Book: Five Years Of Theosophy

V >> Various >> Five Years Of Theosophy




-------
* Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other
works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly
expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be
imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman.
--------

I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a
fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying. We
know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans. But I hope
to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will
aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a
base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing.
Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim--though they
will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.

I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of
the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and
this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of
the Tyrian settlement.

II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the
Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.

III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification
of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the
profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret
language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being
one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like
the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which
had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and
later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of
prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman
Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones
who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the
characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous
assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs. It can be
demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the
Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the
influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we
accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from
250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic
Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among
the initiates). The Vach--its alter ego or the "mystic self," the
sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman--became in time the mystery
language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and
Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and
Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe. The appellation DEVANAGARI
is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic
NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.

As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment--
though a general synthesis must be the final result--we will proceed to
examine the first part--namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is
derived from the Phoenicians. When a Western philologer asserts that
writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has
some approximate certitude as to its real invention. But so far is this
from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians
learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source
from which modern alphabets were directly derived. De Rouge's
investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or
rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:" a theory
which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports
by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters." But the
same authority traces it back one step farther. He says that the
ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to
Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East
(Kedem), or being perhaps primeval." There is not even a certainty
whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original
alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given
rise to the various modes of writing in use." So, if conjecture has the
field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the
eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of
things. Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called
Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also
to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called
Kadmean characters. But, at the same time, this is not proven, they
confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the
art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of
both Phoenicians and Pelasgians.

If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:--From
having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became
Semites--on geographical and philological evidence(?). Their origin
begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea; and that sea
extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of
India. The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world.
That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny. The
historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C. And it is well ascertained
that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State
documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full
records of their religion. Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician
language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus,
and annihilated bodily--as to his works--except one small fragment
preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all
heathen documents that fell in his way. To see the direct bearing of
the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged
ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European
Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge,
yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given. Some
fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are
preserved in Josephus; and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the
earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called. And
in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of
their power; their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the
whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near. Even on
Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red
Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the
Western era. These data no man of science can deny. Leaving entirely
aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the
evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed
tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western
world are alone here given. Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of
which--on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner
consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem
proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others--has
been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!),
we find: (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated
(before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the
regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe; and (2)
that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the
sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,). With
such proofs of international communication, and more than proved
relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and
other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our
forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.

Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole
custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they
traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a
people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of
arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved
against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission? And even if the
Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write--to every educated Hindu an
absurdity--they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000
years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics. Negative
proof, perhaps? Granted: yet no more so than their own, and most
suggestive.

And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding the rebuke of
Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating
"the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the
subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is
conjectured to have been from--(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from
some (b) mariners--from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be
sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their
Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy,"
the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their
"Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have
been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either
of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on
Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks--
though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further,
unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to
Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common
Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then
how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages?
The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who
place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of
historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous
language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now
extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they
be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data
in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people,
chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though
preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean
water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent
construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a
mystic service of those natural powers--the sun, wind, water, and air
(our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the
growth of the fruits of the earth; moreover, some of their tribes were
ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the
head of the clan or family. All this reminds one of the nomads, the
Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were
subject every distinct family or clan. While the Pelasgians were
acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of
culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by
the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the
dawn of Christianity!

Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by
this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan; or rather, which of the
Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a
language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the
Greek. Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of
Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the
Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor
even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad
conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the
blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic
Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough
and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the
palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?" The Latium Antiquum of Pliny
and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest
kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor--the Pelasgian. What,
then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language
"spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe--before their
separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the
Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as
flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that, however inferior to
the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of
Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the
same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees--cannot fail to see and
to know--that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to
have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of
perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any
intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language"
being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived,
even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of
immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost
to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have
the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back--that of a
universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will
be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its
future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit
will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be
followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have
whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan
settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the
fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred
Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed
subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise
and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was
only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini,
Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout
cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.

Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic
nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well
the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven
"book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon
them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither
read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace
of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical
literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the
period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's
period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a
canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller
to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord
Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other
alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and
secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the
laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and
73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton.
He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together
(Strabo, xv. 53 and 67). This would be late in the Sutra period, no
doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning. Can the learned
gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period
showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of
his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so
transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark. One
would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept
the alternative theory--known to us Aryan students as a fact--that
writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the
Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote--many centuries before the
epoch made illustrious by Panini.

Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god
Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned." Has it escaped
notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet
both of Indra and the Sun."* And if he was "the inventor of letters,"
and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows?
That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of
Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans,
illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?" Or, that the gentlemen of
the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for
impartial research?

-------
* "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127.

** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India
by Orpheus.
-------

Orpheus was--in Greece--the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god,
according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or
lyre of seven strings, i.e.--according to occult phraseology--the
sevenfold mystery of the Initiation. Now Indra is the ruler of the
bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to
the sky." He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha
Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person
as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the
Pandavas;* and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet
considered the son of Indra. As throughout India all ancient cyclopean
structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar
structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians.
Moreover, as shown well by Pococke--laughed at because too intuitional
and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned--the
Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown.

-------
* Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not
Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans,
and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas,
Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following:
Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri,
his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as
well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without
comprehending the true reason. As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a
custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives
to be sacrificed upon his tomb; and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a
similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks.
("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48). The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called
esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet
Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families.
--------

In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna
(personification of the universal Divine Principle); and the less
mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or
priest in the service of Zagreus .... founder of the Mysteries .... the
inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed
to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the
deity." Are not these striking parallels; and is it not significant
that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of
religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of
attaining it by masters of the mysteries? Real Devanagari--non-phonetic
characters--meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs
used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals.
Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the
Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or
referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods. If
our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers
meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they
will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus
first derived their knowledge of writing.

A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once
prevailed throughout the world. Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the
course of his initiation. He is identified with Indra; according to
Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion
swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan
nationality--supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a
god; the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia; they are
believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and
taught the Phoenicians; from the latter all modern alphabets proceed.
I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the
balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans
transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West; or on the
side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans,
their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their
redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most
wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were
illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the
Rishis. When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a
river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain
spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan
illiteracy. The history of human intellectual development shows that
humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography
before attaining that of cursive writing. It therefore remains with the
Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us
the pictographic proofs which support their position. As these are
notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our
ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari
characters of Panini's time.

Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful
study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp.
390,480 and 482). It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the
Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing
before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who,
in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases
rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"--
i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.): "Sakah
Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah
Brahmananam adarsana. Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah
Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same
reference may be found in verses 2158-9. The Mahabharata shows the
Yavanas descended from Turvasu--once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently
degraded into Vrishala. Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were
excommunicated. It may be inferred from the account therein contained
of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent
proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of
the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful
monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya. But on account of their having
rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were
excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at
the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of
Sagara's father. The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with,
and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by
the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof,
and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with
Indian history even within historical periods.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.