.S." against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr. Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully examined the subject himself. He assigns no reasons for the date given, and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him. The date which he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of his book on "The Religions of India," which reads thus: "Sankaracharya is generally placed in the eighth century; perhaps we must accept the ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on the 10th of the month 'Madhava' in 788 A.D. Other traditions, it is true, place him in the second and fifth centuries. The author of the Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement of the fourteenth." Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions for placing him in some century before the Christian era as for placing him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under consideration. Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his attention to this subject. Monier Williams merely copies the date given by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter. Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject with some care and attention; and he frankly confesses that the exact period at which "he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined" (p. 201 of vol. I. of his "Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos"). Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very misleading. Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is "the best accredited tradition." When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to support it and establish it by proper arguments. The other traditions alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of the tradition relied upon. But the wording of the foot-note in question seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are a few isolated passages which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in this connection.

Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries. In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;" and in page 135 he states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of orthodoxy." The force of these statements is, however, considerably weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin.

The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is highly ridiculous. It is well known to almost every Hindu that the followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in originating it. There are some passages in his book which tend to show that this date cannot be considered as quite correct. In page 135 he says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka.

Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without retaliating on their enemies. The political ascendency gained by the Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long; and the Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132 of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh century. It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of decay. No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins. But what evidence is there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task? If the main object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to criticize its doctrines and expose its defects. On the other hand, he does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works.

Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the Buddhists or their doctrines; and the insertion of even these few remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting. As, in our humble opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr. Weber's fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha. From these few remarks it will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with Buddhist persecution. We may here quote a few passages from Mr. Wilson's Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in support of our remarks. He writes as follows regarding Sankara's connection with the persecution of the Buddhists:—"Although the popular belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its accuracy. Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant; and, speaking from my own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are to be found in his own writings, all which are extant, and the object of which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism, but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order." Further on he observes that "it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of persecution; he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task, nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas."

From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara's date cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period.

Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be given him for the originality of his discovery. This mysterious and occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy. The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my humble opinion, worthless. The Hindus had a Prominent example of a grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the adventures of the Arabian prophet. There is but one other passage in Mr. Barth's book which has some reference to Sankara's date. In page 207 he writes as follows:—"The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea. This testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara." But this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in some century after the author of Sakuntala.

From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion regarding Sankara's date is very unsatisfactory. As Mr. Wilson seems to have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence. In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara lived. Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson writes as follows:—

"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third or fourth century after; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old. The Bhoja Prabandha enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries. The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago, again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in Tuluva, no more than 600 years since; the latter assertion being intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy, a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through Sankara's native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan's citation of it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798. At the same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the same work in Colonel Mackenzie's possession, states Sankaracharya to have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from Mr. Duncan's statement—a difference of the less importance, as the manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be depended upon. The weight of authority therefore is altogether in favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to adopt this estimate of Sankara's date, and to place him in the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era."

We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson's list before proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage.

In a work called "The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors," published at Bombay in 1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people, 2,200 years ago. The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show that he lived more than 2,000 years ago.

The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their traditions being identical. Their calculation can safely be relied upon as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi (something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham; and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era.

No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature, origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement; nor does it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya. These traditions are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it does not appear on what grounds their testimony is discredited by him. Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham. We have already referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at Madras, who has recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which "common tradition" makes Sankara "about 1,200 years old." As far as our knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India. The majority of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common tradition. We have but a mass of contradictory accounts.

It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson's pretensions should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha with the great Adwaitee teacher. No Hindu would ever commit such a ridiculous mistake. We are astonished to find some of these European Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and Panchatantra, as if they were historical works. In some other part of his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha's date; but now he misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion regarding Sankara's date. Surely, consistency is not one of the prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European Orientalists. The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee teacher is never mentioned in any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi.

It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or the opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara's date. It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but falsehood regarding Sankara's history and his philosophy from the Madhwas and the Vaishnavas. They are always very anxious to show to the world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara, and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting orthodox Hinduism. And consequently they have assigned to him an antiquity of less than 1,500 years.

It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about 900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. No reliance can be placed on such statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted.

Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy's opinion. We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy's calculation was made with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was the only list published up to this time; and as no other Matham, except perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the present time in uninterrupted succession. There is no necessity for depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at Sringeri contains the dates assigned to the various teachers. As these dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain Sankara's date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to every teacher. Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era. The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham.

Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar; and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti. The various manuscript copies of this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya; even if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work, for the following among other reasons:—

I. It is a well-known fact that the customs of Malabar are very peculiar. Their defenders have been, consequently, pointing to some great Rishi or some great philosopher of ancient India as their legislator. Some of them affirm (probably the majority) that Parasurama brought into existence some of these customs and left a special Smriti for the guidance of the people of Malabar; others say that it was Sankaracharya who sanctioned these peculiar customs. It is not very difficult to perceive why these two persons were selected by them. According to the Hindu Puranas, Parasurama lived in Malabar for some time, and according to Hindu traditions Sankara was born in that country. But it is extremely doubtful whether either of them had anything to do with the peculiar customs of the said country. There is no allusion whatever to any of these customs in Sankara's works. He seems to have devoted his whole attention to religious reform, and it is very improbable that he should have ever directed his attention to the local customs of Malabar. While attempting to revive the philosophy of the ancient Rishis, it is not likely that he should have sanctioned the customs of Malabar, which are at variance with the rules laid down in the Smritis of those very Rishis; and as far as our knowledge goes, he left no written regulations regarding to the castes of Malabar.

II. The statements contained in Kerala Utpatti are opposed to the account of Sankara's life given in almost all the Sankara Vijayams (Biographies of Sankara) examined up to this time—viz., Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam, Chitsukhachary's Sankara Vijayavilasam, Brihat Sankara Vijayam, &c. According to the account contained in these works, Sankara left Malabar in his eighth year, and returned to his native village when his mother was on her death-bed, and on that occasion he remained there only for a few days. It is difficult to see at what period of his lifetime he was engaged in making regulations for the castes of Malabar.

III. The work under consideration represents Malabar as the seat of Bhattapada's triumphs over the Buddhists, and says that this teacher established himself in Malabar and expelled the Buddhists from that country. This statement alone will be sufficient to show to our readers the fictitious character of the account contained in this book. According to every other Hindu work, this great teacher of Purva Mimamsa was born in Northern India; almost all his famous disciples and followers were living in that part of the country, and according to Vidyaranya's account he died at Allahabad.

For the foregoing reasons we cannot place any reliance upon this account of Malabar.

From an examination of the traditions and other accounts referred to above, Mr. Wilson comes to the conclusion that Sankaracharya lived in the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era. The accounts of the Sringeri, Kudali and Cumbaconum Mathams, and the traditions current in the Bombay Presidency, as shown in the biographical sketches published at Bombay, place Sankara in some century before the Christian era. On the other hand, Kerala Utpatti, the information obtained by Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar, and the opinions expressed by Dr. Taylor and Mr. Colebrooke, concur in assigning to him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. The remaining traditions referred to by Mr. Wilson are as much opposed to his opinion as to the conclusion that Sankara lived before Christ. We shall now leave it to our readers to say whether, under such circumstances, Mr. Wilson is justified in asserting that "the weight of authority is altogether in favour" of his theory.

We have already referred to the writings of almost all the European Orientalists who expressed an opinion upon the subject under discussion; and we need hardly say that Sankara's date is yet to be ascertained.

We are obliged to comment at length on the opinions of European Orientalists regarding Sankara's date, as there will be no probability of any attention being paid to the opinion of Indian and Tibetan initiates when it is generally believed that the question has been finally settled by European Sanskritists. The Adepts referred to by "An English F.T.S." are certainly in a position to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history. But there is very little chance of their opinions being accepted by the general public under present circumstances, unless they are supported by such evidence as is within the reach of the outside world. As it is not always possible to procure such evidence, there is very little use in publishing the information which is in their possession until the public are willing to recognize and admit the antiquity and trustworthiness of their traditions, the extent of their powers, and the vastness of their knowledge. In the absence of such proof as is above indicated, there is every likelihood of their opinions being rejected as absurd and untenable; their motives will no doubt be questioned, and some people may be tempted to deny even the fact of their existence. It is often asked by Hindus as well as by English men why these Adepts are so very unwilling to publish some portion at least of the information they possess regarding the truths of physical science. But, in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of Nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered. Unless an Adept can prove his conclusions by the same kind of reasoning as is adopted by the modern scientist they remain undemonstrated to the outside world. It is of course impossible for him to develop in a considerable number of human beings such faculties as would enable them to perceive their truth; and it is not always practicable to establish them by the ordinary scientific method unless all the facts and laws on which his demonstration is to be based have already been ascertained by modern science. No Adept can be expected to anticipate the discoveries of the next four or five centuries, and prove some grand scientific truth to the entire satisfaction of the educated public after having discovered every fact and law of Nature required for the said purpose by such process of reasoning as would be accepted by them. They have to encounter similar difficulties in giving any information regarding the events of the ancient history of India.

However, before giving the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by the Indian and Tibetan initiates, we shall indicate a few circumstances by which his date may be approximately determined. It is our humble opinion that the Sankara Vijayams hitherto published can be relied upon as far as they are consistent with each other regarding the general outlines of Sankara's life. We cannot, however, place any reliance whatever upon Anandagiri's Sankara Vijaya published at Calcutta. The Calcutta edition not only differs in some very material points from the manuscript copies of the same work found in Southern India, but is opposed to every other Sankara Vijayam hitherto examined. It is quite clear from its style and some of the statements contained therein, that it was not the production of Anandagiri, one of the four chief disciples of Sankara and the commentator on his Upanishad Bhashyam. For instance, it represents Sankara as the author of a certain verse which is to be found in Vidyaranya's Adhikaranaratnamala, written in the fourteenth century. It represents Sankara as giving orders to two of his disciples to preach the Visishtadwaitee and the Dwaitee doctrines, which are directly opposed to his own doctrine. The book under consideration says that Sankara went to conquer Mandanamisra in debate, followed by Sureswaracharya, though Mandanamisra assumed the latter name at the time of initiation. It is unnecessary for us here to point out all the blunders and absurdities of this book. It will be sufficient to say that in our opinion it was not written by Anandagiri, and that it was the introduction of an unknown author who does not appear to have been even tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Adwaitee doctrine. Vidyaranya's (otherwise Sayanachary, the great commentator of the Vedas) Sankara Vijaya is decidedly the most reliable source of information as regards the main features of Sankara's biography. Its authorship has been universally accepted, and the information contained therein was derived by its author, as may be seen from his own statements, from certain old biographies of Sankara existing at the time of its composition. Taking into consideration the author's vast knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham, there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the most reliable information he could obtain. Mr. Wilson, however, says that the book in question is "much too poetical and legendary" to be acknowledged as a great authority. We admit that the style is highly poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary. Mr. Wilson is not justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara. Probably the learned Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of Christ in the same light. It is not the peculiar privilege of Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator. In the following observations we shall take such facts as are required from this work.

It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara's Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact Patanjali—the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras— under a new name. A tradition current in Southern India represents him as one of the Chelas of Patanjali; but it is very doubtful if this tradition has anything like a proper foundation. But it is quite clear from the 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th verses of the 5th chapter of Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam that Govinda Yogi and Patanjali were identical. According to the immemorial custom observed amongst initiates, Patanjali assumed the name of Govinda Yogi at the time of his initiation by Goudapada. It cannot be contended that Vidyaranya represented Patanjali as Sankara's Guru merely for the purpose of assigning some importance to Sankara and his teaching. Sankara is looked upon as a far greater man than Patanjali by the Adwaitees, and nothing can be added to Sankara's reputation by Vidyaranya's assertion. Moreover, Patanjali's views are not altogether identical with Sankara's views; it may be seen from Sankara's writings that he attached no importance whatever to the practices of Hatha Yog regarding which Patanjali composed his Yoga Sutras. Under such circumstances, if Vidyaranya had the option of selecting a Guru for Sankara, he would no doubt have represented Vyasa himself (who is supposed to be still living) as his Guru. We see no reason therefore to doubt the correctness of the statement under examination. Therefore, as Sankara was Patanjali's Chela, and as Goudapada was his Guru, his date will enable us to fix the dates of Sankara and Goudapada. We may here point out to our readers a mistake that appears in p. 148 of Mr. Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism as regards the latter personage. He is there represented as Sankara's Guru; Mr. Sinnett was informed, we believe, that he was Sankara's Paramaguru, and not having properly understood the meaning of this expression, Mr. Sinnett wrote that he was Sankara's Guru.

It is generally admitted by Orientalists that Patanjali lived before the commencement of the Christian era. Mr. Barth places him in the second century before the Christian era, accepting Goldstucker's opinion, and Monier Williams does the same thing. Weber, who seems to have carefully examined the opinions of all the other Orientalists who have written upon the subject, comes to the conclusion that "we must for the present rest satisfied with placing the date of the composition of the Bhashya between B.C. 140 and A.D. 60, a result which considering the wretched state of the chronology of Indian Liturgy generally is, despite its indefiniteness, of no mean importance." And yet even this date rests upon inferences drawn from one or two unimportant expressions contained in Patanjali's Mahabhashya. It is always dangerous to draw such inferences, and especially so when it is known that, according to the tradition current amongst Hindu grammarians, some portions of Mahabhashya were lost, the gaps being filled up by subsequent writers. Even supposing that we should consider the expression quoted as written by Patanjali himself, there is nothing in those expressions which would enable us to fix the writer's date. For instance, the connection between the expression "Arunad Yavanah Saketam" and the expedition of Menander against Ayodhya between B.C. 144 and 120, relied upon by Goldstucker is merely imaginary. There is nothing in the expression to show that the allusion contained therein points necessarily to Menander's expedition. We believe that Patanjali is referring to the expedition of Yavanas against Ayodhya during the lifetime of Sagara's father described in Harivamsa. This expedition occurred long before Rama's time, and there is nothing to connect it with Menander. Goldstucker's inference is based upon the assumption that there was no other Yavana expedition against Ayodhya known to Patanjali, and it will be easily seen from Harivamsa (written by Vyasa) that the said assumption is unwarranted. Consequently the whole theory constructed by Goldstucker on this weak foundation falls to the ground. No valid inferences can be drawn from the mere names of kings contained in Mahabhashya, even if they are traced to Patanjali himself, as there would be several kings in the same dynasty bearing the same name. From the foregoing remarks it will be clear that we cannot fix, as Weber has done, B.C. 140 as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to Patanjali. It is now necessary to see whether any other such limit has been ascertained by Orientalists. As Panini's date still remains undetermined, the limit cannot be fixed with reference to his date. But it is assumed by some Orientalists that Panini must have lived at some time subsequent to Alexander's invasion, from the fact that Panini explains in his Grammar the formation of the word Yavanani. We are very sorry that European Orientalists have taken the pains to construct theories upon this basis without ascertaining the meaning assigned to the word Yavana, and the time when the Hindus first became acquainted with the Greeks. It is unreasonable to assume without proof that this acquaintance commenced at the time of Alexander's invasion. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for believing that the Greeks were known to the Hindus long before this event. Pythagoras visited India, according to the traditions current amongst Indian initiates, and he is alluded to in Indian astrological works under the name of Yavanacharya. Moreover, it is not quite certain that the word Yavana was strictly confined to the Greeks by the ancient Hindu writers. Probably it was originally applied to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians; it was probably extended first to the Alexandrian Greeks, and subsequently to the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians. Besides the Yavana invasion of Ayodhya described in Harivamsa, there was another subsequent expedition to India by Kala Yavana (Black Yavana) during Krishna's lifetime described in the same work. This expedition was probably undertaken by the Ethiopians. Anyhow, there are no reasons whatever, as far as we can see, for asserting that Hindu writers began to use the word Yavana after Alexander's invasion. We can attach no importance whatever to any inferences that may be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana (both of them lived before Patanjali) from the statements contained in Katha Sarit Sayara, which is nothing more than a mere collection of fables. It is now seen by Orientalists that no proper conclusions can be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana from the statements made by Hiuan Thsang, and we need not therefore say anything here regarding the said statements. Consequently the dates of Panini and Katyayana still remain undetermined by European Orientalists. Goldstucker is probably correct in his conclusion that Panini lived before Buddha, and the Buddhists' accounts agree with the traditions of the initiates in asserting that Katyayana was a contemporary of Buddha. From the fact that Patanjali must have composed his Mahabhashyam after the composition of Panini's Sutras and Katyayana's Vartika, we can only infer that it was written after Buddha's birth. But there are a few considerations which may help us in coming to the conclusion that Patanjali must have lived about the year 500 B.C.; Max Muller fixed the Sutra period between 500 B.C. and 600 B.C. We agree with him in supposing that the period probably ended with B.C. 500, though it is uncertain how far it extended into the depths of Indian antiquity. Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, and this fact has not been doubted by any Hindu writer up to this time. Mr. Weber thinks, however, that the author of the Yoga Sutras might be a different man from the author of the Mahabhashya, though he does not venture to assign any reason for his supposition. We very much doubt if any European Orientalist can ever find out the connection between the first Anhika of the Mahabhashya and the real secrets of Hatha Yoga contained in the Yoga Sutras. No one but an initiate can understand the full significance of the said Anhika; and the "eternity of the Logos" or Sabda is one of the principal doctrines of the Gymnosophists of India, who were generally Hatha Yogis. In the opinion of Hindu writers and pundits Patanjali was the author of three works, viz., Mahabhashya, Yoga Sutras, and a book on Medicine and Anatomy; and there is not the slightest reason for questioning the correctness of this opinion. We must, therefore, place Patanjali in the Sutra period, and this conclusion is confirmed by the traditions of the Indian initiates. As Sankaracharya was a contemporary of Patanjali (being his Chela) he must have lived about the same time. We have thus shown that there are no reasons for placing Sankara in the eighth or ninth century after Christ, as some of the European Orientalists have done. We have further shown that Sankara was Patanjali's Chela, and that his date should be ascertained with reference to Patanjali's date. We have also shown that neither the year B.C. 140 nor the date of Alexander's invasion can be accepted as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to him, and we have lastly pointed out a few circumstances which will justify us in expressing an opinion that Patanjali and his Chela Sankara belonged to the Sutra period. We may, perhaps, now venture to place before the public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian initiates. According to the historical information in their possession he was born in the year B.C. 510 (fifty-one years and two months after the date of Buddha's Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cashmere, and various other places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in Southern India; and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its construction if proper inquiries are made. But even the evidence now brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above indicated. As Goudapada was Sankaracharya's Guru's guru, his date entirely depends on Sankara's date; and there is every reason to suppose that he lived before Buddha.

Question VI.—"Historical Difficulty"—Why?

It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans said to have been Atlanteans." The answer is—None whatever. The word "Atlantean" was a generic name. The objection to have it applied to the old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to as a remnant of the Europeans. "The Turks are surely Semites," he might say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." *

———— * This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged. The figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis. ————-

The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder sister"—by no means the mother—of all the modern languages. As to that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race." When asked what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?" When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?" the same impressive voice replies: "In prehistoric ages, the duration of which no one can now determine." Yet it must have been Sanskrit, however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods" in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very threshold of the Christian era; while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time.

Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the "Adepts," sank over 9,000 years before the Christian era.* How then can one maintain that the "old Greeks and Romans" were Atlanteans? How can that be, since both nations are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit? Moreover, the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no existence as nations 11,000 B.C.. Surely they who advance such a proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement!

————— * The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical myth, is rather imprudent. Mr. Massey, notwithstanding his rare intuitional faculties and great learning, is one of those writers in whom the intensity of research bent into one direction has biased his otherwise clear understanding. Because Hercules is now a constellation it does not follow that there never was a hero of this name. Because the Noachian Universal Deluge is now proved a fiction based upon geological and geographical ignorance, it does not, therefore, appear that there were not many local deluges in prehistoric ages. The ancients connected every terrestrial event with the celestial bodies. They traced the history of their great deified heroes and memorialized it in stellar configurations as often as they personified pure myths, anthropomorphizing objects in Nature. One has to learn the difference between the two modes before attempting to classify them under one nomenclature. An earthquake has just engulfed over 80,000 people (87,903) in Sunda Straits. These were mostly Malays, savages with whom but few had relations, and the dire event will be soon forgotten. Had a portion of Great Britain been thus swept away instead, the whole world would have been in commotion, and yet, a few thousand years hence, even such an event would have passed out of man's memory; and a future Gerald Massey might be found speculating upon the astronomical character and signification of the Isles of Wight, Jersey, or Man, arguing, perhaps, that this latter island had not contained a real living race of men but "belonged to astronomical mythology," was a "Man submerged in celestial waters." If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only "like those of Airyana-Vaejo and Jambu-dvipa," it is terrestrial enough, and therefore "the mythological origin of the Deluge legend" is so far an open question. We claim that it is not "indubitably demonstrated," however clever the theoretical demonstration. ————-

Such are the criticisms passed, such the "historical difficulty." The culprits arraigned are fully alive to their perilous situation; nevertheless, they maintain the statement. The only thing which may perhaps here be objected to is, that the names of the two nations are incorrectly used. It may be argued that to refer to the remote ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans," is an anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true. But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its imperfections, there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to calling the said people by any other name. One misnomer is as good as another; and to refer to old Greeks and Romans in a private letter as the old Hellenes from Hellas or Magna Graecia, and the Latins as from Latium, would have been, besides looking pedantic, just as incorrect as the use of the appellation noted, though it may have sounded, perchance, more "historical." The truth is that, like the ancestors of nearly all the Indo-Europeans (or shall we say Indo-Germanic Japhetidae?), the Greek and Roman sub-races mentioned have to be traced much farther back. Their origin must be carried far into the mists of that "prehistoric" period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice. The Atlantean "old Greeks" could not be designated even as the Autochthones—a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the Hellenes, meant certainly more than simply "soil-born," or primitive aborigines; and yet the so-called fable of Deukalion and Pyrrha is surely no more incredible or marvelous than that of Adam and Eve—a fable that hardly a hundred years ago no one would have dared or even thought to question. And in its esoteric significance the Greek tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called historical event during the period of the Olympiades, though both Hesiod and Homer may have failed to record the former in their epics. Nor could the Romans be referred to as the Umbro-Sabbellians, nor even as the Itali. Peradventure, had the historians learnt something more than they have of the Italian "Autochthones"—the Iapygians—one might have given the "old Romans" the latter name. But then there would be again that other difficulty: history knows that the Latin invaders drove before them, and finally cooped up, this mysterious and miserable race among the clefts of the Calabrian rocks, thus showing the absence of any race affinity between the two. Moreover, Western archeologists keep to their own counsel, and will accept of no other but their own conjectures. And since they have failed to make anything out of the undecipherable inscriptions in an unknown tongue and mysterious characters on the Iapygian monuments, and so for years have pronounced them unguessable, he who would presume to meddle where the doctors muddle would be likely to be reminded of the Arab proverb about proffered advice. Thus, it seems hardly possible to designate "the old Greeks and Romans" by their legitimate, true name, so as to at once satisfy the "historians" and keep on the fair side of truth and fact. However, since in the Replies that precede Science had to be repeatedly shocked by most unscientific propositions, and that before this series is closed many a difficulty, philological and archeological as well as historical, will have to be unavoidably created—it may be just as wise to uncover the occult batteries at once and have it over with.

Well, then, the "Adepts" deny most emphatically to Western science any knowledge whatever of the growth and development of the Indo-Aryan race which, "at the very dawn of history," they have espied in its "patriarchal simplicity" on the banks of the Oxus. Before our proposition concerning "the old Greeks and Romans" can be repudiated or even controverted, Western Orientalists will have to know more than they do about the antiquity of that race and the Aryan language; and they will have to account for those numberless gaps in history which no hypotheses of theirs seem able to fill up. Notwithstanding their present profound ignorance with regard to the early ancestry of the Indo-European nations, and though no historian has yet ventured to assign even a remotely approximate date to the separation of the Aryan nations and the origins of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them. Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first "dawn of traditional history," with the Vedic age as "the background of the whole Indian world" (of which confessedly they know nothing), they will, nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest songs, on its "internal evidence;" and in doing this, they show as little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its "external form." As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better.

"The evidence of language is irrefragable," as the great Oxford Sanskritist says. To which he is answered—"provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology." It may be—no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes—"the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods;" but when something of these alleged "prehistorical periods" comes to be known, and when what we think we know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically opposed to his "evidence of language," the "Adepts" may be, perhaps, permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they differ with those of the greatest living philologist. The study of language is but a part—though, we admit, a fundamental part—of true philology. To be complete, the latter has, as correctly argued by Bockt, to be almost synonymous with history. We gladly concede the right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the result of his study, and the only available evidence. But we would like to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races; even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of the paramount West: for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent regards as ante-historical. The bare fact that, while Western men of science are referred to as "scholars" and scholiasts—native Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and "Indian sciolists"—affords no proof of their real inferiority, but rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit is rarely companion to politeness."

The "Adept" therefore has little, if anything, to do with difficulties presented by Western history. To his knowledge—based on documentary records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part—the history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western world as a landmark of the commencement of its history. Records made throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and zodiacal calculations, cannot err. (This new "difficulty"— palaeographical, t his time—that may be possibly suggested by the mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.)

Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which—the Orientalist or the "Oriental"—is most likely to err. The "English F.T.S." has choice of two sources of information, two groups of teachers. One group is composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists, Philologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists and Orientalists in general. The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller's assertion that the same "blood is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the dark Bengalese," is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as "inferior." A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to, specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences, having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the correct meaning, chronological date, and historical value of the monumental and palaeographic relics of his motherland. It has little, if ever, entered the mind of the Western public that their scholars have, until very lately, worked in a narrow pathway obstructed with the ruins of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic Past; that they have been cramped on all sides by limitations of "revealed" events coming from God, "with whom a thousand years are but as one day," and who have thus felt bound to cram millenniums into centuries and hundreds into units, giving at the utmost an age of 1,000 to what is 10,000 years old. All this to save the threatened authority of their religion and their own respectability and good name in cultured society. And even that, when free themselves from preconceptions, they have had to protect the honour of the Jewish divine chronology assailed by stubborn facts; and thus have become (often unconsciously) the slaves of an artificial history made to fit into the narrow frame of a dogmatic religion. No proper thought has been given to this purely psychological but very significant trifle. Yet we all know how, rather than admit any relation between Sanskrit and the Gothic, Keltic, Greek, Latin and old Persian, facts have been tampered with, old texts purloined from libraries, and philological discoveries vehemently denied. And we have also heard from our retreats, how Dugald Stewart and his colleagues, upon seeing that the discovery would also involve ethnological affinities, and damage the prestige of those sires of the world races—Shem, Ham and Japhet—denied in the face of fact that "Sanskrit had ever been a living, spoken language," supporting the theory that "it was an invention of the Brahmins, who had constructed their Sanskrit on the model of the Greek and Latin." And again we know, holding the proof of the same, how the majority of Orientalists are prone to go out of their way to prevent any Indian antiquity (whether MSS. or inscribed monument, whether art or science) from being declared pre-Christian. As the origin and history of the Gentile world is made to move in the narrow circuit of a few centuries "B.C.," within that fecund epoch when mother earth, recuperated from her arduous labours of the Stone age, begat, it seems without transition, so many highly civilized nations and false pretenses, so the enchanted circle of Indian archeology lies between the (to them unknown) year of the Samvat era, and the tenth century of the Western chronology.

Having to dispose of an "historical difficulty" of such a serious character, the defendants charged with it can but repeat what they have already stated; all depends upon the past history and antiquity allowed to the Indo-Aryan nation. The first step to take is to ascertain how much History herself knows of that almost prehistoric period when the soil of Europe had not been trodden yet by the primitive Aryan tribes. From the latest Encyclopedia down to Professor Max Muller and other Orientalists, we gather what follows; they acknowledge that at some immensely remote period, before the Aryan nations got divided from the parent stock (with the germs of Indo-Germanic languages in them); and before they rushed asunder to scatter over Europe and Asia in search of new homes, there stood a "single barbaric (?) people as physical and political representative of the nascent Aryan race." This people spoke "a now extinct Aryan language," from which by a series of modifications (surely requiring more thousands of years than our difficulty-makers are willing to concede) there arose gradually all the subsequent languages now spoken by the Caucasian races.

That is about all Western history knows of its genesis. Like Ravana's brother, Kumbhakarna,—the Hindu Rip van Winkle—it slept for a long series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep. And when at last it awoke to consciousness, it was but to find the "nascent Aryan race" grown into scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the younger ones it was utterly unable to account for. So much for the "youngest brother." As for "the eldest brother, the Hindu," who, Professor Max Muller tells us, "was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family," and whose history this eminent philologist has now kindly undertaken to impart to him,—he, the Hindu, claims that while his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting shadow of Noah's ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event from his high Himalayan fastnesses; and that he has recorded the history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to the writers. For this crime he now stands condemned as a falsifier of the records of his forefathers. A place has been hitherto purposely left open for India "to be filled up when the pure metal of history should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and superstition." Unable, however, to meet this programme, the Orientalist has since persuaded himself that there was nothing in that "ore" but dross. He did more. He applied himself to contrast Brahmanic "superstition" and "exaggeration" with Mosaic revelation and its chronology. The Veda was confronted with Genesis. Its absurd claims to antiquity were forthwith dwarfed to their proper dimensions by the 4,004 years B.C. measure of the world's age; and the Brahmanic "superstition and fables" about the longevity of the Aryan Rishis, were belittled and exposed by the sober historical evidence furnished in "The genealogy and age of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah," whose respective days were 930 and 950 years; without mentioning Methuselah, who died at the premature age of nine hundred and sixty-nine.

In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs, among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years "B.C." and more, as proved by Colonel Tod; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not enough to have studied stray fragments of Sanskrit literature—even though their number should amount to 10,000 texts, as boasted of—allowed to fall into foreign hands, to speak so confidently of the "Aryan first settlers in India," and assert that, "left to themselves, in a world of their own, without a past and without a future (!) before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder upon," and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other nations. To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric light, and after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret Code—branded generally as "theological twaddle." Nor is it sufficient—if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did or did not know; whether or not they cultivated the social and political virtues; cared or not for history—to claim proficiency in both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya Bhasha. To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to the Brahmanical Code. To master the conventional terms used in the Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules of Panini, or his algebraical symbols. Very true, most of the Brahmans themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their sacred texts. Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique. Disrespectful though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the "language of the gods;" that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly along the lines of countless generations the course of the "now extinct Aryan tongue" in its many and various transformations in the West, and its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up. Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing about—i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has lost sight of from its "nascent state," and caught up again but at the period of its last degeneration—the native student never knew, nor can ever know, anything of that history. Until the Orientalist has proved all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every work upon India and its Past. Having no knowledge himself whatever of those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them as the foreigner. Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is little qualified to declare that the Aryan, having had no political history "of his own…." his only sphere was "religion and philosophy…. in solitude and contemplation." A happy thought suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rik-Veda. Nor can he with the smallest show of logic affirm that "India had no place in the political history of the world," or that "there are no synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India;" for he knows no more of the prehistoric history of those "other nations" than of that of the Brahman. All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of hypotheses begin very little earlier than 200 "B.C.," if even so much, on anything like really historical grounds. He has to prove all this before he can command our attention. Otherwise, however "irrefragable the evidence of language," the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left their northern regions; or (b) why the "eldest brother, the Hindu," should have been "the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family." To the philologist such a supposition may seem "quite natural." Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a programme. That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was forced to make "the eldest brother" tarry so suspiciously long on the Oxus, or wherever "the youngest" may have placed him in his "nascent state" after the latter "saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun." We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the Christian era. To show the "brother" inactive and unconcerned, "with nothing but himself to ponder on," lest his antiquity and "fables of empty idolatry," and perhaps his traditions of other people's doings, should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try him. The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from which we have been so largely quoting—a work of a purely scientific and philological character—such frequent remarks and even prophecies as: "History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fulness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity." Or, again "The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of Nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life;" and such broad sentiments expressed as that "there is some truth in Buddhism, as there is in every one of the false religions of the world, but…." *

—————- * Max Muller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature." —————-

The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the philosophies sprung from its soil!*

————- * And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may be seen by reading carefully "The History of Indian Literature," by Albrecht Weber—a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest authorities. The incessant harping upon the one special string of Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the keynote of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work. Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of Buddhism and Krishna worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its legends; it is openly stated that "it is not at all a far-fetched hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian missionaries!" The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that, notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period—their universal tank of all ancient creeds, and of which some Orientalists would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped "Western influence." Let us hope to the contrary. It can be proved that Buddhist missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in Asia. That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are permeated with Buddhism. Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, "the formula of abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name." —————

Leaflets from Esoteric History

The foregoing—a long, yet necessary digression—will show that the Asiatic scholar is justified in generally withholding what he may know. That it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the "historical difficulty" at issue; but rather on its degree of interference with time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom. That no statement coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether of an alleged historical or religious character. Yet pleasant it is, after the brainless assaults to which occult sciences have hitherto been subjected—assaults in which abuse has been substituted for argument, and flat denial for calm inquiry—to find that there remain in the West some men who will come into the field like philosophers, and soberly and fairly discuss the claims of our hoary doctrines to the respect due to a truth and the dignity demanded for a science. Those alone whose sole desire is to ascertain the truth, not to maintain foregone conclusions, have a right to expect undisguised facts. Reverting to our subject, so far as allowable, we will now, for the sake of that minority, give them.

The records of the Occultists make no difference between the "Atlantean" ancestors of the old Greeks and Romans. Partially corroborated and in turn contradicted by licensed or recognized history, their records teach that of the ancient Latini of classic legend called Itali; of that people, in short, which, crossing the Apennines (as their Judo-Aryan brothers—let this be known—had crossed before them the Hindoo-Koosh) entered from the north the peninsula—there survived at a period long before the days of Romulus but the name, and a nascent language. Profane history informs us that the Latins of the "mythical era" got so Hellenized amidst the rich colonies of Magna Grecia that there remained nothing in them of their primitive Latin nationality. It is the Latins proper, it says, those pre-Roman Italians who by settling in Latium had from the first kept themselves free from the Greek influence, who were the ancestors of the Romans. Contradicting exoteric history, the Occult records affirm that if, owing to circumstances too long and complicated to be related here, the settlers of Latium preserved their primitive nationality a little longer than their brothers who had first entered the peninsula with them after leaving the East (which was not their original home), they lost it very soon, for other reasons. Free from the Samnites during the first period, they did not remain free from other invaders. While the Western historian puts together the mutilated, incomplete records of various nations and people, and makes them into a clever mosaic according to the best and most probable plan and rejects entirely traditional fables, the Occultist pays not the slightest attention to the vain self-glorification of alleged conquerors or their lithic inscriptions. Nor does he follow the stray bits of so-called historical information, often concocted by interested parties and found scattered hither and thither in the fragments of classical writers, whose original texts themselves have not seldom been tampered with. The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their divergences in the various nationalities, races and sub-races, in a more easy way; and he is guided in this as surely as the student who examines a geographical map. As the latter can easily trace by their differently coloured outlines the boundaries of the many countries and their possessions; their geographical superficies and their separations by seas, rivers and mountains; so the Occultist can by following the (to him) well distinguishable and defined auric shades and gradations of colour in the inner-man unerringly pronounce to which of the several distinct human families, as also to what special group, and even small sub-group of the latter, belongs any particular people, tribe, or man. This will appear hazy and incomprehensible to the many who know nothing of ethnic varieties of nerve-aura, and disbelieve in any "inner-man" theory, scientific but to the few. The whole question hangs upon the reality or unreality of the existence of this inner-man whom clairvoyance has discovered, and whose odyle or nerve-emanations Von Reichenbach proves. If one admits such a presence and realizes intuitionally that being closer related to the one invisible Reality, the inner type must be still more pronounced than the outer physical type, then it will be a matter of little, if any, difficulty to conceive our meaning. For, indeed, if even the respective physical idiosyncrasies and special characteristics of any given person make his nationality usually distinguishable by the physical eye of the ordinary observer—let alone the experienced ethnologist: the Englishman being commonly recognizable at a glance from the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, not to speak of the typical differences between human root-families* in their anthropological division—there seems little difficulty in conceiving that the same, though far more pronounced, difference of type and characteristics should exist between the inner races that inhabit these "fleshly tabernacles." Besides this easily discernible psychological and astral differences, there are the documentary records in their unbroken series of chronological tables and the history of the gradual branching off of races and sub-races from the three geological primeval Races, the work of the Initiates of all the archaic and ancient temples up to date, collected in our "Book of Numbers," and other volumes.

————- * Properly speaking, these ought to be called "Geological Races," so as to be easily distinguished from their subsequent evolutions—the root-races. The Occult doctrine has nothing to do with the Biblical division of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and admires, without accepting it, the latest Huxleyan physiological division of the human races into their quintuple groups of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthechroics, and the fifth variety of Melanochroics. Yet it says that the triple division of the blundering Jews is closer to the truth, it knows but of three entirely distinct primeval races whose evolution, formation and development went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata; namely, the BLACK, the RED-YELLOW, and the BROWN-WHITE RACES. ————-

Hence, and on this double testimony (which the Westerns are quite welcome to reject if so pleased) it is affirmed that, owing to the great amalgamation of various sub-races, such as the Iapygian, Etruscan, Pelasgic, and later—the strong admixture of the Hellenic and Kelto-Gaulic element in the veins of the primitive Itali of Latium—there remained in the tribes gathered by Romulus on the banks of the Tiber about as much Latinism as there is now in the Romanic people of Wallachia. Of course if the historical foundation of the fable of the twins of the Vestal Silvia is entirely rejected, together with that of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Aeneas, then it stands to reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the "legendary mythical age." For those who now give these statements, however, there is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged historical Regal period of the earliest Romans. It is to be deplored that the present statement should clash with the authoritative conclusion of Mommsen and others. Yet, stating but that which to the "Adepts" is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome-April, 753 "B.C.") that is given in old traditions in relation to the Paemerium, and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall. The founders of Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and remnants of the many primitive tribes; only a few really Latin families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining. And, while the latter preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning. The famous Latin league is no fable, but history. The succession of kings descended from the Trojan Aeneas is a fact; and the idea that Romulus is to be regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Aeolus, Dorius, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as it is arbitrary. It could only have been entertained by a class of historiographers bent upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead of humbly groveling at their feet as "absurd myths" and old wives' tales and superstitions.

It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little as any casual traveler's unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol. The sentences, "the Greeks and Romans were small sub-races of our own Caucasian stock" (p. 6), and they were "the remnants of the Atlanteans (the modern belong to the fifth race)" (p. 62), show the real meaning on their face. By the old Greeks, "remnants of the Atlanteans" the eponymous ancestors (as they are called by Europeans) of the Aeolians, Dorians and Ionians, are meant. By the connection together of the old Greeks and Romans without distinction, was meant that the primitive Latins were swallowed by Magna Graecia. And by "the modern" belonging "to the fifth race"—both these small branchlets from whose veins had been strained out the last drop of the Atlantean blood—it was implied that the Mongoloid 4th race blood had already been eliminated. Occultists make a distinction between the races intermediate between any two root-races: the Westerns do not. The "old Romans" were Hellenes in a new ethnological disguise; and the still older Greeks the real blood ancestors of the future Romans. In direct relation to this, attention is drawn to the following fact—one of the many in close historical bearing upon the "mythical" age to which Atlantis belongs. It is a fable and may be charged to the account of historical difficulties. It is well calculated, however, to throw all the old ethnological and genealogical divisions into confusion.

Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe, comprised many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval root-languages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Races), we may return to Poseidonis, its last surviving remnant of 12,000 years ago. As the chief element in the languages of the 5th race is the Aryan-Sanskrit of the "Brown-white" geological stock or race, so the predominating element in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze—a language which was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be called by modern philologists. It was, in short, the language of the "Red-yellow" second or middle geological stock (we maintain the term "geological"). A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race was, of course, to be found in the Aryans of the 5th. But this did not prevent in the least the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure Aryan races in it. A number of small islands scattered around Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes, long before the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the memory of men— thanks to some written records. Tradition says that one of the small tribes (the Aeolians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge. If, in spite of the Orientalists and the conjecture of M.F. Lenormant— who invented a name for a people whose shadowy outline he dimly perceived in the faraway Past as preceding the Babylonians—we say that this Aryan race that came from Central Asia, the cradle of the 5th race Humanity, belonged to the "Akkadian" tribes, there will be a new historico-ethnological difficulty created. Yet it is maintained that these "Akkads" were no more a "Turanian" race than any of the modern British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible, and absent from history. With such remarkable pacta conventa between modern exact (?) and ancient Occult sciences, we may proceed with the fable. Belonging virtually, through their original connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old Aeolians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands of years, but by the free intermingling of blood, by intermarriage with them. Perhaps in this connection Mr. Huxley's disposition to account for his Melanochroi (the Greeks being included under this classification or type)—as themselves "the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and the Australioids," among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and the Egyptians to some extent—is not far off from fact. Anyhow the Aeolians of Atlantis were Aryans on the whole, as much as the Basques— Dr. Pritchard's Allophylians—are now southern Europeans, although originally belonging to the South Indian Dravidian stock (their progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the first Aryan emigration, as supposed). Frightened by the frequent earthquakes and the visible approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have sailed from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and, sailing along the coasts, after several years of travel to have landed on the shores of the Aegean Sea in the land of Pyrrha (now Thessaly), to which they gave the name of Aeolia. Thence they proceeded on business with the gods to Mount Olympus. It may be stated here, at the risk of creating a "geographical difficulty," that in that mythical age Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other islands of the Mediterranean, were simply the far-away possessions, or colonies, of Atlantis. Hence, the "fable" proceeds to state that all along the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy the Aeolians often halted, and the memory of their "magical feats" still survives among the descendants of the old Massilians, of the tribes of the later Carthago-Nova, and the seaports of Etruria and Syracuse. And here again it would not be a bad idea, perchance, even at this late hour, for the archeologists to trace, with the permission of the anthropological societies, the origin of the various autochthones through their folk-lore and fables, as they may prove both more suggestive and reliable than their "undecipherable" monuments. History catches a misty glimpse of these particular autochthones thousands of years only after they had been settled in old Greece—namely, at the moment when the Epireans cross the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from their home to Boeotia. But history never listened to the popular legends which speak of the "accursed sorcerers" who departed, leaving as an inheritance behind them more than one secret of their infernal arts, the fame of which crossing the ages has now passed into history—or, classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred. To this day a popular tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the gods to save them from the deluge. But the "Father" expelled them from the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the mountain, in the valleys, and by the shores of the Aegean Sea.

Such is the oldest fable of the ancient Thessalonians. And now, what was the language spoken by the Atlantean Aeolians? History cannot answer us. Nevertheless, the reader has only to be reminded of some of the accepted and a few of the as yet unknown facts, to cause the light to enter any intuitional brain. It is now proved that man was universally conceived in antiquity as born of the earth. Such is now the profane explanation of the term autochthones. In nearly every vulgarized popular fable, from the Sanskrit Arya "born of the earth," or Lord of the Soil in one sense; the Erechtheus of the archaic Greeks, worshiped in the earliest days of the Akropolis and shown by Homer as "he whom the earth bore" ( Il. ii. 548); down to Adam fashioned of "red earth," the genetical story has a deep occult meaning, and an indirect connection with the origin of man and of the subsequent races. Thus, the fables of Helen, the son of Pyrrha the red—the oldest name of Thessaly; and of Mannus, the reputed ancestor of the Germans, himself the son of Tuisco, "the red son of the earth," have not only a direct bearing upon our Atlantis fable, but they explain moreover the division of mankind into geological groups as made by the Occultists. It is only this, their division, that is able to explain to Western teachers the apparently strange, if not absurd, coincidence of the Semitic Adam—a divinely revealed personage—being connected with red earth, in company with the Aryan Pyrrha, Tuisco, &c.—the mythical heroes of "foolish" fables. Nor will that division made by the Eastern Occultists, who call the 5th race people "the Brown-white," and the 4th race the "Red-yellow," Root-races—connecting them with geological strata—appear at all fantastic to those who understood verse iii. 34-9 of the Veda and its occult meaning, and another verse in which the Dasyus are called "Yellow." Hatvi Dasyun pra aryam varanam avat is said of Indra who, by killing the Dasyus, protected the colour of the Aryans; and again, Indra "unveiled the light for the Aryas and the Dasyus was left on the left hand" (ii. III 18). Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom "of the right hand," or occult knowledge); that Prometheus is the brother of Atlas; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus—the antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning; and that he is also the antetype of Deukalion. Prometheus is the creator of man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus—a mountain in Greece—is chained on a mount in the far-off Caucasus. From Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance. The Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on the Atlantean continent—our Antipodes in a certain sense—the 5th was generated and developed in Asia. (The ancient Greek geographer Strabo, for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates, Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.) The fable of Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the 4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved partially "for future seed." But the origin of the fable antecedes the destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however incredible it may seem. The seven great continents of the world, spoken of in the Vishnu Purana (B. II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of course, under another name. Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms (see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil; and Ilavrita is a portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was but an insignificant remnant. And now, while every Brahmin will understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more explanations.

————
* Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living
man.
————

If, in that generally tabooed work, "Isis Unveiled," the "English F.T.S." turns to page 589, vol. I., he may find therein narrated another old Eastern legend. An island …. (where now the Gobi desert lies) was inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours: a handful of "Adepts"—the "Sons of God," now referred to as the Brahman Pitris; called by another yet synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala. "Isis Unveiled" may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who know nothing of Occult Sciences. To the Occultist it is correct, and while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious attempt to let into the West a faint streak of Eastern esoteric light), it reveals more facts than were ever given before its appearance. Let any one read these pages and he may comprehend. The "six such races" in Manu refer to the sub-races of the fourth race (p. 590). In addition to this the reader must turn to the paper on "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism" (p. 187 ante), study the list of the "Manus" of our fourth Round (p. 254), and between this and "Isis" light may, perchance, be focused. On pages 590-6 of the work mentioned above, he will find that Atlantis is mentioned in the "Secret Books of the East" (as yet virgin of Western spoliating hand) under another name in the sacred hieratic or sacerdotal language. And then it will be shown to him that Atlantis was not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, of whose isles and islets many have to this day survived. The remotest ancestors of some of the inhabitants of the now miserable fisherman's hovel "Aclo" (once Atlan), near the gulf of Uraha, were allied at one time as closely with the old Greeks and Romans as they were with the "true inland China-man," mentioned on p. 57 Of "Esoteric Buddhism." Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India; and strange to him who does not follow the mysterious working of the human mind and its unconscious approximations to hidden truths—even the aborigines of the new continent, the Red-skinned tribes, the "Mongoloids" of Mr. Huxley, were named Indians. Names now attributed to chance: elastic word that! Strange coincidence, indeed, to him who does not know—science refusing yet to sanction the wild hypothesis—that there was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the prehistoric ages was not only within the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, but there was even in the days of history, and within its memory, an upper, a lower, and a western India: and still earlier it was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the "Brahmans of Upper India" stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveler, furnished with a canoe and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America. On pp. 592-3 of "Isis," vol. I., the Thevetatas—the evil, mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon—are mentioned, along with the "sons of God" or Brahman Pitris. The Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, the Consentes, Complices, and Novensiles, are all disguised relics of the Atlanteans; while the Etruscan arts of soothsaying their Disciplina revealed by Tages comes direct and in undisguised form from the Atlantean king Thevetat, the "invisible" Dragon, whose name survives to this day among the Siamese and Burmese, as also, in the Jataka allegorical stories of the Buddhists as the opposing power under the name of Devadat. And Tages was the son of Thevetat, before he became the grandson of the Etruscan Jupiter-Tinia. Have the Western Orientalists tried to find out the connection between all these Dragons and Serpents; between the "powers of Evil" in the cycles of epic legends, the Persian and the Indian, the Greek and the Jewish; between the contests of Indra and the giant; the Aryan Nagas and the Iranian Aji Dahaka; the Guatemalian Dragon and the Serpent of Genesis—&c. &c. &c.? Professor Max Muller discredits the connection. So be it. But the fourth race of men, "men" whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once, the hidden as the unrevealed, is mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, the sacred books of the Guatemalians; and the Babylonian Xisuthrus, the far later Jewish Noah, the Hindu Vaivaswata, and the Greek Deukalion, are all identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians, of Popol-Vuh who, like the rest of these allegorical (not mythical) Patriarchs, escaped in his turn and in his days, in a large boat at the time of the last great Deluge—the submersion of Atlantis.

To have been an Indo-Aryan, Vaivaswata had not, of necessity, to meet with his Saviour (Vishnu, under the form of a fish) within the precincts of the present India, or even anywhere on the Asian continent; nor is it necessary to concede that he was the seventh great Manu himself (see catalogue of the Manus, in the paper on "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism" cited above), but simply that the Hindu Noah belonged to the clan of Vaivaswata and typifies the fifth race. Now the last of the Atlantean islands perished some 11,000 years ago; and the fifth race headed by the Aryans began its evolution, to the certain knowledge of the "Adepts" nearer one million than 900,000 years ago. But the historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races? It is not enough for purposes of refutation of other peoples' statements to say that the latter lived separate from the former, and then come to a full stop—a fresh hiatus in the ethnological history of mankind. Since Asia is sometimes called the Cradle of Humanity, and it is an ascertained fact that Central Asia was likewise the cradle of the Semitic and Turanian races (for thus it is taught in Genesis), and we find the Turans agreeably to the theory evolved by the Assyriologists preceding the Babylonian Semitists, where, at what spot of the globe, did these Semito-Turanian nations break away from the parent stock, and what has become of the latter? It cannot be the small Jewish tribe of Patriarchs; and unless it can be shown that the garden of Eden was also on the Oxus or the Euphrates, fenced off from the soil inhabited by the children of Cain, philologists who undertake to fill in the gaps in Universal History with their made-up conjectures, may be regarded as ignorant of this detail as those they would enlighten.

Logically, if the ancestors of these various groups had been at that remote period massed together, then the self-same roots of a parent common stock would have been equally traceable in their perfected languages as they are in those of the Judo-Europeans. And so, since whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary dates. Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high authority in Europe? For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar—in every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences—as little better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps, admiration. He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists. He refuses to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist, Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle her.

With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the "historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement, necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact. They knew that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many, it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors maintained to the contrary. For a body of, so to say, unlicensed preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would be an unprecedented piece of impertinence. Hence their respective claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds. The "Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the "A.C.S.'s"—Adepts in Conjectural Sciences—unless they could show, partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built. They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be right after all. Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised, would have been fatal. Besides risking to be construed into inability to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the writers. Therefore have the "Adepts" agreed to smooth in part at least a few of the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in future by studying the non-historical but actual, instead of the historical but mythical, portions of Universal History. And this they have achieved, they believe (at any rate with a few of their querists), by simply showing, or rather reminding them, that since no historical fact can stand as such against the "assumption" of the "Adepts"— historians being confessedly ignorant of pre-Roman and Greek origins beyond the ghostly shadows of the Etruscans and Pelasgians—no real historical difficulty can be possibly involved in their statement. From objectors outside the Society, the writers neither demand nor do they expect mercy. The "Adept" has no favours to ask at the hands of conjectural science, nor does he exact from any member of the "London Lodge" blind faith: it being his cardinal maxim that faith should only follow inquiry. The "Adept" is more than content to be allowed to remain silent, keeping what he may know to himself, unless worthy seekers wish to share it. He has so done for ages, and can do so for a little longer. Moreover, he would rather not "arrest attention" or "command respect" at present. Thus he leaves his audience to first verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather wavering light of modern science: after which his facts may be either accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student. In short, the "Adept"—if one indeed—has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and unmoved by, the issue. He imparts that which it is lawful for him to give out, and deals but with facts.

The philological and archeological "difficulties" next demand attention.

Philological and Archeological "Difficulties"

Two questions are blended into one. Having shown the reasons why the Asiatic student is prompted to decline the guidance of Western History, it remains to explain his contumacious obstinacy in the same direction with regard to philology and archeology. While expressing the sincerest admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these Western methods:—

1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts. Nor is there more harmony shown in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages.

2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one (since it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our case, namely, Indian antiquities); archeologists have hitherto failed to obtain any such position. On their own confession, they are hardly justified in accepting the Samvat and Salivahana eras as their guiding lights, the real initial points of both being beyond the power of the European Orientalists to verify; yet all the same, the respective dates "of 57 B.C. and 78 A.D." are accepted implicitly, and fanciful ages thereupon ascribed to archeological remains.

3. The greatest authorities upon Indian archeology and architecture— General Cunningham and Mr. Fergusson—represent in their conclusions the two opposite poles. The province of archeology is to provide trustworthy canons of criticism, and not, it should seem, to perplex or puzzle. The Western critic is invited to point to one single relic of the past in India, whether written record or inscribed or uninscribed monument, the age of which is not disputed. No sooner has one archeologist determined a date—say the first century—than another tries to pull it forward to the 10th or perhaps the 14th century of the Christian era. While General Cunningham ascribes the construction of the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ—the opinion of Mr. Fergusson is that its external form belongs to the 14th century; and so the unfortunate outsider is as wise as ever. Noticing this discrepancy in a "Report on the Archeological Survey of India" (vol. viii. p. 60), the conscientious and capable Buddha-Gaya Chief Engineer, Mr. J.D. Beglar, observes that "notwithstanding his (Fergusson's) high authority, this opinion must be unhesitatingly set aside," and forthwith assigns the building under notice to the 6th century. While the conjectures of one archeologist are termed by another "hopelessly wrong," the identifications of Buddhist relics by this other are in their turn denounced as "quite untenable." And so in the case of every relic of whatever age.

When the "recognized" authorities agree—among themselves at least—then will it be time to show them collectively in the wrong. Until then, since their respective conjectures can lay no claim to the character of history, the "Adepts" have neither the leisure nor the disposition to leave weightier business to combat empty speculations, in number as many as there are pretended authorities. Let the blind lead the blind, if they will not accept the light.*

———— * However, it will be shown elsewhere that General Cunningham's latest conclusions about the date of Buddha's death are not all supported by the inscriptions newly discovered.—T. Subba Row. ————-

As in the "historical," so in this new "archeological difficulty," namely, the apparent anachronism as to the date of our Lord's birth, the point at issue is again concerned with the "old Greeks and Romans." Less ancient than our Atlantean friends, they seem more dangerous inasmuch as they have become the direct allies of philologists in our dispute over Buddhist annals. We are notified by Prof. Max Muller, by sympathy the most fair of Sanskritists as well as the most learned—and with whom, for a wonder, most of his rivals are found siding in this particular question—that "everything in Indian chronology depends on the date of Chandragupta,"—the Greek Sandracottus. "Either of these dates (in the Chinese and Ceylonese chronology) is impossible, because it does not agree with the chronology of Greece." ("Hist. of the Sans. Lit.," p. 275.) It is then by the clear light of this new Alexandrian Pharos shed, upon a few synchronisms casually furnished by the Greek and Roman classical writers, that the "extraordinary" statements of the "Adepts" have now to be cautiously examined. For Western Orientalists the historical existence of Buddhism begins with Asoka, though, even with the help of Greek spectacles, they are unable to see beyond Chandragupta. Therefore, "before that time Buddhist chronology is traditional and full of absurdities." Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas—ergo, there were none before "Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign of Asoka. Having nothing more solid, he uses contradictory inferences and speculations. But the Asiatic occultists, whose forefathers had her tablets in their keeping, and even some learned native Pundits—believe they can. The claim, however, is pronounced unworthy of attention. Of the late Smriti (traditional history) which, for those who know how to interpret its allegories, is full of unimpeachable historical records, an Ariadne's thread through the tortuous labyrinth of the Past—has come to be unanimously regarded as a tissue of exaggerations, monstrous fables, "clumsy forgeries of the first centuries A.D." It is now openly declared as worthless not only for exact chronological but even for general historical purposes. Thus by dint of arbitrary condemnations, based on absurd interpretations (too often the direct outcome of sectarian prejudice), the Orientalist has raised himself to the eminence of a philological mantic. His learned vagaries are fast superseding, even in the minds of many a Europeanized Hindu, the important historical facts that lie concealed under the exoteric phraseology of the Puranas and other Smritic literature. At the outset, therefore, the Eastern Initiate declares the evidence of those Orientalists who, abusing their unmerited authority, play ducks and drakes with his most sacred relics, ruled out of court; and before giving his facts he would suggest to the learned European Sanskritist and archeologist that, in the matter of chronology, the difference in the sum of their series of conjectural historical events, proves them to be mistaken from A to Z. They know that one single wrong figure in an arithmetical progression will always throw the whole calculation into inextricable confusion: the multiplication yielding, generally, in such a case, instead of the correct sum something entirely unexpected. A fair proof of this may, perhaps, be found in something already alluded to— namely, the adoption of the dates of certain Hindu eras as the basis of their chronological assumptions. In assigning a date to text or monument they have, of course, to be guided by one of the pre-Christian Indian eras, whether inferentially, or otherwise. And yet—in one case, at least—they complain repeatedly that they are utterly ignorant as to the correct starting-point of the most important of these. The positive date of Vikramaditya, for instance, whose reign forms the starting point of the Samvat era, is in reality unknown to them. With some, Vikramaditya flourished "B.C." 56; with others, 86; with others again, in the 6th century of the Christian era; while Mr. Fergusson will not allow the Samvat era any beginning before the "10th century A.D." In short, and in the words of Dr. Weber,* they "have absolutely no authentic evidence to show whether the era of Vikramaditya dates from the year of his birth, from some achievement, or from the year of his death, or whether, in fine, it may not have been simply introduced by him for astronomical reasons." There were several Vikramadityas and Vikramas in Indian history, for it is not a name, but an honorary title, as the Orientalists have now come to learn. How then can any chronological deduction from such a shifting premise be anything but untrustworthy, especially when, as in the instance of the Samvat, the basic date is made to travel along, at the personal fancy of Orientalists, between the 1st and the 10th century?

—————- * "The History of Indian Literature," Trubner's Series, 1882, p. 202. —————-

Thus it appears to be pretty well proved that in ascribing chronological dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European archeologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms. That, in fine, they have been hitherto furnishing History with an arithmetical mean, while ignorant, in nearly every case, of its first term! Nevertheless, the Asiatic student is invited to verify and correct his dates by the flickering light of this chronological will-o-the-wisp. Nay, nay. Surely "An English F.T.S." would never expect us in matters demanding the minutest exactness to trust to such Western beacons! And he will, perhaps, permit us to hold to our own views, since we know that our dates are neither conjectural nor liable to modifications. Where even such veteran archeologists as General Cunningham do not seem above suspicion, and are openly denounced by their colleagues, palaeography seems to hardly deserve the name of exact science. This busy antiquarian has been repeatedly denounced by Prof. Weber and others for his indiscriminate acceptance of that Samvat era. Nor have the other Orientalists been more lenient; especially those who, perchance under the inspiration of early sympathies for biblical chronology, prefer in matters connected with Indian dates to give head to their own emotional but unscientific intuitions. Some would have us believe that the Samvat era "is not demonstrable for times anteceding the Christian era at all." Kern makes efforts to prove that the Indian astronomers began to employ this era "only after the year of grace 1000." Prof. Weber, referring sarcastically to General Cunningham, observes that "others, on the contrary, have no hesitation in at once referring, wherever possible, every Samvat or Samvatsare-dated inscription to the Samvat era." Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch. Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the following plaint: "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a particular inscription, and what date consequently the inscription bears." *

———— * Op. cit., p. 203. ————

The confession is significant. It is pleasant to find such a ring of sincerity in a European Orientalist, though it does seem quite ominous for Indian archeology. The initiated Brahmans know the positive dates of their eras and remain therefore unconcerned. What the "Adepts" have once said, they maintain; and no new discoveries or modified conjectures of accepted authorities can exert any pressure upon their data. Even if Western archeologists or numismatists took it into their heads to change the date of our Lord and Glorified Deliverer from the 7th century "B.C." to the 7th century "A.D.," we would but the more admire such a remarkable gift for knocking about dates and eras, as though they were so many lawn-tennis balls.

Meanwhile, to all sincere and inquiring Theosophists, we will say plainly, it is useless for any one to speculate about the date of our Lord Sanggyas's birth, while rejecting a priori all the Brahmanical, Ceylonese, Chinese, and Tibetan dates. The pretext that these do not agree with the chronology of a handful of Greeks who visited the country 300 years after the event in question, is too fallacious and bold. Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay of their respective authors—a few Greeks, who themselves lived centuries before the writers quoted—their chronology is itself too defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically opposed to fact, to inspire with confidence any one less prejudiced than the average European Orientalist. To seek to establish the true dates in Indian history by connecting its events with the mythical "invasion," while confessing that "one would look in vain in the literature of the Brahmans or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander's conquest, and although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events related by Alexander's companions with the historical tradition of India," amounts to something more than a mere exhibition of incompetence in this direction: were not Prof. Max Muller the party concerned—we might say that it appears almost like predetermined dishonesty.

These are harsh words to say, and calculated no doubt to shock many a European mind trained to look up to what is termed "scientific authority" with a feeling akin to that of the savage for his family fetich. They are well deserved, nevertheless, as a few examples will show. To such intellects as Prof. Weber's—whom we take as the leader of the German Orientalists of the type of Christophiles—certainly the word "obtuseness" cannot be applied. Upon seeing how chronology is deliberately and maliciously perverted in favour of "Greek influence," Christian interests and his own predetermined theories—another, and even a stronger term should be applied. What expression is too severe to signify one's feelings upon reading such an unwitting confession of disingenuous scholarship as Weber repeatedly makes ("Hist. Ind. Lit.") when urging the necessity of admitting that a passage "has been touched up by later interpellation," or forcing fanciful chronological places for texts admittedly very ancient—"as otherwise the dates would be brought down too far or too near!" And this is the keynote of his entire policy: fiat hypothesis, ruat caelum! On the other hand Prof. Max Muller, enthusiastic Indophile as he seems, crams centuries into his chronological thimble without the smallest apparent compunction….

These two Orientalists are instances, because they are accepted beacons of philology and Indian paleography. Our national monuments are dated and our ancestral history perverted to suit their opinions; the pernicious evil has ensued, that as a result History is now recording for the misguidance of posterity the false annals and distorted facts which, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis. While Prof. Max Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence—his universal solvent—in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature, astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock. This is now entirely disregarded, because a disturbing element in the harmony of the critical spheres. And though nothing is more reasonable than the inference that the Grecian astronomical terms were inherited equally from the parent stock, Prof. Weber would have us believe that "it was Greek influence that just infused a real life into Indian astronomy" (p. 251). In fine, the hoary ancestors of the Hindus borrowed their astronomical terminology and learnt the art of star gazing and even their zodiac from the Hellenic infant! This proof engenders another: the relative antiquity of the astronomical texts shall be henceforth determined upon the presence or absence in them of asterisms and zodiacal signs, the former being undisguisedly Greek in their names, the latter are "designated by their Sanskrit names which are translated from the Greek" (p. 255). Thus "Manu's law being unacquainted with the planets," is considered as more ancient than Yajnavalkya's Code, which "inculcates their worship," and so on. But there is still another and a better test found out by the Sanskritists for determining with "infallible accuracy" the age of the texts, apart from asterisms and zodiacal signs any casual mention in them of the name "Yavana," taken in every instance to designate the "Greeks." This, apart "from an internal chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are told. As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252). Ergo, their teachers were Greeks. For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek" are convertible terms.

But it so happens that Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single Greek—Pythagoras; as Sankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu philosopher; and the ancient Aryan astronomical writers cited his opinions to criticize and compare them with the teachings of their own astronomical science, long before him perfected and derived from their ancestors. The honorific title of Acharya (master) was applied to him as to every other learned astronomer or mystic; and it certainly did not mean that Pythagoras or any other Greek "Master" was necessarily the master of the Brahmans. The word "Yavana" was a generic term employed ages before the "Greeks of Alexander" projected "their influence" upon Jambudvipa, to designate people of a younger race, the word meaning Yuvan "young," or younger. They knew of Yavanas of the north, west, south and east; and the Greek strangers received this appellation as the Persians, Indo-Scythians and others had before them. An exact parallel is afforded in our present day. To the Tibetans every foreigner whatsoever is known as a Peling; the Chinese designate Europeans as "red-haired devils;" and the Mussalmans call every one outside of Islam a Kuffir. The Webers of the future, following the example now set them, may perhaps, after 10,000 years, affirm, upon the authority of scraps of Moslem literature then extant, that the Bible was written, and the English, French, Russians and Germans who possessed and translated or "invented" it, lived in Kaffiristan shortly before their era under "Moslem influence." Because the Yuga Purana of the Gargi Sanhita speaks of an expedition of the Yavanas "as far as Pataliputra," therefore, either the Macedonians or the Seleuciae had conquered all India! But our Western critic is ignorant, of course, of the fact that Ayodhya or Saketa of Rama was for two millenniums repelling inroads of various Mongolian and other Turanian tribes, besides the Indo-Scythians, from beyond Nepaul and the Himalayas. Prof. Weber seems finally himself frightened at the Yavana spectre he has raised, for he queries:—"Whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the name was afterwards transferred." This wholesome doubt ought to have modified his dogmatic tone in many other such cases.

But, drive out prejudice with a pitch fork it will ever return. The eminent scholar, though staggered by his own glimpse of the truth, returns to the charge with new vigour. We are startled by the fresh discovery that Asuramaya:* the earliest astronomer, mentioned repeatedly in the Indian epics, "is identical with 'Ptolemaios' of the Greeks." The reason for it given is, that "this latter name, as we see from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian 'Turamaya,' out of which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily grow; and since, by the later tradition, this 'Maya' is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in the West." Had the "Piyadasi inscription" been found on the site of ancient Babylonia, one might suspect the word "Turamaya" as derived from "Turanomaya," or rather mania. Since, however, the Piyadasi inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by two kings—Chandragupta and Dharmasoka—what has "'Ptolemaios' of the Greeks" to do with "Turamaya" or the latter with "Asuramaya," except, indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under the stupefying "Greek influence" of the Upas Tree of Western Philology? Then we learn that, because "Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e., …. Greeks, and explains the formation of the word 'Yavanani,' to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must be supplied," therefore the word signifies "the writing of the Yavanas" of the Greeks and none other. Would the German philologists (who have so long and so fruitlessly attempted to explain this word) be very much surprised if told that they are yet as far as possible from the truth? That—Yavanani does not mean "Greek writing" at all, but any foreign writing whatsoever? That the absence of the word "writing" in the old texts, except in connection with the names of foreigners, does not in the least imply that none but Greek writing was known to them, or that they had none of their own, being ignorant of the art of reading and writing until the days of Panini? (theory of Prof. Max Muller). For Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans, first under penalty of death, and later on of eternal ostracism, were not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known the existence of their secret temple libraries. So that by the word Yavanani, "to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must he supplied," the writing of foreigners in general, whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant. As to the preposterous hypothesis of Prof. Max Muller that writing "was not used for literary purposes in India" before Panini's time (again upon Greek authority) that matter has been disposed of elsewhere.

————- * Dr. Weber is not probably aware of the fact that this distinguished astronomer's name was simply Maya; the prefix "Asura" was often added to it by ancient Hindu writers to show that he was a Rakshasa. In the opinion of the Brahmans he was an "Atlantean" and one of the greatest astronomers and occultists of the lost Atlantis. ————-

Equally unknown are those certain other and most important facts, fable though they seem. First, that the Aryan "Great War," the Mahabharata, and the Trojan War of Homer—both mythical as to personal biographies and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main— belong to the same cycle of events. For the occurrences of many centuries, among them the separation of sundry peoples and races, erroneously traced to Central Asia alone, were in these immortal epics compressed within the scope of single dramas made to occupy but a few years. Secondly, that in this immense antiquity the forefathers of the Aryan Greeks and the Aryan Brahmans were as closely united and intermixed as are now the Aryans and the so-called Dravidians. Thirdly, that before the days of the historical Rama, from whom in unbroken genealogical descent the Oodeypore sovereigns trace their lineage, Rajpootana was as full of direct post-Atlantean "Greeks," as the post-Trojan, subjacent Cumaea and other settlements of pre-Magna Graecia were of the fast Hellenizing sires of the modern Rajpoot. One acquainted with the real meaning of the ancient epics cannot refrain from asking himself whether these intuitional Orientalists prefer being called deceivers or deceived, and in charity give them the benefit of the doubt.*

————- * Further on, Prof. Weber indulges in the following piece of chronological sleight of hand. In his arduous endeavour "to determine accurately" the place in history of "the Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha" (translation by Beale), he thinks "the special points of relation here found to Christian legends are very striking. The question which party was the borrower Deals properly leaves undetermined. Yet in all likelihood (!!) we have here simply a similar case to that of the appropriation of Christian legend by this worshipers of Krishna" (p. 300). Now it is this that every Hindu and Buddhist has the right to brand as "dishonesty," whether conscious or unconscious. Legends originate earlier than history and die out upon being sifted. Neither of the fabulous events in connection with Buddha's birth, taken exoterically, necessitated a great genius to narrate them, nor was the intellectual capacity of the Hindus ever proved so inferior to that of the Jewish and Greek mob that they should borrow from them even fables inspired by religion. How their fables, evolved between the second and third centuries after Buddha's death, when the fever of proselytism and the adoration of his memory were at their height, could be borrowed and then appropriated from the Christian legends written during the first century of the Western era, can only be explained by a German Orientalist. Mr. T.W. Rhys Davids (Jataka Book) shows the contrary to have been true. It may be remarked in this connection that, while the first "miracles" of both Krishna and Christ are said to have happened at a Mathura, the latter city exists to this day in India—the antiquity of its name being fully proved—while the Mathura, or Matures in Egypt, of the "Gospel of Infancy," where Jesus is alleged to have produced his first miracle, was sought to be identified, centuries ago, by the stump of an old tree in thee desert, and is represented by an empty spot! —————

What can be thought of Prof. Weber's endeavour when, "to determine more accurately the position of Ramayana (called by him the 'artificial epic') in literary history," he ends with an assumption that "it rests upon an acquaintance with the Trojan cycle of legend …. the conclusion there arrived at is that the date of its composition is to be placed at the commencement of the Christian era in an epoch when the operation of the Greek influence upon India had already set in!" (p. 194.) The case is hopeless. If the "internal chronology" and external fitness of things, we may add presented in the triple Indian epic, did not open the eyes of the hypercritical professors to the many historical facts enshrined in their striking allegories; if the significant mention of "black Yavanas," and "white Yavanas," indicating totally different peoples, could so completely escape their notice;* and the enumeration of a host of tribes, nations, races, clans, under their separate Sanskrit designations in the Mahbharata, had not stimulated them to try to trace their ethnic evolution and identify them with their now living European descendants, there is little to hope from their scholarship except a mosaic of learned guesswork. The latter scientific mode of critical analysis may yet end some day in a consensus of opinion that Buddhism is due wholesale to the "Life of Barlaam and Josaphat," written by St. John of Damascus; or that our religion was plagiarized from that famous Roman Catholic legend of the eighth century in which our Lord Gautama is made to figure as a Christian Saint, better still, that the Vedas were written at Athens under the auspices of St. George, the tutelary successor of Theseus.

————- * See Twelfth Book of Mahabharata, Krishnas fight with Kalayavana. ————-

For fear that anything might be lacking to prove the complete obsession of Jambudvipa by the demon of "Greek influence," Dr. Weber vindictively casts a last insult into the face of India by remarking that if "European Western steeples owe their origin to an imitation of the Buddhist topes* …. on the other hand in the most ancient Hindu edifices the presence of Greek influence is unmistakable" (p. 274). Well may Dr. Rajendralala Mitra "hold out particularly against the idea of any Greek influence whatever on the development of Indian architecture." If his ancestral literature must be attributed to "Greek influence," the temples, at least, might have been spared. One can understand how the Egyptian Hall in London reflects the influence of the ruined temples on the Nile; but it is a more difficult feat, even for a German professor, to prove the archaic structure of old Aryavarta a foreshadowing of the genius of the late lamented Sir Christopher Wren! The outcome of this paleographic spoliation is that there is not a tittle left for India to call her own. Even medicine is due to the same Hellenic influence. We are told—this once by Roth—that "only a comparison of the principles of Indian with those of Greek medicine can enable us to judge of the origin, age and value of the former;" …. and "a propos of Charaka's injunctions as to the duties of the physician to his patient," adds Dr. Weber, "he cites some remarkably coincident expressions from the Oath of the Asklepiads." It is then settled. India is Hellenized from head to foot, and even had no physic until the Greek doctors came.

————— * Of Hindu Lingams, rather. —————

Sakya Muni's Place in History

No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof. Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof. Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist chronology. Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in view of possible future discoveries.* We have then to refute in our turn this great Oxford professor's speculations.

————- * Notwithstanding Prof. M. Muller's regrettable efforts to invalidate every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own German confreres. In the portion headed "Tradition as to Buddha's Age" (pp. 283-288) in his "Hist. of Ind. Lit.," Prof. Weber very aptly remarks, "Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present attainable. Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max Muller (1859) ('Hist. A.S.L.' p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), 'Ueber Buddha's Todesjahr,' and by 'Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel Buddhisten' so far yielded any definite results." Nor are they likely to. ————-

To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their chronology. With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and "Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India." In other words, while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration. Until rubbed against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down, in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting." Oh, rare Western sense of justice! *

————— * No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of Chandragupta. They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north: as the grant-tablets could show. But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India. ————-

Occult records show differently. They say—challenging proof to the contrary—that Alexander never penetrated into India farther than Taxila; which is not even quite the modern Attock. The murmuring of the Macedonian's troops began at the same place, and not as given out, on the banks of the Hyphasis. For having never gone to the Hydaspes or Jhelum, he could not have been on the Sutlej. Nor did Alexander ever found satrapies or plant any Greek colonies in the Punjab. The only colonies he left behind him that the Brahmans ever knew of, amounted to a few dozens of disabled soldiers, scattered hither and thither on the frontiers; who with their native raped wives settled around the deserts of Karmania and Drangaria—the then natural boundaries of India. And unless history regards as colonists the many thousands of dead men and those who settled for ever under the hot sands of Gedrosia, there were no other, save in the fertile imagination of the Greek historians. The boasted "invasion of India" was confined to the regions between Karmania and Attock, east and west; and Beloochistan and the Hindu Kush, south and north: countries which were all India for the Greek of those days. His building a fleet on the Hydaspes is a fiction; and his "victorious march through the fighting armies of India," another. However, it is not with the "world conqueror" that we have now to deal, but rather with the supposed accuracy and even casual veracity of his captains and countrymen, whose hazy reminiscences on the testimony of the classical writers have now been raised to unimpeachable evidence in everything that may affect the chronology of early Buddhism and India.

Foremost among the evidence of classical writers, that of Flavius Arrianus is brought forward against the Buddhist and Chinese chronologies. No one should impeach the personal testimony of this conscientious author had he been himself an eye-witness instead of Megasthenes. But when a man comes to know that he wrote his accounts upon the now lost works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy; and that the latter described their data from texts prepared by authors who had never set their eyes upon one line written by either Megasthenes or Nearchus himself; and that knowing so much one is informed by Western historians that among the works of Arrian, Book VII. of the "Anabasis of Alexander," is "the chief authority on the subject of the Indian invasion—a book unfortunately with a gap in its twelfth chapter"—one may well conceive upon what a broken reed Western authority leans for its Indian chronology. Arrian lived over 600 years after Buddha's death; Strabo, 500 (55 "B.C."); Diodorus Siculus—quite a trustworthy compiler!—about the first century; Plutarch over 700 anno Buddhae, and Quintus Curtius over 1,000 years! And when, to crown this army of witnesses against the Buddhist annals, the reader is informed by our Olympian critics that the works of the last-named author—than whom no more blundering (geographically, chronologically, and historically) writer ever lived—form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most valuable source of information respecting the military career of Alexander the Great—then the only wonder is that the great conqueror was not made by his biographers to have—Leonidas-like—defended the Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either rejected or only accepted pro tempore. Well may the Hindu resent the preference shown to the testimony of Greeks—of whom some, at least, are better remembered in Indian history as the importers into Jambudvipa of every Greek and Roman vice known and unknown to their day—against his own national records and history. "Greek influence" was felt, indeed, in India, in this, and only in this, one particular. Greek damsels mentioned as an article of great traffic for India—Persian and Greek Yavanis—were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till then remained pure virgins of the inner temples. Alliances with the Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the rotten apple of Sodom. Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha, found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, by the fire of heaven.

Reverting to the main subject, the "contradictions" between the Ceylonese and Chino-Tibetan chronologies actually prove nothing. If the Chinese annalists of Saul in accepting the prophecy of our Lord that "a thousand years after He had reached Nirvana, His doctrines would reach the north" fell into the mistake of applying it to China, whereas Tibet was meant, the error was corrected after the eleventh century of the Tzina era in most of the temple chronologies. Besides which, it may now refer to other events relating to Buddhism, of which Europe knows nothing, China or Tzina dates its present name only from the year 296 of the Buddhist era* (vulgar chronology having assumed it from the first Hoang of the Tzin dynasty): therefore the Tathagata could not have indicated it by this name in his well-known prophecy. If misunderstood even by several of the Buddhist commentators, it is yet preserved in its true sense by his own immediate Arhats. The Glorified One meant the country that stretches far off from the Lake Mansorowara; far beyond that region of the Himavat, where dwelt from time immemorial the great "teachers of the Snowy Range." These were the great Sraman-acharyas who preceded Him, and were His teachers, their humble successors trying to this day to perpetuate their and His doctrines. The prophecy came out true to the very day, and it is corroborated both by the mathematical and historical chronology of Tibet—quite as accurate as that of the Chinese. Arhat Kasyapa, of the dynasty of Moryas, founded by one of the Chandraguptas near Ptaliputra, left the convent of Panch-Kukkutarama, in consequence of a vision of our Lord, for missionary purpose in the year 683 of the Tzin era (436 Western era) and had reached the great Lake of Bod-Yul in the same year. It is at that period that expired the millennium prophesied.

———— * The reference to Chinahunah (Chinese and Huns) in the Vishma Parva of the Mahabharata is evidently a later interpolation, as it does not occur in the old MSS. existing in Southern India. ————

The Arhat carrying with him the fifth statue of Sakya Muni out of the seven gold statues made after his bodily death by order of the first Council, planted it in the soil on that very spot where seven years later was built the first GUNPA (monastery), where the earliest Buddhist lamas dwelt. And though the conversion of the whole country did not take place before the beginning of the seventh century (Western era), the good law had, nevertheless, reached the North at the time prophesied, and no earlier. For, the first of the golden statues had been plundered from Bhikshu Sali Suka by the Hiong-un robbers and melted, during the days of Dharmasoka, who had sent missionaries beyond Nepaul. The second had a like fate, at Ghar-zha, even before it had reached the boundaries of Bod-Yul. The third was rescued from a barbarous tribe of Bhons by a Chinese military chief who had pursued them into the deserts of Schamo about 423 Buddhist era (120 "B.C.") The fourth was sunk in the third century of the Christian era, together with the ship that carried it from Magadha toward the hills of Ghangs-chhen-dzo-nga (Chitagong). The fifth arriving in the nick of time reached its destination with Arhat Kasyapa. So did the last two.*

————- * No doubt, since the history of these seven statues is not in the hands of the Orientalists, it will be treated as a "groundless fable." Nevertheless such is their origin and history. They date from the first Synod, that of Rajagriha, held in the season of war following the death of Buddha, i.e., one year after his death. Were this Rajagriha Council held 100 years after, as maintained by some, it could not have been presided over by Mahakasyapa, the friend and brother Arhat of Sakyamuni, as he would have been 200 years old. The second Council or Synod, that of Vaisali, was held 120, not 100 or 110 years as some would have it, after the Nirvana, for the latter took place at a time a little over 20 years before the physical death of Tathagata. It was held at the great Saptapana cave (Mahavansa's Sattapanni), near the Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali Manuscripts), that was in Rajagriha, the old capital of Magadha. Memoirs exist, containing the record of his daily life, made by the nephew of king Ajatasatru, a favourite Bikshu of the Mahacharya. These texts have ever been in the possession of the superiors of the first Lamasery built by Arhat Kasyapa in Bod-Yul, most of whose Chohans were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India. The old text in question is a document written in Anudruta Magadha characters. (We deny that these or any other characters—whether Devanagari, Pali, or Dravidian—ever used in India, are variations of, or derivatives from, the Phoenician.) To revert to the texts it is therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called "Sarasvati" and "Bamboo-cave," got its latter name in this wise. When our Lord first sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to 60 feet wide by 33 deep. One day, while teaching the mendicants outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant, showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be easily detached, but the seventh leaf—directly connected with the stem. "Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six? The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five elements of illusive being. And the ONE which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the one—'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara). After that, causing the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was septenary, and had seven stages of development. From that time it was called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave. After the first Synod was held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king, and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments." These in after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and then disposed of as explained. Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct. In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave. At the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave, and he is right. For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations—both having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very time of their leaving India—to have their sites so easily forgotten. ————-

On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open their annals with the following event:—

They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki river in Magadha, was exiled by his father for acts of turbulence and immorality. Sent adrift on the ocean with his companions after having their heads shaved, Buddhist-Bhikshu fashion, as a sign of penitence, he was carried to the shores of Lanka. Once landed, he and his companions conquered and easily took possession of an island inhabited by uncivilized tribes, generically called the Yakshas. This—at whatever epoch and year it may have happened—is an historical fact, and the Ceylonese records, independent of Buddhist chronology, give it out as having taken place 382 years before Dushtagamani (i.e., in 543 before the Christian era). Now, the Buddhist Sacred Annals record certain words of our Lord pronounced by Him shortly before His death. In Mahavansa He is made to have addressed them to Sakra, in the midst of a great assembly of Devatas (Dhyan Chohans), and while already "in the exalted unchangeable Nirvana, seated on the throne on which Nirvana is achieved." In our texts Tathagata addresses them to his assembled Arhats and Bhikkhuts a few days before his final liberation:—"One Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, king of the land of Lala, together with 700 attendants, has just landed on Lanka. Lord of Dhyan Buddhas (Devas)! my doctrine will be established on Lanka. Protect him and Lanka!" This is the sentence pronounced which, as proved later, was a prophecy. The now familiar phenomenon of clairvoyant prevision, amply furnishing a natural explanation of the prophetic utterance without any unscientific theory of miracle, the laugh of certain Orientalists seems uncalled for. Such parallels of poetico-religious embellishments as found in Mahavansa exist in the written records of every religion—as much in Christianity as anywhere else. An unbiased mind would first endeavour to reach the correct and very superficially hidden meaning before throwing ridicule and contemptuous discredit upon them. Moreover, the Tibetans possess a more sober record of this prophecy in the Notes, already alluded to, reverentially taken down by King Ajatasatru's nephew. They are, as said above, in the possession of the Lamas of the convent built by Arhat Kasyapa—the Moryas and their descendants being of a more direct descent than the Rajput Gautamas, the Chiefs of Nagara—the village identified with Kapilavastu—are the best entitled of all to their possession. And we know they are historical to a word. For the Esoteric Buddhist they yet vibrate in space; and these prophetic words, together with the true picture of the Sugata who pronounced them, are present in the aura of every atom of His relics. This, we hasten to say, is no proof but for the psychologist. But there is other and historical evidence: the cumulative testimony of our religious chronicles. The philologist has not seen these; but this is no proof of their non-existence.

The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his disincarnation. Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in dating His death in 543 "B.C.," and one of the great Councils at 100 years after the latter event. But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and internal life—of which no philologist knows anything—can show that there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.* For the profane, the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the initiated—in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the waxing moon, of May. And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by Mahavana—in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions in Ceylon—as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha.

————- * Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities accessible to him, frankly confesses that "the history of Buddha offers an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings during a period of nearly twenty-three years." (Vol. I. p. 260.) ————-

Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented claim. "We are asked to believe"—he writes—"that the Ceylonese historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!" (i.e., Buddha's prophecy), "while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to the exact date of Buddha's death." Two points may be noticed in these sarcastic phrases: (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord; and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the sake of synchronisms." With reference to charge one, he may be asked why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours—were we to ever write the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat. With regard to charge two, the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all Christian chronologists are themselves living in. Their inability to vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity, and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death— even before their own people—is far greater than is ours to demonstrate the year of Buddha to other nations. Their utter failure to establish on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all—ought to engender a fairer spirit. When Christian historians can, upon undeniable historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology, then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds.

The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into exile. The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than, that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber. No Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof. If Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare himself; only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian religion. And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall it be thought worth while to collate the evidence afforded by historical—not psychological—data. Meanwhile, by analyzing some objections and exposing the dangerous logic of our critic, we may give the theosophists a few more facts connected with the subject under discussion.

Now that we have seen Professor Max Muller's opinions in general about this, so to say, the Prologue to the Buddhist Drama with Vijaya as the hero—what has he to say as to the details of its plot? What weapon does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates? What is the fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records? Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended. He begins by premising that—

1st.—"If the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha, it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon and of Burmah" (p. 266). "The Mahavansa begins with relating three miraculous visits which Buddha paid to Ceylon." Vijaya, the name of the founder of the first dynasty (in Ceylon), means conquest, "and, therefore, such a person most likely never existed" (p. 268). This he believes invalidates the whole Buddhist chronology.

To which the following pendant may be offered:—

William I., King of England, is commonly called the Conqueror; he was, moreover, the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, surnamed le Diable. An opera, we hear, was invented on this subject, and full of miraculous events, called "Robert the Devil," showing its traditional character. Therefore shall we be also justified in saying that Edward the Confessor, Saxons and all, up to the time of the union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry VII.—the new historical period in English history—are all "fabulous tradition" and "such a person as William the Conqueror most likely never existed?"

2nd.—In the Chinese chronology—continues the dissecting critic —"the list of the thirty-three Buddhist patriarchs …. is of a doubtful character. For Western history the exact Ceylonese chronology begins with 161 B.C." Extending beyond that date there exists but "a traditional native chronology. Therefore …. what goes before …. is but fabulous tradition."

The chronology of the Apostles and their existence has never been proved historically. The history of the Papacy is confessedly "obscure." Ennodius of Pavia (fifth century) was the first one to address the Roman Bishop (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession, as "Pope." Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all Christian chronology is "purely hypothetical."

3rd.—Two discrepant dates in Buddhist chronology are scornfully pointed out by the Oxford Professor. If the landing of Vijaya, in Lanka—he says—on the same day that Buddha reached Nirvana (died) is in fulfilment of Buddha's prophecy, then "if Buddha was a true prophet, the Ceylonese argue quite rightly that he must have died in the year of the conquest, or 543 B.C." (p. 270). On the other hand, the Chinese have a Buddhist chronology of their own; and it does not agree with the Ceylonese. "The lifetime of Buddha from 1029 to 950 rests on his own prophecy that a millennium would elapse from his death to the conversion of China. If, therefore, Buddha was a true prophet, he must have lived about 1000 B.C." (p. 266). But the date does not agree with the Ceylonese chronology—ergo, Buddha was a false prophet. As to that other "the first and most important link" in the Ceylonese as well as in the Chinese chronology, "it is extremely weak." …. In the Ceylonese "a miraculous genealogy had to be provided for Vijaya," and, "a prophecy was therefore invented" (p. 269).

On these same lines of argument it may be argued that:

Since no genealogy of Jesus, "exact or inexact," is found in any of the world's records save those entitled the Gospels of SS. Mathew (I—1-17), and Luke (iii. 23—38); and, since these radically disagree—although this personage is the most conspicuous in Western history, and the nicest accuracy might have been expected in his case; therefore, agreeably with Professor Max Muller's sarcastic logic, if Jesus "was a true prophet," he must have descended from David through Joseph (Matthew's Gospel); and "if he was a true prophet," again, then the Christians "argue quite rightly that he must have" descended from David through Mary (Luke's Gospel). Furthermore, since the two genealogies are obviously discrepant and prophecies were, in this instance, truly "invented" by the post-apostolic theologians [or, if preferred, old prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets, irrelevant to Jesus, were adapted to suit his case—as recent English commentators (in Holy Orders), the Bible revisers, now concede]; and since, moreover— always following the Professor's argument, in the cases of Buddhist and Brahmanical chronologies—Biblical chronology and genealogy are found to be "traditional and full of absurdities …. every attempt to bring them into harmony having proved a failure." (p. 266): have we or have we not a certain right to retort, that if Gautama Buddha is shown on these lines a false prophet, then Jesus must be likewise "a false prophet?" And if Jesus was a true prophet despite existing confusion of authorities, why on the same lines may not Buddha have been one? Discredit the Buddhist prophecies and the Christian ones must go along with them.

The utterances of the ancient pythoness now but provoke the scientific smile: but no tripod ever mounted by the prophetess of old was so shaky as the chronological trinity of points upon which this Orientalist stands to deliver his oracles. Moreover, his arguments are double-edged, as shown. If the citadel of Buddhism can be undermined by Professor Max Muller's critical engineering, then pari passu that of Christianity must crumble in the same ruins. Or have the Christians alone the monopoly of absurd religious "inventions" and the right of being jealous of any infringement of their patent rights?

To conclude, we say, that the year of Buddha's death is correctly stated by Mr. Sinnett, "Esoteric Buddhism" having to give its chronological dates according to esoteric reckoning. And this reckoning would alone, if explained, make away with every objection urged, from Professor Max Muller's "Sanskrit Literature" down to the latest "evidence"—the proofs in the "Reports of the Archeological Survey of India." The Ceylonese era, as given in Mahavansa, is correct in everything, withholding but the above given fact of Nirvana, the great mystery of Samma-Sambuddha and Abhidina remaining to this day unknown to the outsider; and though certainly known to Bikshu Mahanama—King Dhatusena's uncle—it could not be explained in a work like the Mahavansa. Moreover, the Singhalese chronology agrees in every particular with the Burmese chronology. Independent of the religious era dating from Buddha's death, called "Nirvanic Era," there existed, as now shown by Bishop Bigandet ("Life of Guadama"), two historical eras. One lasted 1362 years, its last year corresponding with 1156 of the Christian era: the other, broken in two small eras, the last, succeeding immediately the other, exists to the present day. The beginning of the first, which lasted 562 years, coincides with the year 79 A.D. and the Indian Saka era. Consequently, the learned Bishop, who surely can never be suspected of partiality to Buddhism, accepts the year 543 of Buddha's Nirvana. So do Mr. Tumour, Professor Lassen, and others.

The alleged discrepancies between the fourteen various dates of Nirvana collected by Csoma Corosi, do not relate to the Nyr-Nyang in the least. They are calculations concerning the Nirvana of the precursors, the Boddhisatwas and previous incarnations of Sanggyas that the Hungarian found in various works and wrongly applied to the last Buddha. Europeans must not forget that this enthusiast acted under protest of the Lamas during the time of his stay with them: and that, moreover, he had learned more about the doctrines of the heretical Dugpas than of the orthodox Gelugpas. The statement of this "great authority (!) on Tibetan Buddhism," as he is called, to the effect that Gautama had three wives whom he names—and then contradicts himself by showing ("Tibetan Grammar," p. 162, see note) that the first two wives "are one and the same," shows how little he can be regarded as an "authority." He had not even learned that "Gopa, Yasodhara and Utpala Varna" are the three names for three mystical powers. So with the "discrepancies" of the dates. Out of the sixty-four mentioned by him but two relate to Sakya Muni—namely, the years 576 and 546—and these two err in their transcription; for when corrected they must stand 564 and 543. As for the rest they concern the seven ku-sum, or triple form of the Nirvanic state and their respective duration, and relate to doctrines of which Orientalists know absolutely nothing.

Consequently from the Northern Buddhists, who, as confessed by Professor Weber, "alone possess these (Buddhist) Scriptures complete," and have "preserved more authentic information regarding the circumstances of their redaction"—the Orientalists have up to this time learned next to nothing. The Tibetans say that Tathagata became a full Buddha—i.e., reached absolute Nirvana—in 2544 of the Kali era (according to Souramana), and thus lived indeed but eighty years, as no Nirvanee of the seventh degree can be reckoned among the living (i.e., existing) men. It is no better than loose conjecture to argue that it would have entered as little into the thoughts of the Brahmans to note the day of Buddha's birth "as the Romans or even the Jews (would have) thought of preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the founder of a religion." (Max Muller's "Hist. S. L.") For, while the Jews had been from the first rejecting the claim of Messiah-ship set up by the Chelas of the Jewish prophet and were not expecting their Messiah at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth. If, in after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing superstitions, yet there had been a time when he was met by them as an Avatar. And, though they destroyed, others preserved.

The thousand and one speculations and the torturing of exoteric texts by Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time lost in their study.

The Indian annals specify King Ajatasatru as a contemporary of Buddha, and another Ajatasatru helped to prepare the council 100 years after his death. These princes were sovereigns of Magadha and have naught to do with Ajatasatru of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, who was a sovereign of the Kasis; though Bhadrasena, "the son of Ajatasatru" cursed by Aruni, may have more to do with his namesake the "heir of Chandragupta" than is generally known, Professor Max Miller objects to two Asokas. He rejects Kalasoka and accepts but Dharmasoka—in accordance with "Greek" and in utter conflict with Buddhist chronology. He knows not—or perhaps prefers to ignore—that besides the two Asokas there were several personages named Chandragupta and Chandramasa. Plutarch is set aside as conflicting with the more welcome theory, and the evidence of Justin alone is accepted. There was Kalasoka, called by some Chandramasa and by others Chandragupta, whose son Nanda was succeeded by his cousin the Chandragupta of Seleucus, and under whom the Council of Vaisali took place "supported by King Nanda" as correctly stated by Taranatha. (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure invention of the Brahmans.) Then there was the last of the Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama; he commenced the new era called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)—according to some European "authorities;" after him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena—also Chandragupta, who was followed by Dharmasoka Chandragupta. And there were two Piyadasis—the "Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka. And if controverted, the Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency. If Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name; and if his inauguration occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all? Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years earlier—if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the throne. And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara, Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is called in the Vayu Purana. These are all synonymous. However easy, at first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage, it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period. The Vayu and Matsya Puranas mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda and the Morya dynasties. And, though they connect Chandragupta with a Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of invalidating Buddhist chronology. However falsified the now extant texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller (notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at variance with Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta." Not, at any rate, when the real Chandragupta instead of the false Sandrocottus of the Greeks is recognized and introduced. Quite independently of the Buddhist version, there exists the historical fact recorded in the Brahmanical as well as in the Burmese and Tibetan versions, that in the year 63 of Buddha, Susinago of Benares was chosen king by the people of Pataliputra, who made away with Ajatasatru's dynasty. Susinago removed the capital of Magadha from Rajagriha to Vaisali, while his successor Kalasoka removed it in his turn to Pataliputra. It was during the reign of the latter that the prophecy of Buddha concerning Patalibat or Pataliputra—a small village during His time—was realized. (See Mahaparinibbana Sutta).

It will be easy enough, when the time comes, to answer all denying Orientalists and face them with proof and document in hand. They speak of the extravagant, wild exaggerations of the Buddhists and Brahmans. The latter answer: "The wildest theorists of all are they who, to evade a self-evident fact, assume moral, anti-national impossibilities, entirely opposed to the most conspicuous traits of the Brahmanical Indian character—namely, borrowing from, or imitating in anything, other nations. From their comments on Rig Veda, down to the annals of Ceylon, from Panini to Matouan-lin, every page of their learned scholia appears, to one acquainted with the subject, like a monstrous jumble of unwarranted and insane speculations. Therefore, notwithstanding Greek chronology and Chandragupta—whose date is represented as 'the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology' that 'nothing will ever shake'—it is to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses. She is drifting into danger. We are at the end of a cycle—geological and other—and at the beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient civilizations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of the prophet's honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy."

Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham

We have carefully examined the new inscription discovered by General A. Cunningham on the strength of which the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers has been declared to be incorrect; and we are of opinion that the said inscription confirms the truth of the Buddhist traditions instead of proving them to be erroneous. The above-mentioned archeologist writes as follows regarding the inscription under consideration in the first volume of his reports:—"The most interesting inscription (at Gaya) is a long and perfect one dated in the era of the Nirvana or death of Buddha. I read the date as follows:—Bhagavati Parinirvritte Samvat 1819 Karttike badi I Budhi—that is, 'in the year 1819 of the Emancipation of Bhagavata on Wednesday, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik.' If the era here used is the same as that of the Buddhists of Ceylon and Burmah, which began in 543 B.C., the date of this inscription will be 1819—543 = A.D. 1276. The style of the letters is in keeping with this date, but is quite incompatible with that derivable from the Chinese date of the era. The Chinese place the death of Buddha upwards of 1000 years before Christ, so that according to them the date of this inscription would be about A.D. 800, a period much too early for the style of character used in the inscription. But as the day of the week is here fortunately added, the date can be verified by calculation. According to my calculation, the date of the inscription corresponds with Wednesday, the 17th of September, AD. 1342. This would place the Nirvana of Buddha in 477 B.C., which is the very year that was first proposed by myself as the most probable date of that event. This corrected date has since been adopted by Professor Max Muller."

The reasons assigned by some Orientalists for considering this so-called "corrected date" as the real date of Buddha's death have already been noticed and criticized in the preceding paper; and now we have only to consider whether the inscription in question disproves the old date.

Major-General Cunningham evidently seems to take it for granted, as far as his present calculation is concerned, that the number of days in a year is counted in the Magadha country and by Buddhist writers in general on the same basis on which the number of days in a current English year is counted; and this wrong assumption has vitiated his calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion. Three different methods of calculation were in use in India at the time when Buddha lived, and they are still in use in different parts of the country. These methods are known as Souramanam, Chandrarmanam and Barhaspatyamanam. According to the Hindu works on astronomy a Souramanam year consists of 365 days 15 ghadias and 31 vighadias; a Chandramanam year has 360 days, and a year on the basis of Barhaspatyamanam has 361 days and 11 ghadias nearly. Such being the case, General Cunningham ought to have taken the trouble of ascertaining before he made his calculation the particular manam (measure) employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculating the years of the Buddhist era mentioned in the inscription above quoted. Instead of placing himself in the position of the writer of the said inscription and making the required calculation from that standpoint, he made the calculation on the same basis of which an English gentleman of the nineteenth century would calculate time according to his own calendar.

If the calculation were correctly made, it would have shown him that the inscription in question is perfectly consistent with the statement that Buddha died in the year 543 B.C. according to Barhaspatyamanam (the only manam used in Magadha and by Pali writers in general). The correctness of this assertion will be clearly seen on examining the following calculation.

543 years according to Barhaspatyamanam are equivalent to 536 years and 8 months (nearly) according to Souramanam.

Similarly, 1819 years according to the former manam are equivalent to 1798 years (nearly) according to the latter manarn.

As the Christian era commenced on the 3102nd year of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam), Buddha died in the year 2565 of Kaliyuga and the inscription was written in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam). And now the question is whether according to the Hindu almanack, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a Wednesday.

According to Suryasiddhanta the number of days from the beginning of Kaliyuga up to midnight on the 15th day of increasing moon of Aswina is 1,593,072, the number of Adhikamasansas (extra months) during the interval being 1608 and the number of Kshayathithis 25,323.

If we divide this number by 7 the remainder would be 5. As Kaliyuga commenced with Friday, the period of time above defined closed with Tuesday, as according to Suryasiddhanta a weekday is counted from midnight to midnight.

It is to be noticed that in places where Barhaspatyamanam is in use Krishnapaksham (or the fortnight of waning moon) commences first and is followed by Suklapaksham (period of waxing moon).

Consequently, the next day after the 15th day of the waxing moon of Aswina will be the 1st day of the waning moon of Kartika to those who are guided by the Barhaspatyamanam calendar. And therefore the latter date, which is the date mentioned in the inscription, was Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga.

The geocentric longitude of the sun at the time of his meridian passage on the said date being 174 deg. 20' 16" and the moon's longitude being 70 deg 51' 42" (according to Suryasiddhanta) it can be easily seen that at Gaya there was Padyamitithi (first day of waning moon) for nearly 7 ghadias and 50 vighadias from the time of sunrise.

It is clear from the foregoing calculation that "Kartik I Badi" coincided with Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga or the year 1261 of the Christian era, and that from the standpoint of the person who wrote the inscription the said year was the 1819th year of the Buddhist era. And consequently this new inscription confirms the correctness of the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers. It would have been better if Major-General Cunningham had carefully examined the basis of his calculation before proclaiming to the world at large that the Buddhist accounts were untrustworthy.

Discrimination of Spirit and Not Spirit

(Translated from the original Sanskrit of Sankara Acharya.)

by Mohini M. Chatterji

[An apology is scarcely needed for undertaking a translation of Sankara Acharya's celebrated Synopsis of Vedantism entitled "Atmanatma Vivekah." This little treatise, within a small compass, fully sets forth the scope and purpose of the Vedanta philosophy. It has been a matter of no little wonder, considering the authorship of this pamphlet and its own intrinsic merits, that a translation of it has not already been executed by some competent scholar. The present translation, though pretending to no scholarship, is dutifully literal, excepting, however, the omission of a few lines relating to the etymology of the words Sarira and Deha, and one or two other things which, though interesting in themselves, have no direct bearing on the main subject of treatment. —T.R.]

Nothing is Spirit which can be the object of consciousness. To one possessed of right discrimination, the Spirit is the subject of knowledge. This right discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is set forth in millions of treatises.

This discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is given below:

Q. Whence comes pain to the Spirit?

A. By reason of its taking a body. It is said in the Sruti: * "Not in this (state of existence) is there cessation of pleasure and pain of a living thing possessed of a body."

Q. By what is produced this taking of a body?

A. By Karma.**

Q. Why does it become so by Karma?

A. By desire and the rest (i.e., the passions).

Q. By what are desire and the rest produced?

A. By egotism.

Q. By what again is egotism produced?

A. By want of right discrimination.

Q. By what is this want of right discrimination produced?

A. By ignorance.

Q. Is ignorance produced by anything?

A. No, by nothing. Ignorance is without beginning and ineffable by reason of its being the intermingling of the real (sat) and the unreal (asat.)*** It is a something embodying the three qualities**** and is said to be opposed to Wisdom, inasmuch as it produces the concept "I am ignorant." The Sruti says, "(Ignorance) is the power of the Deity and is enshrouded by its own qualities." *****

————— * Chandogya Upanishad.

** This word it is impossible to translate. It means the doing of a thing for the attainment of an object of worldly desire.

*** This word, as used in Vedantic works, is generally misunderstood. It does not mean the negation of everything; it means "that which does not exhibit the truth," the "illusory."

**** Satva (goodness), Rajas (foulness), and Tamas (darkness) are the three qualities; pleasure, pain and indifference considered as objective principles.

***** Chandogya Upanishad. ————

The origin of pain can thus be traced to ignorance and it will not cease until ignorance is entirely dispelled, which will be only when the identity of the Self with Brahma (the Universal Spirit) is fully realized.* Anticipating the contention that the eternal acts (i.e., those enjoined by the Vedas) are proper, and would therefore lead to the destruction of ignorance, it is said that ignorance cannot be dispelled by Karma (religious exercises).

———— * This portion has been condensed from the original. ————

Q. Why is it so?

A. By reason of the absence of logical opposition between ignorance and act. Therefore it is clear that Ignorance can only be removed by Wisdom.

Q. How can this Wisdom be acquired?

A. By discussion—by discussing the nature of Spirit and Non-Spirit.

Q. Who are worthy of engaging in such discussion?

A. Those who have acquired the four qualifications.

Q. What are the four qualifications?

A. (1) True discrimination of permanent and impermanent things. (2) Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions both here and hereafter. (3) Possession of Sama and the other five qualities. (4) An intense desire of becoming liberated (from conditional existence).

(1.) Q. What is the right discrimination of permanent and impermanent things?

A. Certainty as to the Material Universe being false and illusive, and
Brahman being the only reality.

(2.) Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions in this world is to have the same amount of disinclination for the enjoyment of worldly objects of desire (such as garland of flowers, sandal-wood paste, women and the like) beyond those absolutely necessary for the preservation of life, as one has for vomited food, &c. The same amount of disinclination to enjoyment in the society of Rambha, Urvasi, and other celestial nymphs in the higher spheres of life beginning with Svarga loka and ending with Brahma loka.*

———— * These include the whole range of Rupa loka (the world of forms) in Buddhistic esoteric philosophy. ————

(3) Q. What are the six qualities beginning with Sama?

A. Sama, dama, uparati, titiksha, samadhana and sraddha.

Sama is the repression of the inward sense called Manas—i.e., not allowing it to engage in any other thing but Sravana (listening to what the sages say about the Spirit), Manana (reflecting on it), Nididhyasana (meditating on the same). Dama is the repression of the external senses.

Q. What are the external senses?

A. The five organs of perception and the five bodily organs for the performance of external acts. Restraining these from all other things but sravana and the rest, is dama.

Uparati is the abstaining on principle from engaging in any of the acts and ceremonies enjoined by the shastras. Otherwise, it is the state of the mind which is always engaged in Sravana and the rest, without ever diverging from them.

Titiksha (literally the desire to leave) is the bearing with indifference all opposites (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold, &c.) Otherwise, it is the showing of forbearance to a person one is capable of punishing.

Whenever a mind, engaged in Sravana and the rest, wanders to any worldly object of desire, and, finding it worthless, returns to the performance of the three exercises—such returning is called samadhana.

Sraddha is an intensely strong faith in the utterances of one's guru and of the Vedanta philosophy.

(4.) An intense desire for liberation is called mumukshatva.

Those who possess these four qualifications, are worthy of engaging in discussions as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit, and, like Brahmacharins, they have no other duty (but such discussion). It is not, however, at all improper for householders to engage in such discussions; but, on the contrary, such a course is highly meritorious. For it is said—Whoever, with due reverence, engages in the discussion of subjects treated of in Vedanta philosophy and does proper service to his guru, reaps happy fruits. Discussion as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit is therefore a duty.

Q. What is Spirit?

A. It is that principle which enters into the composition of man and is not included in the three bodies, and which is distinct from the five sheaths (Koshas), being sat (existence),* chit (consciousness),** and ananda (bliss),*** and witness of the three states.

———— * This stands for Purusha.

** This stands for Prakriti, cosmic matter, irrespective of the state we perceive it to be in.

*** Bliss is Maya or Sakti, it is the creative energy producing changes of state in Prakriti. Says the Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad): "Verily from Bliss are all these bhutas (elements) born, and being born by it they live, and they return and enter into Bliss." ————

Q. What are the three bodies?

A. The gross (sthula), the subtile (sukshma), and the causal (karana).

Q. What is the gross body?

A. That which is the effect of the Mahabhutas (primordial subtile elements) differentiated into the five gross ones (Panchikrita),* is born of Karma and subject to the six changes beginning with birth.** It is said:—

What is produced by the (subtile) elements differentiated into the five gross ones, is acquired by Karma, and is the measure of pleasure and pain, is called the body (sarira) par excellence.

Q. What is the subtile body?

A. It is the effect of the elements not differentiated into five and having seventeen characteristic marks (lingas).

Q. What are the seventeen?

A. The five channels of knowledge (Jnanendriyas), the five organs of action, the five vital airs, beginning with prana, and manas and buddhi.

———- * The five subtile elements thus produce the gross ones—each of the five is divided into eight parts, four of those parts and one part of each of the others enter into combination, and the result is the gross element corresponding with the subtile element, whose parts predominate in the composition.

** These six changes are—birth, death, existence in time, growth, decay, and undergoing change of substance (parinam) as milk is changed into whey. ————

Q. What are the Jnandendriyas?

A. [Spiritual] Ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose.

Q. What is the ear?

A. That channel of knowledge which transcends the [physical] ear, is limited by the auricular orifice, on which the akas depends, and which is capable of taking cognisance of sound.

Q. The skin?

A. That which transcends the skin, on which the skin depends, and which extends from head to foot, and has the power of perceiving heat and cold.

Q. The eye?

A. That which transcends the ocular orb, on which the orb depends, which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the power of cognising forms.

Q. The tongue?

A. That which transcends the tongue, and can perceive taste.

Q. The nose?

A. That which transcends the nose, and has the power of smelling.

Q. What are the organs of action?

A. The organ of speech (vach), hands, feet, &c.

Q. What is vach?

A. That which transcends speech, in which speech resides, and which is located in eight different centres* and has the power of speech.

———— * The secret commentaries say seven; for it does not separate the lips into the "upper" and "nether" lips. And, it adds to the seven centres the seven passages in the head connected with, and affected by, vach— namely, the mouth, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears. "The left ear, eye and nostril being the messengers of the right side of the head; the right ear, eye and nostril, those of the left side." Now this is purely scientific. The latest discoveries and conclusions of modern physiology have shown that the power or the faculty of human speech is located in the third frontal cavity of the left hemisphere of the brain. On the other hand, it is a well known fact that the nerve tissues inter-cross each other (decussate) in the brain in such a way that the motions of our left extremities are governed by the right hemisphere, while the motions of our right limbs are subject to the left hemisphere of the brain. ————-

Q. What are the eight centres?

A. Breast, throat, head, upper and nether lips, palate ligature (fraenum), binding the tongue to the lower jaw and tongue.

Q. What is the organ of the hands?

A. That which transcends the hands, on which the palms depend, and which has the power of giving and taking…. (The other organs are similarly described.)

Q. What is the antahkarana? *

A. Manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara form it. The seat of the manas is the root of the throat, of buddhi the face, of chitta the umbilicus, and of ahankara the breast. The functions of these four components of antahkarana are respectively doubt, certainty, retention and egotism.

Q. How are the five vital airs,** beginning with prana, named?

———— * A flood of light will be thrown on the text by the note of a learned occultist, who says:—"Antahkarana is the path of communication between soul and body, entirely disconnected with the former, existing with, belonging to, and dying with the body." This path is well traced in the text.

** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the body to external objects. They are the five allotropic modifications of life. ———-

A. Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. Their locations are said to be:—of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body. Functions of these are:—prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends, samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana circulates all over the body. Of these five vital airs there are five sub-airs—namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya. Functions of these are:—eructations produced by naga, kurma opens the eye, dhananjaya assimilates food, devadatta causes yawning, and krikara produces appetite—this is said by those versed in Yoga.

The presiding powers (or macrocosmic analogues) of the five channels of knowledge and the others are dik (akas) and the rest. Dik, vata (air), arka (sun), pracheta (water), Aswini, bahni (fire), Indra, Upendra, Mrityu (death), Chandra (moon), Brahma, Rudra, and Kshetrajnesvara,* which is the great Creator and cause of everything. These are the presiding powers of ear, and the others in the order in which they occur.

All these taken together form the linga sarira.** It is also said in the Shastras:—

The five vital airs, manas, buddhi, and the ten organs form the subtile body, which arises from the subtile elements, undifferentiated into the five gross ones, and which is the means of the perception of pleasure and pain.

Q. What is the Karana sarira?

————-
* The principle of intellect (Buddhi) in the macrocosm. For further
explanation of this term, see Sankara's commentaries on the Brahma
Sutras.

** Linga means that which conveys meaning, characteristic mark. ————

A. It is ignorance [of different monads] (avidya), which is the cause of the other two bodies, and which is without beginning [in the present manvantara],* ineffable, reflection [of Brahma] and productive of the concept of non-identity between self and Brahma. It is also said:—

"Without a beginning, ineffable avidya is called the upadhi (vehicle)— karana (cause). Know the Spirit to be truly different from the three upadhis—i.e., bodies."

Q. What is Not-Spirit?

A. It is the three bodies [described above], which are impermanent, inanimate (jada), essentially painful and subject to congregation and segregation.

———— * It must not be supposed that avidya is here confounded with prakriti. What is meant by avidya being without beginning, is that it forms no link in the Karmic chain leading to succession of births and deaths, it is evolved by a law embodied in prakriti itself. Avidya is ignorance or matter as related to distinct monads, whereas the ignorance mentioned before is cosmic ignorance, or maya-Avidya begins and ends with this manvantara. Maya is eternal. The Vedanta philosophy of the school of Sankara regards the universe as consisting of one substance, Brahman (the one ego, the highest abstraction of subjectivity from our standpoint), having an infinity of attributes, or modes of manifestation from which it is only logically separable. These attributes or modes in their collectivity form Prakriti (the abstract objectivity). It is evident that Brahman per se does not admit of any description other than "I am that I am." Whereas Prakriti is composed of an infinite number of differentiations of itself. In the universe, therefore, the only principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite moods, and so is space. The only progress in Nature is the realization of moods unrealized before. ————

Q. What is impermanent?

A. That which does not exist in one and the same state in the three divisions of time [namely, present, past and future.]

Q. What is inanimate (jada)?

A. That which cannot distinguish between the objects of its own cognition and the objects of the cognition of others….

Q. What are the three states (mentioned above as those of which the
Spirit is witness)?

A. Wakefulness (jagrata), dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless slumber (sushupti).

Q. What is the state of wakefulness?

A. That in which objects are known through the avenue of [physical] senses.

Q. Of dreaming?

A. That in which objects are perceived by reason of desires resulting from impressions produced during wakefulness.

Q. What is the state of dreamless slumber?

A. That in which there is an utter absence of the perception of objects.

The indwelling of the notion of "I" in the gross body during wakefulness is visva (world of objects),* in subtile body during dreaming is taijas (magnetic fire), and in the causal body during dreamless slumber is prajna (One Life).

Q. What are the five sheaths?

A. Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vjjnanamaya, and Anandamaya.

Annamaya is related to anna** (food), Pranamaya of prana (life),
Manomaya of manas, Vijnanamaya of vijnana (finite perception),
Anandamaya of ananda (illusive bliss).

———- * That is to say, by mistaking the gross body for self, the consciousness of external objects is produced.

** This word also means the earth in Sanskrit. ———-

Q. What is the Annamaya sheath?

A. The gross body.

Q. Why?

A. The food eaten by father and mother is transformed into semen and blood, the combination of which is transformed into the shape of a body. It wraps up like a sheath and hence so called. It is the transformation of food and wraps up the spirit like a sheath—it shows the spirit which is infinite as finite, which is without the six changes, beginning with birth as subject to those changes, which is without the three kinds of pain* as liable to them. It conceals the spirit as the sheath conceals the sword, the husk the grain, or the womb the fetus.

Q. What is the next sheath?

A. The combination of the five organs of action, and the five vital airs form the Pranamaya sheath.

By the manifestation of prana, the spirit which is speechless appears as the speaker, which is never the giver as the giver, which never moves as in motion, which is devoid of hunger and thirst as hungry and thirsty.

Q. What is the third sheath?

A. It is the five (subtile) organs of sense (jnanendriya) and manas.

———— * The three kinds of pain are:—

Adhibhautika, i.e., from external objects, e.g., from thieves, wild animals, &c.

Adhidaivika, i.e., from elements, e.g., thunder, &c.

Adhyatmika, i.e., from within one's self, e.g., head-ache, &c. See Sankhya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the opening Sloka. ———-

By the manifestation of this sheath (vikara) the spirit which is devoid of doubt appears as doubting, devoid of grief and delusion as grieved and deluded, devoid of sight as seeing.

Q. What is the Vijnanamaya sheath?

A. [The essence of] the five organs of sense form this sheath in combination with buddhi.

Q. Why is this sheath called the jiva (personal ego), which by reason of its thinking itself the actor, enjoyer, &c., goes to the other loka and comes back to this?*

A. It wraps up and shows the spirit which never acts as the actor, which never cognises as conscious, which has no concept of certainty as being certain, which is never evil or inanimate as being both.

Q. What is the Anandamaya sheath?

A. It is the antahkarana, wherein ignorance predominates, and which produces gratification, enjoyment, &c. It wraps up and shows the spirit, which is void of desire, enjoyment and fruition, as having them, which has no conditioned happiness as being possessed thereof.

Q. Why is the spirit said to be different from the three bodies?

A. That which is truth cannot be untruth, knowledge ignorance, bliss misery, or vice versa.

Q. Why is it called the witness of the three states?

A. Being the master of the three states, it is the knowledge of the three states, as existing in the present, past and future.**

———- * That is to say, flits from birth to birth.

** It is the stable basis upon which the three states arise and disappear. ———-

Q. How is the spirit different from the five sheaths?

A. This is being illustrated by an example:—"This is my cow," "this is my calf," "this is my son or daughter," "this is my wife," "this is my anandamaya sheath," and so on*—the spirit can never be connected with these concepts; it is different from and witness of them all. For it is said in the Upanishad—[The spirit is] "naught of sound, of touch, of form, or colour, of taste, or of smell; it is everlasting, having no beginning or end, superior [in order of subjectivity] to Prakriti (differentiated matter); whoever correctly understands it as such attains mukti (liberation)." The spirit has also been called (above) sat, chit, and ananda.

Q. What is meant by its being sat (presence)?

A. Existing unchanged in the three divisions of time and uninfluenced by anything else.

Q. What by being chit (consciousness)?

A. Manifesting itself without depending upon anything else, and containing the germ of everything in itself.

Q. What by being ananda (bliss)?

A. The ne plus ultra of bliss.

Whoever knows without doubt and apprehension of its being otherwise, the self as being one with Brahma or spirit, which is eternal, non-dual and unconditioned, attains moksha (liberation from conditioned existence.)

———— * The "heresy of individuality," or attavada of the Buddhists. ————

Was Writing Known Before Panini?

I am entrusted with the task of putting together some facts which would support the view that the art of writing was known in India before the time of our grammarian—the Siva-taught Panini. Professor Max Muller has maintained the contrary opinion ever since 1856, and has the approbation of other illustrious Western scholars. Stated briefly, their position is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper, or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period], though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p. 501.) To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber—a gentleman who, we observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period—admits that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs!

Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern; further, that contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of languages. Therefore, when Prof. Muller affirms that "there is not a single word in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of writing" (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal deference to Western opinion. For it is very hard to conceive how one so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing characters to preserve his grammatical system—supposing that none had previously existed—if his genius was equal to the invention of classical Sanskrit. The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for a written or bound book in the later literature of India—though applied by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda; (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work; (in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author; and (in B. iv. 3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof. Muller at all. Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed down to posterity by oral communication. Hence, we must believe that Panini was illiterate; but yet composed the most elaborate and scientific system of grammar ever known; recorded its 3,996 rules only upon the molecular quicksands of his "cerebral cineritious matter," and handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral teaching! Of course, nothing could be clearer; it commends itself to the simplest intellect as a thing most probable! And in the presence of such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op. cit. 523) confess that "it is possible" that he "may have overlooked some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence of written books previous to Panini." That looks like the military strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled. The precaution was necessary: written books did exist many centuries before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine upon his age. They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature. As the Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual relations, which none but the initiate would observe. That few living Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal imparters—the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a spiritually degenerate posterity.*

———- * Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman. ————

I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying. We know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans. But I hope to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing. Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim—though they will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.

I.—It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of the Tyrian settlement.

II.—Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the
Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.

III.—It can be proved that before the final division and classification of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries—the latter being one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman Aryans—mystics and metaphysicians above everything—were the only ones who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs. It can be demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from 250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among the initiates). The Vach—its alter ego or the "mystic self," the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman—became in time the mystery language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe. The appellation DEVANAGARI is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.

As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment— though a general synthesis must be the final result—we will proceed to examine the first part—namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is derived from the Phoenicians. When a Western philologer asserts that writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has some approximate certitude as to its real invention. But so far is this from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source from which modern alphabets were directly derived. De Rouge's investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:" a theory which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters." But the same authority traces it back one step farther. He says that the ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East (Kedem), or being perhaps primeval." There is not even a certainty whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given rise to the various modes of writing in use." So, if conjecture has the field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of things. Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called Kadmean characters. But, at the same time, this is not proven, they confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of both Phoenicians and Pelasgians.

If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:—From having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became Semites—on geographical and philological evidence(?). Their origin begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea; and that sea extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of India. The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world. That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny. The historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C. And it is well ascertained that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full records of their religion. Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus, and annihilated bodily—as to his works—except one small fragment preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all heathen documents that fell in his way. To see the direct bearing of the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge, yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given. Some fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are preserved in Josephus; and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called. And in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of their power; their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near. Even on Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the Western era. These data no man of science can deny. Leaving entirely aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western world are alone here given. Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of which—on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others—has been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!), we find: (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated (before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe; and (2) that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,). With such proofs of international communication, and more than proved relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.

Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission? And even if the Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write—to every educated Hindu an absurdity—they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000 years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics. Negative proof, perhaps? Granted: yet no more so than their own, and most suggestive.

And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding the rebuke of Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating "the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is conjectured to have been from—(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from some (b) mariners—from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy," the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their "Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks— though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further, unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages? The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people, chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a mystic service of those natural powers—the sun, wind, water, and air (our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the growth of the fruits of the earth; moreover, some of their tribes were ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the head of the clan or family. All this reminds one of the nomads, the Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were subject every distinct family or clan. While the Pelasgians were acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the dawn of Christianity!

Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan; or rather, which of the Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the Greek. Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?" The Latium Antiquum of Pliny and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor—the Pelasgian. What, then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language "spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe—before their separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees—cannot fail to see and to know—that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language" being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived, even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back—that of a universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have whispered to us that there was also a time—before the original Aryan settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhasha—when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini, Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.

Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic nomads—fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns—knew well the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven "book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished? One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and 73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton. He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together (Strabo, xv. 53 and 67). This would be late in the Sutra period, no doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning. Can the learned gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark. One would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept the alternative theory—known to us Aryan students as a fact—that writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote—many centuries before the epoch made illustrious by Panini.

Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned." Has it escaped notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet both of Indra and the Sun."* And if he was "the inventor of letters," and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows? That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans, illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?" Or, that the gentlemen of the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for impartial research?

———- * "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127.

** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India by Orpheus. ———-

Orpheus was—in Greece—the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god, according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or lyre of seven strings, i.e.—according to occult phraseology—the sevenfold mystery of the Initiation. Now Indra is the ruler of the bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to the sky." He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the Pandavas;* and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet considered the son of Indra. As throughout India all ancient cyclopean structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians. Moreover, as shown well by Pococke—laughed at because too intuitional and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned—the Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown.

———- * Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans, and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas, Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following: Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri, his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without comprehending the true reason. As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives to be sacrificed upon his tomb; and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks. ("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48). The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families. ————

In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna (personification of the universal Divine Principle); and the less mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or priest in the service of Zagreus …. founder of the Mysteries …. the inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the deity." Are not these striking parallels; and is it not significant that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of attaining it by masters of the mysteries? Real Devanagari—non-phonetic characters—meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals. Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods. If our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus first derived their knowledge of writing.

A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once prevailed throughout the world. Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the course of his initiation. He is identified with Indra; according to Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan nationality—supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a god; the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia; they are believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and taught the Phoenicians; from the latter all modern alphabets proceed. I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West; or on the side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans, their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the Rishis. When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan illiteracy. The history of human intellectual development shows that humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography before attaining that of cursive writing. It therefore remains with the Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us the pictographic proofs which support their position. As these are notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari characters of Panini's time.

Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp. 390,480 and 482). It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who, in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"— i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.): "Sakah Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah Brahmananam adarsana. Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same reference may be found in verses 2158-9. The Mahabharata shows the Yavanas descended from Turvasu—once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently degraded into Vrishala. Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were excommunicated. It may be inferred from the account therein contained of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya. But on account of their having rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of Sagara's father. The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with, and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof, and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with Indian history even within historical periods.

The value of that chronology—which places virtually the "primitive Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)—may, in conclusion, be illustrated by an example. Rough as may be the calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to data not generally accessible. In the words of Prof. Max Muller:—"The Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of everything Indian. No historian has disputed its claim to that early date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones" ("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61). And now, pray, what is this extremely "early date?" "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion. Several facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:—(1) Manu in his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once mentions Bengal; the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of Bengal. It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his sacrificial horse. [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.] (2) In the Ayun a list of the Hindu kings of Bengal is given. Though the date of the first king who reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps between the various dynasties; it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ. Now if, disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties that are preserved by history, we find the following:—

24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years 9 Kaista kings " " " " 250 " 11 Of the Adisur families " " " 714 " 10 Of the Bhopal family " " " 689 " 10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) " " 185 " 10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of " " 137 " ———— Years . . . . 4,393 "

If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive reigns. If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried), well and good. Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little to be said. But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal—if its date has to be accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.! A scientific rule which is good enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules which will not "work both ways?"

—A Chela