We see still standing the pyramids, and the ruins of temples and labyrinths, their walls covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and with the strange pictures of gods and goddesses. On rolls of papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, [pg 013]we have even fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians. Yet, though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of the mysterious race, the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the original intention of its ceremonial worship are far from being fully disclosed to us.[17]
Here again the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by which alone they become intelligible have disappeared.
In fact so little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sex on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two ago, one of this kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what was considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has, thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung round its neck, turned out to be that of Sesostris—the greatest King of Egypt!
Nevertheless, having found that “there is a natural connection between language and religion”; and that “there was a common Âryan religion before the separation of the Âryan race; a common Semitic religion before the separation of the Semitic race; and a common Turanic religion before the separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the Turanian class”; having, in fact, discovered only “three ancient centres of religion” and “three centres of language”; and though as entirely ignorant of those primitive religions and languages as of their origin—the Professor does not hesitate to declare “that a truly historical basis for a scientific treatment of the principal religions of the world” has been gained!
A “scientific treatment” of a subject is no guarantee for its “historical basis”; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no Philologist, even among the most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for historical facts. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has thoroughly proved to the world's satisfaction that, according to the phonetic rules of Grimm's law, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite distinct from each other, and has proved it scientifically. When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin “was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer,”[18] he has not the slightest “historical basis” for it, but makes history and fact subservient to his own conclusions, which may be very “scientific” in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual [pg 014] truth. The conflicting views of the various eminent Philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Prof. Max Müller himself, on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, are an evident proof that the statement has no “historical” basis to stand upon, “internal evidence” being very often a Jack-o'-lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better argument to bring forward to crush the contention of those learned writers who have insisted for the last century or so that there must have been “fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind ... preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy.” For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pandits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time. And while a prominent Singhalese priest assured the writer that it was well known that the most important tracts, belonging to the Buddhist sacred canon, were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European Pandits, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to ancient Brâhmanical works. When told that Professor Max Müller had declared to the audiences of his Lectures that the theory “that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, finds but few supporters at present”—the holy and learned man laughed. His answer was suggestive. “If Mr. ‘Moksh Mooller’ [as he pronounced the name], were a Brâhman, and came with me, I might take him to a gupa cave bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There was a ‘primeval revelation,’ and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reäppear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait.”
Questioned further on the point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut, in 1880.
No doubt the mystification played by the Brâhmans upon Colonel Wilford and Sir William Jones, in the last century, at Calcutta, was cruel, but it had been well deserved, and no one was more to blame in that affair than the missionaries and Colonel Wilford himself. The former, on the testimony of Sir William Jones himself,[19] were silly enough to maintain that “the Hindûs were even now almost Christians, [pg 015] because their Brahmâ, Vishnu and Mahesha were no other than the Christian trinity.”[20] It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy and, in its reäction, has caused the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For “that first supply from the Brâhmanical market,” in answer to the demand of Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of their opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole Purânic story about Krishna was plagiarized by the Brâhmans from the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his Lectures concerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of Colonel Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of the Brâhmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from the Brâhmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Colonel Vans Kennedy has long ago justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brâhman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Müller. What it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every identification and “connection” between the gods of many nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot-Hermes, etc.) was Maia, the mother of Gautama Buddha, also Mâyâ, and the mother of Jesus, likewise Mâyâ (Illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great Illusion symbolically)—yet these three characters have no connection, nor can they have any, since Bopp has “laid down his code of phonetic laws.”
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten [pg 016] history, it is a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny à priori everything that does not dove-tail with their special conclusions. Thus, while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and sciences having existed far back in the night of time, yet even the knowledge of writing is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited with barbarism instead of culture. Nevertheless traces of an immense civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This civilization is undeniably prehistoric. And how can there be civilization without a literature in some form, without annals or chronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the broken links in the history of departed nations. The gigantic and unbroken wall of the mountains that hem in the whole table-land of Tibet, from the upper course of the river Khuan-Khé down to the Karakorum hills, witnessed a civilization during millenniums of years, and should have strange secrets to tell mankind. The eastern and central portions of these regions—the Nan-chan and the Altyn-tag—were once upon a time covered with cities that could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting sand and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known to the traveller. Within those table-lands of sand there is water, and fresh oases are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible even to the profane native traveller. Hurricanes may “tear up the sands and sweep whole plains away,” they are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach. Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; and as their entrances are concealed, there is little fear that anyone would discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes where—
Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the mountain-range forms a rugged screen