Isis unveiled, vol. I
Chapter XV –INDIA THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
Pages 580-586
The previous blog ended with the statement :
The subject of discussion in the next blog will be, if the Lost Word is to be found underlying these ancient works, why have not the great Orientalists, Egyptologists, Biblical scholars have not discerned it. It is because they see only the dead letter and miss the spirit that gives life.
Max Muller, for instance, was entirely misled by the dead-letter of the ancient Sanskrit literature and missed the hidden spirit in them. After a long painstaking research he ended up criticizing them to be mere theological twaddle, and that no one could read ten pages of their Vedas and Puranas without being disgusted. H.P.B. remarks that without a clue to the hidden meaning of this “twaddle” of religious conceptions he passed his judgement, and that the Exoteric can never be the judge of the esoteric. The Esotericism of ancient knowledge was a closely guarded secret with the ancients, as much as it is to this day with the modern heirs to ancient wisdom. Max Muller himself, in one of his lectures, said that the Romans, the Jews, Brahmans never thought of converting people to their national form of worship, religion was looked upon by them as their private national property, and was guarded against strangers, and most sacred names of the goods, the prayers by which they could be invoked was kept a secret, and that no religion was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans.
Therefore, mere learning a few exoteric rites from a Brahman Srotriya, initiates of the sacrificial mysteries, an uninitiated scholar could never hope of correctly interpreting the symbols and thoroughly sift their knowledge system. There lies beyond or behind the exoteric “twaddle” far more than was ever dreamt of by our modern philosophers. In fact, it is the same in the ancient scriptures of all older nations. Professor John Williams Draper, in his work, Intellectual Development of Europe, classifies the time, from the days of Socrates, the precursor and teacher of Plato, to Karneades as “the age of faith,” and that from Philo Judeus to the destruction of Neo-platonic schools by Justinian, the “age of decrepitude.” This only shows that the learned Professor knew as little about the real tendency of Greek philosophy and the Attic schools as he understood the true charater of Giordono Bruno.
Mere scholarship in languages, grammar and philology will never reveal the hidden sense of the ancient myths. Muller was far better acuanted with old Sanskrit verbs than with Sanskrit thought. Says HPB : “He who is not intuitionally vivified by the religious spirit of old, will never see beyond the exoteric ‘twaddle.’ ”
To give an example of the apparent meaningless jargon of the ancient writings which misleads one not acquainted with the ancient symbolism, a Jewish philosophical idea expressed in mythical language, in the Jewish scripture, Codex Nazareus, is narrated : The cavity of the cranium of the Macroprosopos—the Long Face—lies hidden the aerial WISDOM which nowhere is opened; and it is not discovered, and nor opened; and then another : the”‘nose”; of “ the ancient of days” is Life in every part.” To the uninitiated scholar this sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. And when it is further said in the Codex : “She” the Spiritus invites her son Karabtanos,” who is frantic and without judgment,” to an unnatural union, one is likely to be filled with disgust and throw the book away. Yet the scripture cannot be judged by the outward forms of expression nor take in the literal sense the apparent obscene language. Hindu and Egyptian religions contain such expressions, and the modern scholars have ever been misled by the outer garb and have dubbed them all as mere gross sexual symbols. The Holy Bible itself is full such expressions and sexual symbols. When the hidden meaning is explained by those versed in the mystery of symbolical language, grand philosophical and scientific truths are discerned in them, like the bringing out a precious gem from the bowels of the earth.
The narrative from the Codex Nazareus cited above is the same truth psychological anthropology which is hidden in the Biblical narrative of Eve being tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The explanation : The ever-insinuating, restless spirit, when once it falls into matter which is “frantic and without judgment.” Matter is Karabtanos, and is the son of Spirit, or Spiritus of Nazarenes, the Sophia Achamoth; the latter is the daughter of the pure intellectual spirit, the divine breath. Ancient Wisdom says, Matter is one of correlations of Spirit. When read in the higher light the hidden science in the apparently crude outer symbols of ancient books shines forth. Unable to do this, Orientalists have erred in dismissing the old religious doctrines as mere theological twaddle and sexual worship.
Scholars who did justice to India
Not all scholars have been so blind. Some of the great ones, such as Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Barthelemy, St. Hillare, Jacolliot etc have done have done justice to ancient India thus disabusing the wicked propaganda of Christian missionaries in portraying Indian religion to be devilish. Of them Jacolliot, the great French Sanskritist, stands out among the scholars who did justice to India. He brought forward in his extensive researches, all recorded in 24 volumes, La Bible dans P Inde, he brings forward testimony to the great achievements of India in legislation, ethics, philosophy, and religion.
India, the storehouse of knowledge
No people in the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and its offspring MAN, as the Sanskrit metaphysicians and theologians. Says Jacolliot : My complaint against many translators and Orientalists, while admiring their profound knowledge is, that not having lived in India, they fall in exactness of expression and the comprehension of the symbolical sense of the poetical chants, prayers, and ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether of translation or appreciation.” He lived long years in India, gained confidence of Brahman Initiates and learnt from them, to some extent, the hidden sense of their ancient religious literature. Says he, “the life of several generations would scarce suffice merely to read the works that ancient India has left us on history, ethics, poetry, philosophy, religion, different sciences, and medicine.” And yet, says H.P.B., what Jacolliot was given to understand by the Brahmans was only a fragment of their system. Yet Jaccoliot was the most impartial.
Says Jacolliot : In the same way as the modern society jostles antiquity at each step, as our poets have copied Homer and Virgil. Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terrene; as our philosophers have drawn inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; as our historians take Titus Livicus, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models; as our orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates, and our codes transcribe Justinian—so had antiquity’s self also an antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy, and that was ancient India. It is quite logical. Peoples precede and succeed each other, knowledge acquired by one nation overflows into other nations. India of 6000 years ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing with population, impressed upon Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Rome, as these last have impressed upon us.
In the next blog some of the pioneering achievements of ancient Indian civilization which inspired other civilizations to bloom, as shown by the great Orientalist, Jacolliot, will be discussed. 584
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Chapter XV –INDIA THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
Pages 580-586
The previous blog ended with the statement :
The subject of discussion in the next blog will be, if the Lost Word is to be found underlying these ancient works, why have not the great Orientalists, Egyptologists, Biblical scholars have not discerned it. It is because they see only the dead letter and miss the spirit that gives life.
Max Muller, for instance, was entirely misled by the dead-letter of the ancient Sanskrit literature and missed the hidden spirit in them. After a long painstaking research he ended up criticizing them to be mere theological twaddle, and that no one could read ten pages of their Vedas and Puranas without being disgusted. H.P.B. remarks that without a clue to the hidden meaning of this “twaddle” of religious conceptions he passed his judgement, and that the Exoteric can never be the judge of the esoteric. The Esotericism of ancient knowledge was a closely guarded secret with the ancients, as much as it is to this day with the modern heirs to ancient wisdom. Max Muller himself, in one of his lectures, said that the Romans, the Jews, Brahmans never thought of converting people to their national form of worship, religion was looked upon by them as their private national property, and was guarded against strangers, and most sacred names of the goods, the prayers by which they could be invoked was kept a secret, and that no religion was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans.
Therefore, mere learning a few exoteric rites from a Brahman Srotriya, initiates of the sacrificial mysteries, an uninitiated scholar could never hope of correctly interpreting the symbols and thoroughly sift their knowledge system. There lies beyond or behind the exoteric “twaddle” far more than was ever dreamt of by our modern philosophers. In fact, it is the same in the ancient scriptures of all older nations. Professor John Williams Draper, in his work, Intellectual Development of Europe, classifies the time, from the days of Socrates, the precursor and teacher of Plato, to Karneades as “the age of faith,” and that from Philo Judeus to the destruction of Neo-platonic schools by Justinian, the “age of decrepitude.” This only shows that the learned Professor knew as little about the real tendency of Greek philosophy and the Attic schools as he understood the true charater of Giordono Bruno.
Mere scholarship in languages, grammar and philology will never reveal the hidden sense of the ancient myths. Muller was far better acuanted with old Sanskrit verbs than with Sanskrit thought. Says HPB : “He who is not intuitionally vivified by the religious spirit of old, will never see beyond the exoteric ‘twaddle.’ ”
To give an example of the apparent meaningless jargon of the ancient writings which misleads one not acquainted with the ancient symbolism, a Jewish philosophical idea expressed in mythical language, in the Jewish scripture, Codex Nazareus, is narrated : The cavity of the cranium of the Macroprosopos—the Long Face—lies hidden the aerial WISDOM which nowhere is opened; and it is not discovered, and nor opened; and then another : the”‘nose”; of “ the ancient of days” is Life in every part.” To the uninitiated scholar this sounds like the ravings of a lunatic. And when it is further said in the Codex : “She” the Spiritus invites her son Karabtanos,” who is frantic and without judgment,” to an unnatural union, one is likely to be filled with disgust and throw the book away. Yet the scripture cannot be judged by the outward forms of expression nor take in the literal sense the apparent obscene language. Hindu and Egyptian religions contain such expressions, and the modern scholars have ever been misled by the outer garb and have dubbed them all as mere gross sexual symbols. The Holy Bible itself is full such expressions and sexual symbols. When the hidden meaning is explained by those versed in the mystery of symbolical language, grand philosophical and scientific truths are discerned in them, like the bringing out a precious gem from the bowels of the earth.
The narrative from the Codex Nazareus cited above is the same truth psychological anthropology which is hidden in the Biblical narrative of Eve being tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The explanation : The ever-insinuating, restless spirit, when once it falls into matter which is “frantic and without judgment.” Matter is Karabtanos, and is the son of Spirit, or Spiritus of Nazarenes, the Sophia Achamoth; the latter is the daughter of the pure intellectual spirit, the divine breath. Ancient Wisdom says, Matter is one of correlations of Spirit. When read in the higher light the hidden science in the apparently crude outer symbols of ancient books shines forth. Unable to do this, Orientalists have erred in dismissing the old religious doctrines as mere theological twaddle and sexual worship.
Scholars who did justice to India
Not all scholars have been so blind. Some of the great ones, such as Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Barthelemy, St. Hillare, Jacolliot etc have done have done justice to ancient India thus disabusing the wicked propaganda of Christian missionaries in portraying Indian religion to be devilish. Of them Jacolliot, the great French Sanskritist, stands out among the scholars who did justice to India. He brought forward in his extensive researches, all recorded in 24 volumes, La Bible dans P Inde, he brings forward testimony to the great achievements of India in legislation, ethics, philosophy, and religion.
India, the storehouse of knowledge
No people in the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and its offspring MAN, as the Sanskrit metaphysicians and theologians. Says Jacolliot : My complaint against many translators and Orientalists, while admiring their profound knowledge is, that not having lived in India, they fall in exactness of expression and the comprehension of the symbolical sense of the poetical chants, prayers, and ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether of translation or appreciation.” He lived long years in India, gained confidence of Brahman Initiates and learnt from them, to some extent, the hidden sense of their ancient religious literature. Says he, “the life of several generations would scarce suffice merely to read the works that ancient India has left us on history, ethics, poetry, philosophy, religion, different sciences, and medicine.” And yet, says H.P.B., what Jacolliot was given to understand by the Brahmans was only a fragment of their system. Yet Jaccoliot was the most impartial.
India is the cradle of civilization
Says Jacolliot : In the same way as the modern society jostles antiquity at each step, as our poets have copied Homer and Virgil. Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terrene; as our philosophers have drawn inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; as our historians take Titus Livicus, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models; as our orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates, and our codes transcribe Justinian—so had antiquity’s self also an antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy, and that was ancient India. It is quite logical. Peoples precede and succeed each other, knowledge acquired by one nation overflows into other nations. India of 6000 years ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing with population, impressed upon Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Rome, as these last have impressed upon us.
In the next blog some of the pioneering achievements of ancient Indian civilization which inspired other civilizations to bloom, as shown by the great Orientalist, Jacolliot, will be discussed. 584
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