Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the heavenly bodies, and—no more. So far, it has been unable to discover with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun, stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old Chaldea and Egypt—namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction. But let the modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted with; or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the world's perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen. The essence of cometary matter must be—and the "Adepts" say is—totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar— all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding. It is to be feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or extra radiant state; et seq.

Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of their inner constitution. His science has led him no farther towards a reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer shell, or Sthula Sarira. Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations, the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and the matter of our own planet. Verily and indeed, no microscopes, spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to physical inquiry. The methods of spiritual research and psychological observation are the only efficient agencies to employ. We have to proceed by analogy in everything to be sure. Yet the candid men of science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a few stars—a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the shoreless, cosmic ocean—to conclude that these stars are the same as all other stars—our earth included; that, because they have attained a certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have, therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within even that limited space. For, in truth, they have done nothing of the kind. They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of their vision. And even though it were helped by telescopes of a hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick Observatory, the case would not alter. No physical instrument will ever help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella, with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away, can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea. For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral shape) the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that, far stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the great Shamo desert. The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.

———— * The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric Western astronomy. Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day. ————

Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the material constitution, of star and planet, since European science, knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not—and this is more than sufficient for all present purposes. The next best thing to learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.

Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered. The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western science to afford some useful hints at least.

Question 1.—Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?

Answer:—No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance: while denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged to remote worlds in the process of formation; and agreeing with modern science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed; they yet add that many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds. The astronomer has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M. Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others. Before an emphatic contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a single trace behind? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed? In the great cosmic deep—we say. The bright "brick" is caught by the hand of the mason—directed by that Universal Architect which destroys but to rebuild. It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.

Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry worlds. There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all the physicist knows. The "Adept" affirms in this connection that orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word "infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance; rather as a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious Reality. When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space—in its septenary completeness. "The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted "properties of the nature of things—of two subjective negatives converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space. As an absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above." When demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround—say, a fly, but which, in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the transparent atmosphere. This is no psychology, but simply occult physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force," to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya. In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an etheroscope.

It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that "An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law. To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system), why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets are directly in opposition to this theory? How long shall we see even great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident hiatus! The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only "about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth," should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be "twenty-seven times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth," should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth's equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the "Adepts" are aware.

Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos.

What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much of the rest)? But these do not prove the solidity of the "central mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing "a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?" We say that there is indeed a "prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical, mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will consider the next interrogatory.



Question II.—Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?

Such is the accepted theory of modern science: it is not what the "Adepts" teach. The former says—the sun "derives no important accession of heat from without:"—the latter answer—"the sun needs it not." He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical textbooks of Missionary Schools—namely, that "the sun has an orbital journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General Readers.")

The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion, in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly speaking, though the body of the sun—a body that was never yet reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented—cannot be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or, properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had? The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun—an invisible orb of which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing—has in him the spirit of every element that exists in the solar system; and his "Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our planet having to await its further growth and development before any of its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;" the ascetic's dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man's blood—the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere. The "rose-coloured region!" How little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of matter.

————- * There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject. The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth (Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so. The visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem. ————-

If the "Adepts" are asked: "What then, in your views, is the nature of our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"—they answer: beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible.*

————- * If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God himself, and how he is visible, how invisible," The italics are the author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words which had a double meaning in their code. Here "God himself" visible and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum—Nature's seventh principle. —————

And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame, no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the "protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.; to this the only answer that can be given is the following: the appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes. Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities—Sir W. Herschel—says the following: "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of the sun through the transparent ones." The underlined words, written nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived. And what the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas, the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!

———— * Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of the question." —————

The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W. Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps metaphorically!" It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid bodies revolving near the sun's surface. "They have been conjectured to be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...." When all his anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all astronomers comes near the truth—far nearer than any of those modern astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his "imaginative and fanciful theories." His only mistake, now shared by most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun itself. When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory—"the definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature"—his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable knowledge of physical science. When he adds: "Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the immediate sources of the solar light and heat"—he utters a grander physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And when, furthermore, we find him postulating—"looked at in this point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a much as it gives out. Were the astronomers to be asked—what definite and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory—what knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere—they might, perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present theories. For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:—

Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction? They have no means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of determining, the sun's physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter, such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable velocity of many meteors;" (c) confessedly—they "have no means of learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light "may come from the surface layers only;" and, "it may be but a shell" .... (truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion, properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;" and "whether these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only processes of combustion which can actually take place there." Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible characteristic of the light of the glowing gas." Thus, the whole basis of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they, the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz., that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages, prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the authorities of the age in physical science—Professor Tyndall—saying that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—would be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and again:—".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store ...."—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the flux of power is eternally the same." Mr. Tyndall speaks here as though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori—"the sun is cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds as loud as it ever did.

No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will not be extinguished. Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and—died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them—to die themselves for their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun: he will have unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"—the mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana "borrowed from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from the Gospel—in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the same source! When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders, then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the historical truths of the West vindicated!



Question III.—Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?

No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism" (page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm—the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.

That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability, and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible—for what criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some 20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature, popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word— superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and "folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius, mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end—the dawn of pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae—at the nearest. The latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately— Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy— hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation—Western scholars got early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be, most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into which most have slipped.

The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists—so long will Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient Judaism and modern Christianity.

So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time, that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient relics—Babylonia and Assyria—there are other sites where it could profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces" under its beds of sand.

Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon "heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory—thus obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations—still, despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not scrupled to deny one to others—whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige.

No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the Pelasgi—the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus? What about the Etruscans—the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people described as are the Pelasgi—a highly intellectual, receptive, active people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary, though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else, subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from which all European alphabets are derived—who were they? Could they be shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg (Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to 2247 "B.C.." And who were the Etruscans?

Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say—prehistoric) Tursenoi of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their northern latitudes"—only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology, accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but "a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"? Or, that the Trojan war could not have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle, Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has access to quite different—and we make bold to say, more trustworthy— materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend Western historical infallibility? He believes—on the strength of the documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement. That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And, having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the Normans and Saxons—two thousand years before they could build their medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans; and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness—since they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of this age—about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii, their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi; so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."

When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—as proved by their inscriptions—than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the Past?"

"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?" More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments, to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences. What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the hand of Time—lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm—the question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of "Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which, following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in enunciating, you are not the first to explain them." We learn more easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which is now simply improving upon details.



Question IV.—Is the Moon immersed in matter?

No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela" his "views of the moon," for publication. With Selenography, modern science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and 105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature. Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to—



Question V.—About the mineral monad.

Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is "authorized by the Adepts." Why not? The term "monad" applies to the latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to the term and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it "unscientific." What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short, the mineral monad is one—the higher animal and human monads are countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression.

It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the "Mineral Monad" is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The "Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad—not the atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.

And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage of the differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree—i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"— considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side—these are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana—the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple diagram will aid us:—

[[Diagram here]]

The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion (a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the spiritual impulse (through the elementals—of which little is permitted to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis—matter; and this idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line, d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.

The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god, like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp. 205-6). The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its lowest and most concrete terrestrial state; in man the monad is fully developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state—but one degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*

————— * The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness. —————



Question VIII.—Sri Sankaracharya's Date

It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any particular event in the ancient history of India; and this difficulty is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists, whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy. The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based. The writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of Hindu writers and pundits. Very often, facts and dates are taken by these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries on the assumption that they are correct without any further investigation by themselves. Even when a writer gives a date with an expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will be convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of Sankaracharya.

I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old. We do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously think of defending the said doctrine. Nevertheless, it had exercised a considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology. If an antiquity of five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding the truth of the statement.

II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial investigator untainted by Christian prejudices. The maximum limit of Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament; and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other, should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.

III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era. Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin, in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five thousand years.

IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha. For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ. This is indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.

V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of different writers. By this process of reasoning they have discovered two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis. We do not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to identity of personality. But we cannot but protest against such assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them, merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or establishing a favourite hypothesis.

VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language and Indian literature. The time required for this growth is often estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the time required for the gradual development of the various strata composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a proper method in making these calculations. It will be wrong to assume that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of another within the same limits. The peculiar characteristics of the nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into consideration in attempting to make any such calculation. The history of the said nation is equally important. Any one who examines Max Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to these considerations. The time allotted to the growth of these four "strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.

We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers regarding the dates of ancient Indian history.

In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya's date, special care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very first Sankaracharya who established the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams (temples) established by him and his successors. Many of the Adwaitee Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during their time. They are often referred to under the general name of Sankaracharya. Consequently, any reference made to any one of these Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first Sankaracharya himself.

Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara's date is quoted by "An English F.T.S." against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr. Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully examined the subject himself. He assigns no reasons for the date given, and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him. The date which he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of his book on "The Religions of India," which reads thus: "Sankaracharya is generally placed in the eighth century; perhaps we must accept the ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on the 10th of the month 'Madhava' in 788 A.D. Other traditions, it is true, place him in the second and fifth centuries. The author of the Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement of the fourteenth." Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions for placing him in some century before the Christian era as for placing him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under consideration. Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his attention to this subject. Monier Williams merely copies the date given by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter. Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject with some care and attention; and he frankly confesses that the exact period at which "he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined" (p. 201 of vol. I. of his "Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos"). Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very misleading. Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is "the best accredited tradition." When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to support it and establish it by proper arguments. The other traditions alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of the tradition relied upon. But the wording of the foot-note in question seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are a few isolated passages which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in this connection.

Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries. In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;" and in page 135 he states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of orthodoxy." The force of these statements is, however, considerably weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin.

The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is highly ridiculous. It is well known to almost every Hindu that the followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in originating it. There are some passages in his book which tend to show that this date cannot be considered as quite correct. In page 135 he says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka.

Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without retaliating on their enemies. The political ascendency gained by the Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long; and the Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132 of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh century. It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of decay. No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins. But what evidence is there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task? If the main object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to criticize its doctrines and expose its defects. On the other hand, he does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works.

Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the Buddhists or their doctrines; and the insertion of even these few remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting. As, in our humble opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr. Weber's fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha. From these few remarks it will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with Buddhist persecution. We may here quote a few passages from Mr. Wilson's Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in support of our remarks. He writes as follows regarding Sankara's connection with the persecution of the Buddhists:—"Although the popular belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its accuracy. Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant; and, speaking from my own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are to be found in his own writings, all which are extant, and the object of which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism, but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order." Further on he observes that "it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of persecution; he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task, nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas."

From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara's date cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period.

Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be given him for the originality of his discovery. This mysterious and occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy. The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my humble opinion, worthless. The Hindus had a Prominent example of a grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the adventures of the Arabian prophet. There is but one other passage in Mr. Barth's book which has some reference to Sankara's date. In page 207 he writes as follows:—"The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea. This testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara." But this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in some century after the author of Sakuntala.

From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion regarding Sankara's date is very unsatisfactory. As Mr. Wilson seems to have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence. In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara lived. Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson writes as follows:—

"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third or fourth century after; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old. The Bhoja Prabandha enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries. The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago, again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in Tuluva, no more than 600 years since; the latter assertion being intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy, a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through Sankara's native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan's citation of it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798. At the same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the same work in Colonel Mackenzie's possession, states Sankaracharya to have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from Mr. Duncan's statement—a difference of the less importance, as the manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be depended upon. The weight of authority therefore is altogether in favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to adopt this estimate of Sankara's date, and to place him in the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era."

We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson's list before proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage.

In a work called "The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors," published at Bombay in 1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people, 2,200 years ago. The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show that he lived more than 2,000 years ago.

The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their traditions being identical. Their calculation can safely be relied upon as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi (something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham; and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era.

No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature, origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement; nor does it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya. These traditions are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it does not appear on what grounds their testimony is discredited by him. Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham. We have already referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at Madras, who has recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which "common tradition" makes Sankara "about 1,200 years old." As far as our knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India. The majority of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common tradition. We have but a mass of contradictory accounts.

It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson's pretensions should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha with the great Adwaitee teacher. No Hindu would ever commit such a ridiculous mistake. We are astonished to find some of these European Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and Panchatantra, as if they were historical works. In some other part of his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha's date; but now he misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion regarding Sankara's date. Surely, consistency is not one of the prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European Orientalists. The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee teacher is never mentioned in any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi.