Maier gives the longitude as .. 7 13 53 48
And places the apogee at .. .. 7 14 6 54
The determination of the moon's place by the Brâhmans thus differs only by nine minutes from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty-two minutes, and it is very evident that they could only have obtained this agreement with our best Tables and this exactitude in the celestial positions by observation. If then, observation fixed the end of this period, there is every reason to believe that it determined its commencement. But then this motion, determined directly, and from nature, would of necessity be in close agreement with the true motions of the heavenly bodies.
And in fact the Hindû motion during this long period of 4,883 years, does not differ by a minute from that of Cassini, and agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples, the Hindûs and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and perhaps as distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely the same results as regards the moon's motions; and an agreement which would be inconceivable, if it were not based on the observation and mutual imitation of nature. We must remark that the four Tables of the Hindûs are all copies of the same Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese Tables existed in 1687, when they were brought from India by M. de la Loubère. At that time the tables of Cassini and Maier were not in existence, and thus the Hindûs were already in possession of the exact motion contained in these Tables, while we did not yet possess it. It must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindû motion is the point of observation. It is exact throughout this period of 4,383 years, because it was taken from the sky itself; and if observation determined its close, it fixed its commencement also. It is the longest period which has been observed and of which the recollection is preserved in the annals of Astronomy. It has its [pg 730]origin in the epoch of the year 3102 b.c., and it is a demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch.[1142]
Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific men who have tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Âryans. From John Bentley down to Burgess' Sûrya-Siddhânta, not one Astronomer has been fair enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However distorted and misunderstood the Hindû Symbology may be, no Occultist can fail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences; nor will he turn away from their metaphysical and mystical interpretation of the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The descent and reäscent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of things, to believe in a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical Soul and the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the former, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth have placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the author of The Gnostics and their Remains asserts, the aim of all the Gnostic schools and the later Platonists
was to accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic theosophy, the very essence of which was that the innumerable gods of the Hindû mythology were but names for the Energies of the First Triad in its successive Avatârs or manifestations unto man,
whither can we better turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very root, than to the old Indian wisdom? We say again: Archaic Occultism would remain incomprehensible to all, if it were to be rendered otherwise than through the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hindûism. For the former is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one mother—ancient Lemuro-Atlantean Wisdom.
Section XVII. Summary of the Position.
The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it remains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or not. If there were such a thing as a void, a vacuum in Nature, one ought to find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless admirers of the “lights” of Science, who pass their time in mutually destroying their teachings. If ever the theory that “two lights make darkness” found its application it is in this case, where one-half of the “lights” imposes its forces and “modes of motion” on the belief of the faithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same. “Ether, Matter, Energy”—the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three principles of the truly unknown God of Science, called by them Physical Nature!