Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of another large continent [America].
It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil” of Colonel Wilford,[348] as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took [pg 156] place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.
The Shatapatha then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu. This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his [and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and amazing nonsense,” as some call the Purânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a sub-race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the favour of the two deities,” her sex is changed and she becomes a man, Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists[349] think and have declared that:
Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.
The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,” or “a stream of praise,” should be male and female by turn: unless, indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to perceive.
In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch-Shata-Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root-Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:
From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:
By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.
But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their own Purânas a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat-born.” This allegory is regarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.
But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask: