Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated, “when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called Ît, at the head of a numerous army, saying ‘abhayan,’ or there is no fear”; and scattered the enemy. “The King Ît,” explains Wilford, “is a subordinate incarnation of Mrīra”—Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?—who “reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha-dvîpa, through Barbaradêsa, Misra-st'hân and Arva-st'hân, or Arabia,”[961] etc.
Surely, if the Hindû Purânas give a description of wars on continents and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs—they who were never known to navigate, or cross the Kâla-pâni, the Black Waters of the Ocean, in the days of Phœnician navigation—then these Purânas must be older than those Phœnicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years b.c. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,[962] for an Adept writes:
In the above accounts, the Hindûs speak of this island as existing and in great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years ago.
But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindû Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished soon after the upheaval of the two Americas[963]—the two Varshas of Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun sets,” where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,[964] he says:
We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the world, i.e., in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of 24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas, Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of the “White Island.”
Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to have killed Div-sefid, the White Devil—a possible personification of the ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas—he may perchance be only a representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants, the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily cursing the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura, and Shankha-dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and ethnologically Plato's Atlantis in Hindû dress.
It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island is still existing, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years which have elapsed since Shankha-dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindûs should [pg 426] have known the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one assumes that:
At the time when the summer tropical “colure” passed through the Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo was vertical to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island of Atlantis at noon.
This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became connected with Shankha-dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato's Atlantis). Only, as shown by Mackey's Sphinxiad, this must have occurred about 23,000 years ago, astronomically; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have passed over Atlantis or Shankha-dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly demonstrated. Say the Commentaries:
The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who descended originally from Shveta-dvîpa],[965] who had mixed with the Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta-dvîpa].... Those of the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM.