CHAPTER VI.

" The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-monx>w roll up ; but Yesterday and To- morrow both arr." — Sartor Rtsartus : Natural Supematuralism. .
" May we not then be permitted to examine the a*ithenticity of the Bible? which since the second cen- tury has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth ? To maintain itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism." — Convict betwetn Religion and Science.
** One kiss of Nara upon the lips of Nari and all Nature wakes." — ^Vina Snati (A Hindu Poet}.
WE must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present canon- ical Gospelsy and hence its whole religious dogmatism, to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to which were the most divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the puzzling question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council may well be called mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the mystical number of its 318 bishoi)s, on which Barnabas (viii. 11, 12, 13) lays such a stress; added to this, there is no agreement among ancient writers as to the time and place of its assembly, nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine,* Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea, affirms that " except Constantine, the emperor, and Eusebius Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate^ simple creatures, that understood nothing ; " which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools. Such was apparently the opinion entertained of them by Pai> pus, who tells us of the bit of magic resorted to to decide which were the true gospels. In his Synodicon to that Council Pappus says, having ** promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for determination under a communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, and // Jiappened accord- ingly." But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber over night !
On the authority of ecclesiastical eye-witnesses, therefore, we are at liberty to say that the Christian world owes its " Word of God ** to a
♦ Socrates ; ** Scol. EccL Hist.," b. I., c ix.
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method of divination, for resorting to which the Churcli subsequently condemned unfortunate victims as conjurers, enchanters, magicians, witches, and vaticinators, and burnt them by thousands ! In treating of this truly divine phenomenon of the self-sorting manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that God himself presides over the Sories. As we have shown elsewhere, Augustine confesses that he himself used this sort of divination. But opinions, like revealed religions, are liable to change. That which for nearly fifteen hundred years was imposed on Christendom as a book, of which every word was written under the direct supervision of the Holy Ghost ; of which not a syllable, nor a comma could be changed witiiout sacrilege, is now being retranslated, revised, corrected, and clipped of whole verses, in some cases of entire chai)ters. And yet, as soon as the new edition is out, its doctors would have us accept it as a new " Revelation " of the nineteenth century, with the alternative of being held as an infidel. Thus, we see that, no more within than ivithout its precincts, is the infallible Church to be trusted more than would be reasonably convenient. The forefathers of our modern divines found authority for the Sortes in the verse where it is said : ** The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord ; " * and now, their direct heirs hold that " the whole disposing thereof is of the Devil." Perhaps, they are unconsciously beginning to endorse the doctrine of the Syriap Bardesanes, that the actions of God, as well as of man, are subject to necessity 1
It was no doubt, also, according to strict "necessity" that the Neo- platonists were so summarily dealt with by the Christian mob. In those days, the doctrines of the Hindu naturalists and antediluvian Pyrrho- nists were forgotten, if they ever had been known at all, to any but a few philosophers ; and Mr. Darwin, with his modern discoveries^ had not even been mentioned in the prophecies. In this case the law of the survival of the fittest was reversed ; the Neo-platonists were doomed to destruc- tion from the day when they openly sided with Aristotle,
At the beginning of the fourth century crowds began gathering at the door of the academy where the learned and unfortunate Hypatia expound- ed the doctrines of the divine Plato and Plotinus, and thereby impeded the progress of Christian proselytism. She too successfully dispelled the mist hanging over the religious " mysteries " invented by the Fathers, not to be considered dangerous. This alone would have been sufficient to imperil both herself and her followers. It was precisely the teachings
* ** Proverbs," chap, xvi., p. 33. In ancient Egypt and Greece, and among Israel- ites, small sticks and balls called the *' sacred divining lots " were used for this kind of oracle in the temples. According to the figures which were formed by the accidental juxtaposition of the latter, the priest interpreted the will of the gods.
WHY HYPATIA WAS MURDERED. 2S3
of this Pagan philosopher, which had been so freely borrowed by the Chris- tians to give a finishing touch to their otherwise incomprehensible scheme, that had seduced so many into joining the new religion ; and now the Platonic light began shining so inconveniently bright upon the pious patchwork, as to allow every one to see whence the " revealed " doctrines were derived. But there was a still greater peril. Hypatia had studied under Plutarch, the head of the Athenian school, and had learned all the secrets of theurgy. While she lived to instruct the multitude, no divine miracles could be produced before one who could divulge the natural causes by which they took place. Her doom was sealed by Cyril, whose eloquence she eclipsed, and whose authority, built on degrading superstitions, had to yield before hers, which was erected on the rock of immutable natural law. It is more than curious that Cave, the author of the Lives of the Fathers^ should find it incredi- ble that Cyril sanctioned her murder on account of his " general charac- ter.'* A saint who will sell the gold and silver vessels of his church, and then, after spending the money, lie at his trial, as he did, may well be sus- pected of anything. Besides, in this case, the Church had to fight for her life, to say nothing of her future supremacy. Alone, the hated and erudite Pagan scholars, and the no less learned Gnostics, held in their doctrines the hitherto concealed wires of all these theological marion- ettes. Once the curtain should be lifted, the connection between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions would be exposed ; and then, what would have become of the Mysteries into which it is sin and blas- phemy to j)ry ? With such a coincidence of the astronomical allegories of various Pagan myths with the dates adopted by Christianity for the nativity, cnicifixion, and resurrection, and such an identity of rites and cere- monies, what would have been the fate of the new religion, had not the Church, under the pretext of serving Christ, got rid of the too-well- informed philosophers? To guess what, if the coup d'etat had then failed, might have been the prevailing religion in our own century would indeed, be a hard task. But, in all probability, the state of things which made of the middle ages a period of intellectual darkness, which degraded the nations of the Occident, and lowered the European of those days almost to the level of a Papuan savage — could not have occurred. The fears of the Christians were but too well founded, and their pious zeal and prophetic insight was rewarded from the very first. In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the bloody riot between the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect Christian shape, was discov- ered hewn upon the granite slabs of the adytum. This was a lucky dis- covery, indeed ; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had
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been hallowed by the Pagans in a " spirit of prophecy." At least, Sozo- men, with an air of triumph, records the fact.* But, archaeology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pre- tences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running around the design, at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.
According to King and other numismatists and archaeologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. Sym- bol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the initiate, after his " new birth " was accx>mplished, and the Mystoe had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory — the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify, and who had the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin cross from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India, where it can be found until now, two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus, and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the mediaeval ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and demoniacal possession ; and the ** signet of the living God," brought down in St. John's vision by the angel ascending from the east to " seal the servants of our God in their foreheads," was but the same mvstic Tau — the Egyptian cross. In the painted glass of St. Dionysus (France), this angel is represented as stauiping this sign on the forehead of the elect ; the legend reads, signvm TAY. In King's Gnostics^ the author reminds us that "this mark is commonly born by St. Anthony, an Egyptian recluse." f What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the apostle, at least, it meant the ** Ineffa- ble Name," as he calls this ** signet of the living God," a few chapters further on, J the '* Father* s name written in their foreheads'^
The BrahmAtma, the chief of the Hindu initiates, had on his head-gear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-
♦ Another untrustworthy, untruthful, and ignorant \vTiter, and ecclesiastical histo- rian of the fifth century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans, Neo- platonics, and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the year 324 to 439, dedicated by hiin to Thcodosius, the younger, is full of deliberate falsi- fications. Edition of " Reading," Cantab, 1720, fol. Translated. Plon fr^res, PariSb
f ** Gems of the Orthodox Christians,*' voL i., p. 135. % Revelation xiv. i.
■ LADY ELLENBOROUGH'S TALISMAN. 255
like ; and, in some Buddhist pagudas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the stair- case which leads to the inner daghoba, * and the porticos ot some Pro- chida f are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, and as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the Catacombs, at Rome, the " Vesica piscis," was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figiure in the world-sym- bols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon's temple was built on three foundations, forming the " triple Tau," or three crosses.
In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an em- blem, to the realization by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated. J The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the " Tree of Infamy." It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol ; but, during the first two decades, the apostles looked upon it with horror. § It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the " signet of the living God," but the mystic Tau — the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.
The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damas- cus, and in the desert, after her last marriage, as Hanoum Medjouyi, had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druze fi-om Mount I^ebanon. It was recognized by a certain sign on its left corner, to be- long to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a ^^ Mtrssianic" amulet, of the second or third century, B.C. It is a green stone of a pen- tagonal form ; at the bottom is engraved a fish ; higher, Solomon's seal ; ]
* Daghoba is a small temple of globular form, in which are preserved the relics of Gautama.
f Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums, and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.
X The Talmudirtic records claim that, after having been hung, he was lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams. ** Mishna Sanhedrin," voL vi., p. 4 ; *' Talmud,'* of Babylon, same article, 43 a, 67 a.
§ ** Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion," MSS. xi.
I The engraving represents the talisman as of twice the natural size. We are at a loss to understand why King, in his " Gnostic Gems," represents Solomon*s seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is bix-pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu, in India.
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and still higher, the four Chaldaic letters— Jod, He, Vau, He, I AHO, which form the name of the Deity. These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem is not our property, we are not at Hberty to give. The Tau, in its mysti- cal sense, as well as the cruxansata^ is the Tree of Life,
It is well known, that the earliest Cnristian emblems — before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus — were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and the Fish. The origin of the latter em- blem, which has so puzzled the archaeologists, thus becomes comprehen- sible. The whole secret lies in the easily- ascertained fact that, while in the Kabala^ the King Messiah is called "Interpreter," or Revealer of the mystery, and shown to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud — for reasons we will now explain — the Messiah is very often designated as " Dag," or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates — as the very name indicates — to the Babylonian Dag- on, the man-fish, who was the instnictor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah's) coming ** is the con- junction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign PiscesP * Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might be traced still farther back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and Pagan tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his brother co-religionists.
When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words : " Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove, or a ship running before the wind (the Argha), or afish.'^ Was the good father, when writing this sentence, laboring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian versions) ; or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these Pagan symbols ?
* King (** Gnostics") gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages, of three fishes interlaced into a triangle, and having the five letters (a most sacred Pythagorean number) L X OT2 engraved on it. The number five relates to the same kabalistic computation.
THE HINDU NOACHIAN LEGEND. 257
Joshua, son of Nun, or Nave {Navis), could have with perfect propriety adopted the image of a ship^ or even of a fish, for Joshua means Jesus, son of the fish-god ; but it was really too hazardous to connect the emblems of Venus, Astarte, and all the Hindu goddesses— the argha^ dove^ and Jish — with the " immaculate " birth of their god ! This looks very much as if in the early days of Christianity but little difference was made be- tween Christ, Bacchus, Apollo, and the Hindu Christna, the incarnation of Vishnu, with whose first avatar this symbol of the fish originated.
In the Haripurana^ in the Bagaved-giiia^ as well as in several other books, the god Vishnu is shown as having assumed the form of a fish with a human head, in order to reclaim the Vedas lost during the deluge. Hav- ing enabled Visvamitra to escape with all his tribe in the ark, Vishnu, pitying weak and ignorant humanity, remained with them for some time. It was this god who taught them to build houses, cultivate the land, and to thank the unknown Deity whom he represented, by building temples and instituting a regular worship ; and, as he remained half-fish, half-man, all the time, at every sunset he used to return to the ocean, wherein he passed the night.
" It is he," says the sacred book, " who taught men, after the diluvium, all that was necessary for their happiness.
" One day he plunged into the water and returned no more, for the earth had covered itself again with vegetation, fruit, and cattle.
"But he had taught the Brahmas the secret of all things" (Hari- pur and).
So far, we see in this narrative the double of the story given by the Babylonian Berosus about Oannes, the fish-man, who is no other than Vishnu — unless, indeed, we have to believe that it was Chaldea which civilized India!
We say again, we desire to give nothing on our sole authority. There- fore we cite Jacolliot, who, however criticised and contradicted on other points, and however loose he may be in the matter of chronology (though even in this he is nearer right than those scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the Council of Nicea), at least .cannot be denied the reputation of a good Sanscrit scholar. And he says, while analyzing the word Oan^ or Oannes, that O in Sanscrit is an interjection expressing an invocation, as O, Swayambhuva ! O, God ! etc ; and An is a radical, signifying in Sanscrit a spirit, a being ; and, we presume, what the Greeks meant by the word Damon, a semi-god.
" What an extraordinary antiquity," he remarks, " this fable of Vishnu, disguised as a fish, gives to the sacred books of the Hindus ; especially in presence of the fact that the Vfdas and Manu reckon more than hventy' five thousand years of existence, as proved by the most serious as the most
17
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authentic documents. Few peoples, says the learned Halhed, have their annals more authentic or serious than the Hindus."*
We may, perhaps, throw additional light upon the puzzling question of the fish-symbol by reminding the reader that according to Genesis the first created of living beings, the first type of animal life, was the fish. " And the Elohim said : * Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life * . . . and God created great whales . . . and the morning and the evening were the fifth day!* Jonah is swallowed by a big fish, and is cast out again three days later. This the Christians regard as a premonition of the three days* sepulture of Jesus which preceded his resurrection — though the statement of the three days is as fanciful as much of the rest, and adopted to fit the well-known threat to destroy the temple and rebuild it again in three days. Between his burial and alleged resur- rection there intervened but one day — the Jewish Sabbath — as he was buried on Friday evening and rose to life at dawn on Sunday. However, whatever other circumstance may be regarded as a prophecy, the story of Jonah cannot be made to answer the purpose.
** Big Fish " is Cetus, the latinized form of Keto-m/rw and keto is Dag- on, Poseidon, the female gender of it being Keton Atar-gatis — the Syrian goddess, and Venus, of Askalon. The figure or bust of Der-Keto or Astarte was generally represented on the prow of the ships. Jonah (the Greek Ion a, or doxfe sacred to Venus) fled to Jaffa, where the god Dagon, the man-fish, was worshipped, and dared not go to Nineveh, where the dove was revered. Hence, some commentators believe that when Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a fish, we must understand that he was picked up by one of these vessels, on the prow of which was the figure of Keto, But the kabalists have another legend, to this effect : They say that Jonah was a run-away priest from the temple of the goddess where the dove was worshipped, and desired to abolish idolatry and insti- tute monotheistic worship. That, caught near Jafifa, he was held pris- oner by the devotees of Dagon in one of the prison-cells of the temple, and that it is the strange form of the cell which gave rise to the allegory. In the collection of Mose de Garcia, a Portuguese kabalist, there is a draw- ing representing the interior of the temple of Dagon. In the middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body is human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an aperture which can be closed like the door of a closet. In it the transgressors against the local deity were shut up until further disposal. The drawing m question was made from an old tablet covered with curious drawings and inscriptions in old Phoenician characters, describing this Venetian
• t

THE FISH-AVATAR OF VISHNU. 259
oubliette of biblical days. The tablet itself was found in an excavation a few miles from Jaffa. Considering the extraordinary tendency of Orien- tal nations for puns and allegories, is it not barely possible that the ** big fish " by which Jonah was swallowed was simply the cell within the belly of Dagon ?
It is significant that this double appellation of " Messiah " and •* Dag " (tish), of the Talmudists, should so well apply to the Hindu Vishnu, the ** Preserving " Spirit, and the second personage of the Brahmanic trinity. This deity, having already manifested itself, is still regarded as the future Saviour of humanity, and is the selected Redeemer, who will appear at its tenth incarnation or avatar, like the Messiah of the Jews, to lead the blessed onward, and restore to them the primitive Vedas. At his first avatar, Vishnu is alleged to have appeared to humanity, in form like a fish. In the temple of Rama, there is a representation of this god which answers perfectly to that of Dagon, as given by Berosus. He has the body of a man issuing from the mouth of a fish, and holds in his hands the lost Veda, Vishnu, moreover, is the water-god, in one sense, the Logos of the Parabrahm, for as the three persons of the manifested god-head constantly interchange their attri- butes, we see him in the same temple represented as reclining on the seven-headed serpent, Ananta (eternity), and moving, like the Spirit of God, on the face of the primeval waters.
Vishnu is evidently the Adam Kadmon of the kabalists, for Adam is the Logos or the first Anointed, as Adam Second is the King Messiah.
Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive or feminine counterpart of Vishnu, the creator and the preserver, is also called Ada Maya. She is the ** Mother of the World," Damatri, the Venus Aphrodite of the Greeks ; also I sis and Eve. While Venus is born from the sea-foam, Lakmy springs out from the water at the churning of the sea ; when born, she is so beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. The Jews, borrowing their types wherever they could get them, made their first woman after the pattern of Lakmy. It is curious that Viracocha, the Supreme Being in Peru, means, literally translated, " foam of the sea."
Eugene Burnouf, the great authority of the French school, announces his opinion in the same spirit : " We must learn one day," he observes, ** that all ancient traditions disfigured by emigration and legend, belong to the history of India." Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, Inman, King, JacoUiot, and many other Orientalists.
We have said above, that, according to the secret computation pecu- liar to the students of the hidden science, Messiah is the fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish Kabala, where the ten Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon (placed below the crown), he comes fifth. So in
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the Gnostic system ; so in the Buddhistic, in which the fifth Buddha — Maitree, will appear at his last advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world. If Vishnu is represented in his forthcoming and last appearance as the tenth avatar or incarnation^ it is only because every unit held as an androgyne manifests itself doubly. The Buddhists who reject this dual-sexed incarnation reckon but five. Thus, while Vishnu is to make his last appearance in his tenth, Buddha is said to do the same in his fifth incarnation. *
The better to illustrate the idea, and show how completely the real meaning of the avatars, known only to the students of the secret doctrine was misunderstood by the ignorant masses, we elsewhere give the diagrams of the Hindu and Chaldeo-Kabalistic avatars and emana- tions, f This basic and true fundamental stone of the secret cycles, shows on its very face, that far from taking their revealed Vcdas and Bible literally, the Brahman-pundits, and the Tanaim — the scientists and philosophers of the pre-Christian epochs — speculated on the crea- tion and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anti- cipating him and his school in the natural selection of species, gradual development, and transformation.
We advise every one tempted to entei an indignant protest against this affirmation to read more carefully the books of Manu, even in the incomplete translation of Sir William Jones, and the more or less care- less one of JacoUiot. If we compare the Sanchoniathon Phoenician , Cosmogony, and the record of Berosus with the Bhagavatta and Manu^ we will find enunciated exactly the same principles as those now offered as the latest developments of modern science. We have quoted from the Chaldean and Phoenician records in our first volume ; we will now glance at the Hindu books.
" When this world had issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetal seed which animated first the plants ; from the plants, life passed into fastastical bodies which were born in the ilus of the waters ; then, through a series of forms and various animals, it reached man." J
"He (man, before becoming such) will pass successively through plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals ; such is the inferior degree."
" Such, from Brahma down to the vegetables, are declared the trans- migrations which take place in this world." §
* The kabalistic Sephirbth are also ten in number, or five pairs.
f An avatar is a descent from on high upon earth of the Deity in some manifest
shape.
X •• Bhagavatta.'* g '
DARWIN COMPARED WITH VYASA. 261
In the Sanchoniathonian Cosmogony, men are also evolved out of the ilus of the chaos, * and the same evolution and transformation of species are shown.
And now we will leave the rostrum to Mr. Darwin : " I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors." f
Again : beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from some one primordial form. | . . . I view all beings, not as special creations, but* as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before thi first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.'* §
In short, they lived in the Sanchoniathonian chaos, and in the ilus of Manu. Vyasa and Kapila go still farther than Darwin and Manu. " They see in Brahma but the name of the universal germ ; they deny the existence of a First Cause ; and pretend that everything in nature found itself developed only in consequence of material and fatal forces," says JacoUiot. |
Correct as may be this latter quotation from Kapila, it demands a few words of explanation. JacoUiot repeatedly compares Kapila and Veda Vyasa with Pyrrho and Littre. We have nothing against such a comparison with the Greek philosopher, but we must decidedly object to any with the French Comtist ; we find it an unmierited fiing at the mem- ory of the great Aryan sage. Nowhere does this prolific writer state the repudiation by either ancient or modem Brahmans of God — the " unknown,*^ universal Spirit ; nor does any other Orientalist accuse the Hindus of the same, however perverted the general deductions of our savants about Buddhistic atheism. On the contrary, JacoUiot states more than once that the learned Pundits and educated Brahmans have never shared the popular superstitions ; and affirms their unshaken belief in 'the unity of God and the soul's immortality, although most assuredly neither Kapila, nor the initiated Brahmans, nor the followers of the Vedanta school would ever admit the existence of an anthropomorphic creator, a " First Cause" in the Christian sense. JacoUiot, in his Jndo- Muropean and African Traditions^ is the first to make an onslaught on Professor Miiller, for- remarking that the Hindu gods were ''masks without actors . . . names without being, and not beings without names." T Quoting, in support of his argument, numerous verses from the sacred Hindu books, he adds : " Is it possible to refuse to the author of these stanzas a definite and clear conception of the divine
• See Cory's " Ancient Fragments."
t " Origin of Species," first edition, p. 4S4. % Ibid., p. 484.
I Ibid., pp. 488, 489. I *' La Genise de THumanitfe," p. 339.
\ ** l.aditioos Indo-£urop6ennes et Africaiiies," p. 291.
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force, of the Unique Being, master and Sovereign of the Universe ? . . . Were the altars then built to a metaphor ? " *
The latter argument is perfectly just, so far as Max MuUer's nega- tion is concerned. But we doubt whether the French rationalist under- stands Kapila's and Vyasa's philosophy better than the German philolo- gist does the "theological twaddle," as the latter terms the Athan'a- Veda, Professor Miiller and Jacolliot may have ever so great claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other ancient Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand and one mys- teries of the old secret doctrine and its philosophy. Only, while the German philologist does not even take the trouble to look into this magi- cal and " theological twaddle," we find the French Indianist never losing an opportunity to investigate. Moreover, he honestly admits his incom- petency to ever fathom this ocean of mystical learning. In its existence he not only firmly believes, but throughout his works he incessantly calls the attention of science to its unmistakable traces at every step in India. Still, though the learned Pundits and Brahmans — his "revered masters" of the pagodas of Villenoor and Chclambnim in the Car- natic, t as it seems, positively refused to reveal to him the mysteries of the magical part of the A^roucJiada-Pariksfial^ \ and of Brahmatma's triangle, § he persists in the honest declaration that everything is possible in Hindu metaphysics, even to the Kapila and Vyasa systems having been hitherto misunderstood.