Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part I- The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth Races
§§ (43) The Lemuro-Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization. The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. (44) Their statues, witnesses to the size of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. (45) Lemuria destroyed by fire, Atlantis by water. The Flood. (46) The destruction of the fourth race and of the last antediluvian monster-animals.
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43. THEY (the Lemurians) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT OF THE FIRES (lava) VOMITED. OUT OF THE WHITE STONE OF THE MOUNTAINS (marble) AND THE BLACK STONE (of the subterranean fires) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM (a).
(a) As the History of the first two human races -- the last of the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans -- proceeds, we have at this point to blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively.
Here reference is also made to the divine Dynasties, such as were claimed by the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their human kings; they are still believed in by the modern Hindus, and are enumerated in their sacred books. But of these we shall treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern geologists are now being driven into admitting the evident existence of submerged continents. But to confess their presence is not to accept that there were men on them during the early geological periods;* -- ay, men and civilized nations, not Palaeolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated arts and sciences, and knew astronomy, architecture and mathematics to perfection. This primeval civilization did not, as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had passed. Yet, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava.* One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are "very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru," ("The Countries of the World," by Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43); and that they are in the CYCLOPEAN STYLE. The first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, and Karma -- its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by the "Flames," extinguished it by long generations of bestiality.* The Aryan nations could trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the Lemurians, in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had personally incarnated.**
It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself against the Elements, his brothers -- more favoured than he by their Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them -- built cities, and cultivated arts and sciences. Nevertheless, and civilization notwithstand-
Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, "the four preceding Manus" are the four classes of the originally arupa gods -- the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing principles -- some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says --the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the LOGOS -- "I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas) are in me, and I am in them." (Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers born of its mind -- the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the "Intellectual Breaths" -- those angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, ("Theosophist," April 1887, p. 444.)
ing, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, they, the builders, could now obtain theirs only gradually; even these being generally used for power over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The command and the guidance over his own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking. "There is no such thing as magic" philosophises "SHE," the author forgetting that "magic" in her early day still meant the great SCIENCE of WIDOM, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern perversion of thought -- "though there is such a thing as knowledge of the Secrets of Nature." (p. 152). But they have become "Secrets" only in our race, and were public property with the Third.
Gradually, mankind went down in stature, for, even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean race, the majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save the hierarchy of the "Elect," the followers and disciples of the "Sons of Will and Yoga" -- called later the "Sons of the Fire Mist."
Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race. But, as said in the Commentary: --
The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had perished ages before. Their (Lemuria's) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now the "fabled" Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of their accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground ("cave-men"), when the golden yellow race (the Fourth) became in its turn "black with sin." From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Sveta-dwipa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya, east and west, the first, the one and the pure, had become corrupted. . . . The demi-gods of the Third had made room for the semi-demons of the Fourth Race. Sveta-dwipa, whose northern parts of the Toyambudhi the seven Kumaras (Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, Sanatkumara, Jata, Vodhu, and Panchasikha) had visited, agreeably with exoteric tradition (See the Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purana; Asiat. Researches also, Vol. XI., pp. 99, 100); the White Island had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dwipa (Pushkara) and Rakshasas from the seventh climate replaced the Saddhus and the ascetics of the Third age, who "had descended to them from other and higher regions." . . . .
It is evident that, taken in their dead letter, the Puranas read as an absurd tissue of fairy tales and no better. But if one reads chapters I., II. and III. from Book II. (Vol. II.) of Vishnu Purana and accepts verbatim its geography, geodesy, and ethnology, in the matter of Priyavrata's seven sons, among whom the father divides the seven Dwipas (Continental Islands); and then proceeds to study how the eldest son, the King of Jambu-dwipa, Agnidhra, apportioned Jambu-dwipa among his nine sons; and then how Nabhi his son, who had a hundred sons and apportioned all these in his turn -- then the reader is likely to throw the book away and pronounce it a farrago of nonsense. But the esoteric student will understand that, in the days when the Puranas were written, the true meaning was clear only to the Initiated Brahmins, who wrote those works allegorically and would not give the whole truth to the masses. And he will explain to the Orientalists who, beginning with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, made and still are making such a mess of it, that the first three chapters (See Wilson's trans. of Vishnu Purana Book II et seq.) purposely confuse the following subjects and events: --
I. The series of Kalpas or Ages (also of Races) are never taken into account; e.g., events which have happened in one being allowed to stand along with those which took place in another. The chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying -- "Whenever any contradictions in different Puranas are observed, they are ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like" (Vishnu and Bhagavata Puranas).
II. The several meanings of the words "Manvantara" and "Kalpa" or age, are withheld, and the general one only given.
III. In the genealogy and geography of the Kings and their Varshas (countries) and Dwipas, they are all allowed to be regarded as terrestrial regions.
Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is easy and permissible to show that: --
(a) The Seven Dwipas apportioned to Priyavrata's septenary progeny refer to several localities: first of all to our planetary chain. Jambu-dwipa alone representing our globe, the six others are the (to us) invisible companion globes of this earth. This is shown by the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu (dwipa) "is in the centre of all these (the so-called insular continents) and is surrounded" by a sea of salt water (lavana), whereas Plaksha, Salmalia,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 321 THE HINDU SYMBOLIZATION.
Kusa, Krauncha, Saka and Pushkara, are "surrounded severally -- by great seas of sugar-cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk," etc., etc., and such like metaphorical names. (Chap. II, Book II) This is shown furthermore by --
(b) Bhaskara Acharya, who uses expressions from the Secret Doctrine and its books, in his description of the sidereal position of all these dwipas: -- "the sea of milk and the sea of curds" etc., meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of nebulae; the more so, since he names "the country to the south of the equator Bhur-loka, that to the north Bhuva-loka, Swar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya lokas"; and says: "Those lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits," i.e., they are various paradises. (See Bibliotheca Indica. Trans. of the Goladhyaya of the Siddhanta-siromani III., 21-44).
(c) That this geographical division of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to our Round nor even to our races (the name of Bharata Varsha (India) notwithstanding), is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of Vishnu Purana. For he closes the first chapter by saying: "Bharata (the son of Nabhi, who gave his name to Bharata-Varsha or India) consigned the Kingdom to his son Sumati . . . . and abandoned his life at Salagrama. He was afterwards born again as a religious Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics . . . . under these princes (Bharata's descendants) Bharata Varsha was divided into nine portions, and their descendants held successively possession of the country for seventy-one periods of the aggregate of the four ages," or the reign of a Manu, representing a Mahayuga of 4,320,000 years.
But having said so much, Parasara suddenly explains that "this was the creation of Swayambhuva Manu, by which the earth was peopled when he presided over the first Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Varaha," i.e., the boar incarnation, or Avatar. Now every Brahmin knows that it is only with Vaivasvata Manu that our Humanity began on this Earth (or Round). And if the Western reader turns to the sub-section on "The Primeval Manus of Humanity," he will see that Vaivasvata is the seventh of the fourteen Manus who preside over our planetary chain during its life cycle: i.e., that representing or standing in every Round for two Manus of the same name (a Root and a Seed Manu), he is the Root Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only "an incongruity" (see his Vishnu Purana, vol. II., p. 108, footnote), and speculates that "the patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvantaras and Kalpas," and thus "have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods." It is nothing of the kind.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 322 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
But as Orientalists know nothing of the secret teaching, they will take everything literally, and then turn round and abuse the writers of that which they do not comprehend!
These genealogies embrace a period of three and a half Rounds; they speak of pre-human periods, and explain the descent into generation of every Manu -- the first manifested sparks of the ONE Unity -- and show, furthermore, each of these human sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitars, the human ancestors, then by human Races. No being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human cycles. Therefore the Sloka says, "Happy are those who are born, even from the (latent) condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-varsha; as that is the way to . . . final liberation." In Jambu-dwipa, Bharata is considered the best of its divisions, because IT IS THE LAND OF WORKS. In it alone "it is that the succession of four Yugas (ages), the Krita, the Treta, the Dwapara, and Kali take place"; when, therefore, Parasara, asked by Maitreya "to give him the descriptions of the Earth," returns again to the enumeration of the same Dwipas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the Swayambhuva Manvantara -- it is simply a blind, yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their sub-divisions, islands, and continents, some of which were called by the names of celestial lokas, and by those of other globes. Hence the confusion.
All these are called by the Orientalists "mythical" and "fabulous" islands and lands.* Very true, some are not of this earth, but they still exist. The "White Island" and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since the latter was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the land of Sin -- Atlantis, in general, not to Plato's island alone; and since the former was (a) the Sveta-dwipa of theogony, and (b) Saka-dwipa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its "seven holy rivers that washed away all sin," and its "seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue," as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas -- that caste which even the Brahmins acknowledged as not inferior to their own -- and which was the nursery of the first Zaratushta. The Brahmins are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Narada's advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun in the temple built by Samba (the reputed) son of Krishna, who in reality had none. In this the Puranas are historical --allegory notwithstanding -- and Occultism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in Bhavishya Purana. It is stated that, having been cured by Surya (the Sun) of leprosy, Samba, having built a temple dedicated to the Sun, was looking for pious Brahmins to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God. But Narada (this virgin ascetic whom one finds in every age in the Puranas) advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brahmins to receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Samba to Gauramukha (white face), the Purohita or family priest of Hgrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best employ. The priest directed Samba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Surya, to discharge the duty. Ignorant of the place they lived in, it is Surya, the Sun himself, who directs Samba to Sakadwipa beyond the salt water. Then Samba performs the journey, using Garuda (Vishnu's and Krishna's vehicle, the great Bird) who lands him among the Magas, etc.
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Narada, who is found reborn in every cycle (or race), besides Garuda -- the symbol esoterically of the great cycle -- show the allegory; yet the Magas are the Magi of Chaldea, and their class and worship were born on the earlier Atlantis, in Saka-dwipa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the Magas of Saka-dwipa are the forefathers of the fire-worshipping Parsis. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing hundreds of thousands to a few centuries this time: they carry the event -- Narada and Samba notwithstanding -- to the days of the flight of the Parsis to Gujerat, which is simply absurd, as that was in the VIIIth cent. of our era. Though the Magas in the Bhavishya Purana are credited with still living in Saka-dwipa in the day of Krishna's Son, yet the last of it -- Plato's "Atlantis" -- had perished 6000 years before. They were Mag "late of" Saka-Dwipa, and lived in those days in Chaldea. This is an intentional confusion, again.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet the human Asuras and the Rakshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the Ocean floors. "Lemuria," as we have called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.* It covered the whole area of space from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W. (See Addenda to this Book II., Section, "Proofs of the Submerged Continents.") This statement seems corroborated by Science, -- even if only partially; as, when discussing continental trends, and showing the infra-Arctic masses trending generally with the Meridian, several ancient continents are generally mentioned, though inferentially. Among such the "Mascarene continent," which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, is spoken of, and the existence of another ancient continent running "from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom," is taught.* The latter corroborates, then, the Occult teaching which shows the (now) polar regions as the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, and as the tomb of the bulk of the mankind of that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, to a decrease of velocity in the earth's rotation: --
"When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities (the poles) agree with its middle circle (equator), when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle belt (equatorial lands), while those at the ends are subject to pralayas by submersion . . . ."
And again: --
. . . "Thus the wheel (the Earth) is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath of its waters (tides). Toward the close of the age (Kalpa) of a great (root) race, the regents of the moon (the Pitar fathers, or Pitris) begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the wheel about its belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities (poles) new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in."
We have but to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning of the above very clearly. Scientists (modern Specialists) have ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of land and water on the planets, and the shifting of the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.* Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the periods of the earth's first incrustation. (See "American Naturalist," XVIII., 15 et seq.); therefore it seems easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statements. We propose to treat of this at greater length in the Addenda. (Vide § § V. and VI.)
It is asked by some Theosophists: "What will Atlantis be like when raised?" they understanding from a few words in "Esoteric Buddhism" that "old continents" that have been submerged will reappear. Here, again, there is a slight misconception. Were the same identical lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, indeed, be barren for ages. Because the Atlantic sea-bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming -- a new "cretaceous formation" of strata, in fact -- is no reason why, when the time for a new continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The racial cataclysms are not a Noah's deluge of forty days -- a kind of Bombay monsoon.
That the periodical sinking and re-appearance of the mighty continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by the modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the proofs of the same have been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dwipas) are mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out re-incarnated in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these "sacred islands" Atlantean -- as done by us; for, like everything else in the Hindu Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Swayambhuva Manu, to his seven sons -- was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to Atlanteans, whose continent had been submerged in its turn. When originally mentioned by Parasara (Vishnu Purana) the seven refer to an esoteric doctrine which is explained further on. Of all the seven islands, Jambu-dwipa is the only one that is terrestrial, for it is our globe. In the Puranas every reference to the North of Meru is connected with that primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region; which, when the magnolia blossomed there where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a continent again. Science speaks of an ancient continent which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions formed a horse-shoe-like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the semi-circle. This continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains re-appeared again on the face of the Oceans. Therefore, though it can be said without departing from truth that Atlantis is included in the Seven great insular continents, since the Fourth Race Atlanteans got some of the Lemurian relics, and, settling on the islands, included them among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on that remnant of Lemuria only to perish thereon, when destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain geographers and geologists; to the Occultists it is history. What does Science know to the contrary? "Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India . . . . . Science also refuses to sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other, were connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the pre-historic ages . . . . was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the 'Brahmans of Upper India' stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached -- hardly wetting his feet -- the Alaskan peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian islands; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe, and starting from the South, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America." (But see "Five years of Theosophy," art. "Leaflets from Esoteric History," pp. 338 and 340.) This was written from the words of a MASTER -- a rather doubtful authority for the materialists and the sceptics. But here we have one of their own flock, and a bird of the same feather -- Ernest Haeckel, who, in his distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost verbatim: . . . . "It would seem that the region on the earth's surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the CLOSELY RELATED CATARRHINE APES (! !) took place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished -- H.P.B.] or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean, which, lying to the South of the Asia of to-day, stretched on the one hand eastwards to upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and Africa." (See supra and compare "The Pedigree of Man," p. 80-81.)
In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of "Lemuria," had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the "lotus leaves" of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by materialistic Science. Haeckel, when speaking of Blumenbach's brown or Malay race and the Australians and Papuans, remarks: -- "There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, that Australian island-world, that seems to have been once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent." ("Pedigree of Man," p. 82. But see footnote supra and the Addenda.)
It certainly was, since it stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Haeckel, in his fantastic "Pedigree of Man," considers "the Australians of to-day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged (? !), of that second branch of the primitive human race. . . that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from the home of man's infancy, and seems to have been the parent of all the other straight-haired races of men. . . . The one, woolly-haired, migrated in part, westwards" . . . (i.e., to Africa and northwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no existence as yet) . . . "the other, straight-haired, was evolved farther to the north in Asia . . . . and peopled Australia . . . " (p. 81). "Behold," writes a MASTER, "the relics of that once great nation (Lemuria of the Third Race) in some of the flat-headed aborigines of your Australia" ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65). But they belong to the last remnants of the Seventh Sub-race of the Third. Prof. Haeckel must also have dreamt a dream and seen for once a true vision!
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the Ancestors of those, who are termed by us the most ancient peoples of the world -- now called respectively the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phoenicians on the other. These were governed by the DIVINE DYNASTIES, i.e., kings and rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was then, but who were Beings from spheres higher and more celestial than our own sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is useless of course to attempt to force their existence on sceptics. Their greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as catarrhinides; which fact they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx appended to their os sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if they only had it long enough, they would wag in joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their ape-ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets right on this point theosophists and students of Occult Sciences.
If we regard the Second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the really human race with solid bones, then Haeckel's surmise that "the evolution of the primitive men took place . . . . in either Southern Asia or . . . . Lemuria" -- Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of question -- is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, in the same way that the evolution of the First Race (from the bodies of the pitars) took place on seven distinctly separated regions of the (then) only Earth at the arctic pole -- so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur: it began in those northern regions, which have just been described a few pages back as including Behring's Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi-tropical even in the Arctic regions and most adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when: --
"The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the SWEAT BORN; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish REMAINED AS HALF-GROWN BABES* IN SIZE AND INTELLECT. This was the third pralaya of the races.**
Which means again, that our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the earth's axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic law. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as "the great ADJUSTER." Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes; nor does it seem so sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial phenomena altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and law which alone could reasonably explain such sudden changes and their results. It has tried to account for them by various more or less fantastic speculations; one of which would be the sudden, and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De Boucheporn's hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our esoteric explanation, since FOHAT is as good as any comet, having, in addition, universal intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu's Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial disturbances; when the old continents -- save the first one -- were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time; the survival of the fittest nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones -- the failures -- were disposed of by being swept off the earth. Such sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
The Sub-races are subject to the same cleansing process, as also the side-branchlets (the family-Races). Let one, well-acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe, take notes of what he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles -- especially with the Sidereal year, equal to 25,868 of our solar years.* If the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, then will he find how the weal and woe of nations is intimately connected with the beginning and close of this sidereal cycle. True, the non-occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge or -- if he so prefers -- speculation on the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of -- about 16,000 years hence.
Our meaning is very clear. Every sidereal year the tropics recede from the pole four degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator rounds through the Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still 2 1/2 degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal year; which gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.*
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) --
"Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and Pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles) . . . Many acquired DIVINE, more -- UNLAWFUL knowledge, and followed willingly the LEFT PATH." (Commentary xxxiii.)
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction? Who can tell. . . . But we are told that --
-------
(44.) THEY (the Atlanteans) BUILT GREAT IMAGES, NINE YATIS HIGH (27 feet) -- THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES (a). LUNAR FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS (the Lemurians). WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH (Race) (b).
(a) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged continent -- as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages -- are all between 20 and 30 feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders. (See § "Stones, Witnesses to Giants," at the end of this Stanza.) The writer is well aware that the modern archaeologists have decided now that "these statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary decisions of modern science which does not carry much weight.
We are told that it is after the destruction of "Lemuria" by subterranean fires that men went on steadily decreasing in stature -- a process already commenced after their physical FALL -- and that finally, some millions of years after, they reached between six and seven feet, and are now dwindling down (as the older Asiatic races) to nearer five than six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth Root Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family (Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders) are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind; but the Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of the surviving sub-races, the others to the very last and transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow.
(b) Now, how could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac is denied to the Hindus by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Aryan Hindus knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled-for slander was so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by the clear evidence of facts, as not to need very much additional refutation. While the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs (See Denon's "Voyage en Egypte" Vol. II.) irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than three-and-a-half sidereal years -- or about 87,000 years -- the Hindu calculations cover nearly thirty-three such years, or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the Sphinxiad, "These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the (last local) Flood (in Asia), or Age of Horror," in the latitude of India. And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great Flood within the Aryan historical memory -- that which submerged the last portions of Atlantis, 850,000 years ago. The floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical.
The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic continent described a few pages back. As a MASTER says (See "Esoteric Buddhism," p. 65): -- "Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents explored and fathomed by them . . . . there may be hidden, deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several times already submerged, and had the time to re-appear again and bear their new groups of mankind and civilisations; and that at the first great geological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our already autopsized continents will go down and the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again?"
Not the same identical continents, of course.
But here an explanation is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a Northern "Lemuria." The prolongation of that great continent into the North Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must be noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round "South Africa" (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden -- which every geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river -- is the bed of the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age. The former reality of this river is a fact of science -- will its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary-age Northern Lemuria, which their data demand? Professor Berthold Seeman not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded Australia and Europe as formerly portions of one continent -- thus corroborating the whole "horse-shoe" doctrine already enunciated. No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d'Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean. (Cf. chart adapted from the "Challenger" and "Dolphin" soundings in Mr. Donnelly's, "Atlantis, the Antediluvian World," p. 47.)
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Their continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans. After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the highest "occult" authority, that "Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than Europe with America." ("Esoteric Buddhism," p. 58.)
The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, of course, be regarded by it as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific proofs. But we write for the future. Discoveries in this direction will vindicate the claims of the Asiatic philosophers, who maintain that Sciences -- Geology, Ethnology, and History included --were pursued by the Antediluvian nations who lived an untold number of ages ago. Future finds will justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such archaic nations as the Egyptians, Aryans of India, Chaldeans, Chinese, and Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations during "myriads of centuries";* and the latter points to the fact that, "Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth. Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period. The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy. It was already mature."** To this Professor R. Owen adds that, "Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community before the time of Menes"; and Winchell ("Pre-Adamites," p. 120), that "at the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a physician, and left anatomical books."
This is quite natural if we have to believe the statements of Herodotus, who records in Euterpe (cxlii.), that the written history of the Egyptian priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000 or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left without witnesses, its tremendous antiquity, notwithstanding. The complete records of the growth, development, social, and even political life of the Lemurians, have been preserved in the secret annals. Unfortunately, few are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that of the seven sciences; which sciences find their expression in the seven different applications of the secret records to the exoteric texts. Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from, one of the following standpoints --
1. The Realistic plane of thought;
2. The Idealistic;
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely mythical element in any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during the process of interpretation. For, it is either symbolical (archaic mode of thought), emblematical (a later though very ancient mode of thought), parabolical (allegory), hieroglyphical, or again logo-grammical -- the most difficult method of all, as every letter, as in the Chinese language, represents a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the Vedas, the "Book of the Dead," or the Bible (to a degree), is composed of such logograms. No one who is not initiated into the mystery of the occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane thinker, however great his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to say -- i.e., in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves of Solar-myth and sexual-worship -- shall penetrate into the arcana. behind the veil. One who deals with the husk or shell of the dead letter, and devotes himself to the kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word-symbols, can never expect to get beyond the vagaries of modern mythologists.
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deukalion, Noah, etc., etc. -- all the head-figures of the world-deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or geological -- all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such deluges are based on events that took place in nature, and stand as historical records, therefore, whether they were sidereal, geological, or even simply allegorical, of a moral event on other and higher planes of being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
To speak of a race nine yatis, or 27 feet high, in a work claiming a more scientific character than "Jack the Giant-Killer," is a somewhat unusual proceeding. "Where are your proofs?" the writer will be asked. In History and tradition, is the answer. Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist in oral and written lore. India had her Danavas and Daityas; Ceylon had her Rakshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldea, her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with the famous giants, Anakim (Numbers xiii. 33). Moses speaks of Og, a king who was nine cubits high (15 ft. 4 in.) and four wide (Deut. iii. 11), and Goliath was "six cubits and a span in height" (or 10 ft. 7 in.). The only difference found between the "revealed Scripture" and the evidence furnished to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, Philostratus, etc., etc., is this: While the pagans mention only the skeletons of giants, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them had personally seen, the Bible interpreters unblushingly demand that geology and archaeology should believe, that several countries were inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter or the giants have to be given up. (But see Part III., Addenda, the closing chapter.)
Of still standing witnesses to the submerged continents, and the colossal men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archaeology claims several such on this globe, though beyond wondering "what these may be" -- it never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Besides the Easter Island statues mentioned already, to what epoch do the colossal statues, still erect and intact near Bamian, belong? Archaeology assigns them to the first centuries of Christianity (as usual), and errs in this as it does in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first examine what is known of them to orthodox Science. In "The Countries of the World," by Robert Brown, in Vol. IV., page 43, it is stated that --
"Teapi, Rapa-nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost 2,000 miles from the South American coast. . . . In length it is about twelve miles, in breadth four . . . and there is an extinct crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of their activity remains. . . .
" . . . But who made the great stone images (p. 44, etc.) which are now the chief attraction of the island to visitors? No one knows" -- says the reviewer. "It is more than likely that they were here when the present inhabitants (a handful of Polynesian savages) arrived. . . . Their workmanship is of a high order . . . . and it is believed that the race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru and other portions of South America. . . Even at the date of Cook's visit, some of the statues, measuring 27 feet in height and eight across the shoulders were lying overthrown, while others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in length, twelve to sixteen broad. . . . all built of hewn stone in the Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac, or the ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru" (vol. iii., pp. 310, 311).
"THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT ANY OF THE STATUES HAVE BEEN BUILT UP, BIT BY BIT, BY SCAFFOLDING ERECTED AROUND THEM" -- adds the journal very suggestively -- without explaining how they could be built otherwise, unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. One of the best of these colossal images is now in the British Museum. The images at Ronororaka -- the only ones now found erect -- are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, and one resting on the back of its head like the head of a man asleep. Their types, though all are long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant for portraits, as the noses, the mouths and chins differ greatly in form, their head-dress, moreover -- a kind of flat cap with a back piece attached to it to cover the back portion of the head --showing that the originals were no savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked -- "Who made them?" -- but it is not archaeology nor yet geology that is likely to answer, though the latter recognizes in the Island a portion of a submerged continent.
But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the most gigantic in the whole world, for Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty" (now at New York) is a dwarf when compared with the largest of the five images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place, speak of a mountain "all honeycombed with gigantic cells," with two immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern Miaotse (vide supra, quotation from Shoo-King) the last surviving witnesses of the Miaotse who had "troubled the earth"; the Jesuits are right, and the Archaeologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of old. "Masses of enormous human bones" were found "in America, near Misorte," a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran America when it had hardly arisen from the waters (See "De La Vega," Vol. ix., ch. ix.).*
Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-warriors of Nadir-Shah? Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia, half-way between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Kobhibaba, a huge mountain of the Paropamisian (or Hindu-Kush) chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the XIIIth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their viharas. Such viharas are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the rock-cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. It is at the entrance of some of these that five enormous statues, of what is regarded as Buddha, have been discovered or rather rediscovered in our century, as the famous Chinese traveller, Hiouen-Thsang, speaks of, and saw them, when he visited Bamian in the VIIth century.
When it is maintained that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, the fact is easily proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or seventy feet higher than the "Statue of Liberty" now at New York, as the latter is only 105 feet or 34 metres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, between whose limbs passed easily the largest vessels of those days, measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second statue, cut out in the rock like the first one, is only 120 feet (15 feet taller than the said "Liberty").** The third statue is only 60 feet high -- the two others still smaller, the last one being only a little larger than the average tall man of our present race. The first and largest of the Colossi represents a man draped in a kind of toga; M. de Nadeylac thinks (See infra) that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, point out undeniably that Buddha was meant to be represented. But the above proves nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of Buddha, represented in the posture of Samadhi, have large drooping ears, this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due to esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who knows and hears all, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures nothing can escape. "The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance": --says a Stanza. Gautama Buddha was an Aryan Hindu, and an approach to such ears is found only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort them artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottos of the Miaotse into Viharas and cells, came into Central Asia about or in the first century of the Christian era. Therefore Hiouen Thsang, speaking of the colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation that overlaid the statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but of such gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The very drapery, in contrast to the figure itself, cut out in the standing rock, is made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far earlier period than Buddhism. Whom does it represent in such case, it may be asked?
Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust, and as the three were found by them in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered the figures with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent Lord Tathagata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments -- which remind one of the Byzantine style of painting -- are all due to the piety of the monk-ascetics, like some other minor figures and rock-cut ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the Initiates of the Fourth Race, who sought refuge, after the submersion of their continent, in the fastnesses and on the summits of the Central Asian mountain chains. Moreover, the five statues are an imperishable record of the esoteric teaching about the gradual evolution of the races.
The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived the Atlantean Deluge. The second -- 120 feet high -- represents the sweat-born; and the third -- measuring 60 feet -- immortalizes the race that fell, and thereby inaugurated the first physical race, born of father and mother, the last descendants of which are represented in the Statues found on Easter Isle; but they were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the latter. (See the following sub-section on "Cyclopean Ruins, and Colossal Stones as Witnesses to Giants.")
These are, then, the "Giants" of antiquity, the ante- and post-diluvian Gibborim of the Bible. They lived and flourished one million rather than between three and four thousand years ago. The Anakim of Joshua, whose hosts were as "grasshoppers" in comparison with them, are thus a piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions of years.
In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear the wise words of Montaigne in his mind. Saith the great French philosopher: --
" . . . It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who persuade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort.
" . . . But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage to have the bounds and limits of God's will, and the power of our common Mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie.
"If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason cannot attain, how many doe such daily present themselves unto our sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde-folde we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands; verily we shall finde it is rather custome than Science that receiveth, the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things, were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other." (Essays, chap. xxvi.)
A fair-minded scholar should, before denying the possibility of our history and records, search modern History, as well as the universal traditions scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth of corroborative evidence which is found scattered about and buried even in the British Museum alone. The
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 341 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BIBLE.
reader is asked to throw one more glance at the subject-matter treated of in the chapter which follows: --
