The “Ocean” is Space, of course, for the latter was called “Waters of Space” before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the word Karshvar is consistently rendered as Dvîpa, and Hvaniratha is rendered by Jambudvîpa (Neryosangh, the translator of the Yasna).[1769] But this fact is not taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even such a learned Zoroastrian and Parsî by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger's work, passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of the former on the “incongruities” of this kind abounding in the Mazdean Scriptures. One of such “incongruities” and “coïncidences” concerns the similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the seven Dvîpas—islands, or continents, rather—as met with in the Purânas, namely:
The Dvîpas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean, surround Jambudvîpa, which is situated in the centre, [and] according to the Iranian view, [pg 802]the Kêrshvar Qaniratha is likewise situated in the centre of the rest, they form no concentric circles, but each of them [the six other Karshvars] is a peculiar individual space, and so they group themselves round [above] Qaniratha.[1770]
Now Qaniratha—better Hvaniratha—is not, as believed by Geiger and his translator, “the country inhabited by the Irânian tribes,” and “the other names” do not mean “the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the North, South, West, and East,” but signify our Globe or Earth. For that which is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely, that:
Two, Vorubarshti and Voruzarshti, lie in the North; two, Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in the East and West
—is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the Chain of our Planet, the Earth, represented in the Book of Dzyan (11) thus:
The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in the Secret Doctrine to present us with the Esoteric tenet. The “Earth” (our world) is tripartite, because the Chain of the Worlds is situated on three different planes above our Globe; and it is septempartite because of the seven Globes or Spheres which compose the Chain. Hence the further meaning given in Vendidâd (xix. 39), showing that:
Qaniratha alone is combined with imat, “this” (earth), while all other Karshvares are combined with the word “avat,” “that” or those—upper earths.
Nothing could be plainer. The same may be said of the modern comprehension of all other ancient beliefs.
The Druids, then, understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, when, all other fires being extinguished on the first of November, their sacred and inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and later Chaldees, like the Greeks, and again like the Christians—who do the same to this day, without suspecting [pg 803] the real meaning—they greeted the Morning Star, the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.[1771] Strabo speaks of an island near to Britannia: