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In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years “B.C.” and more, as proved by Colonel Tod; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not enough to have studied stray fragments of Sanskrit literature—even though their number should amount to 10,000 texts, as boasted of—allowed to fall into their hands, to speak so confidently of the “Aryan first settlers in India,” and assert that, “left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a, future [!] before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on”23—and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other nations. To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric light, and {{Page aside|208}} after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret Code—branded generally as “theological twaddle.” Nor is it sufficient—if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did or did not know; whether or not they cultivated the social and political virtues; cared or not for history—to claim proficiency in both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya Bhâshya. To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to the Brahmanical Code. To master the conventional terms used in the Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules of Pânini, or his algebraical symbols. Very true, most of the Brahmans themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their sacred texts. Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique. Disrespectful though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the “language of the gods”; that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly along the lines of countless generations, the course of the “now extinct Aryan tongue” in its many and various transformations in the West, and its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up. Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing about, i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has lost sight of from its “nascent state,” and caught up again but at the period of its last degeneration—the native {{Page aside|209}} student never knew, nor can ever know anything of that history. Until the Orientalist has proved all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every work upon India and its Past. Having no knowledge himself whatever of those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them as the foreigner. Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is little qualified to declare that the Aryan having had no political history “of his own . . .” his only sphere was “religion and philosophy . . . in solitude and contemplation.”24 A happy thought suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rig-Veda. Nor can he, with the smallest show of logic affirm that “India has no place in the political history of the world,”25 or that there are no “synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India,”26 for—he knows no more of the prehistoric history of those “other nations” than of that of the Brahman. All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of hypothesis begin very little earlier than 200 “B. C.,” if even so much, on anything like really historical grounds. He has to prove all this before he would command our attention. Otherwise, however “irrefragable” the evidence of language, the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left their northern regions; or (b) why the “eldest brother, the Hindu,” should have been “the last to leave the common home” of the Aryan family. To the philologist such a supposition may seem “quite natural.” Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a programme. That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was forced to make “the eldest brother” tarry so {{Page aside|210}} suspiciously long on the Oxus, or wherever “the youngest” may have placed him in his “nascent state” after the latter “saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun.”27 We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the Christian era. To show the “Brother” inactive and unconcerned, with nothing but himself to ponder on, lest his antiquity and “fables of empty idolatry” and, perhaps, his traditions of other people’s doings, should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try him. The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from which we have been so largely quoting—a work of a purely scientific and philological character—such frequent remarks and even prophecies as:—“History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity.” Or, again,—“The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life”; and such broad sentiments expressed as that “there is some truth in Buddhism as there is in every one of the false religions of the world. But . . .”28

In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years “B.C.” and more, as proved by Colonel Tod; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not enough to have studied stray fragments of Sanskrit literature—even though their number should amount to 10,000 texts, as boasted of—allowed to fall into their hands, to speak so confidently of the “Aryan first settlers in India,” and assert that, “left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a, future [!] before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on”23—and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other nations. To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric light, and {{Page aside|208}} after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret Code—branded generally as “theological twaddle.” Nor is it sufficient—if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did or did not know; whether or not they cultivated the social and political virtues; cared or not for history—to claim proficiency in both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya Bhâshya. To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to the Brahmanical Code. To master the conventional terms used in the Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules of Pânini, or his algebraical symbols. Very true, most of the Brahmans themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their sacred texts. Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique. Disrespectful though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the “language of the gods”; that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly along the lines of countless generations, the course of the “now extinct Aryan tongue” in its many and various transformations in the West, and its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up. Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing about, i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has lost sight of from its “nascent state,” and caught up again but at the period of its last degeneration—the native {{Page aside|209}} student never knew, nor can ever know anything of that history. Until the Orientalist has proved all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every work upon India and its Past. Having no knowledge himself whatever of those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them as the foreigner. Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is little qualified to declare that the Aryan having had no political history “of his own . . .” his only sphere was “religion and philosophy . . . in solitude and contemplation.”24 A happy thought suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rig-Veda. Nor can he, with the smallest show of logic affirm that “India has no place in the political history of the world,”25 or that there are no “synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India,”26 for—he knows no more of the prehistoric history of those “other nations” than of that of the Brahman. All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of hypothesis begin very little earlier than 200 “B. C.,” if even so much, on anything like really historical grounds. He has to prove all this before he would command our attention. Otherwise, however “irrefragable” the evidence of language, the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left their northern regions; or (b) why the “eldest brother, the Hindu,” should have been “the last to leave the common home” of the Aryan family. To the philologist such a supposition may seem “quite natural.” Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a programme. That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was forced to make “the eldest brother” tarry so {{Page aside|210}} suspiciously long on the Oxus, or wherever “the youngest” may have placed him in his “nascent state” after the latter “saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun.”27 We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the Christian era. To show the “Brother” inactive and unconcerned, with nothing but himself to ponder on, lest his antiquity and “fables of empty idolatry” and, perhaps, his traditions of other people’s doings, should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try him. The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from which we have been so largely quoting—a work of a purely scientific and philological character—such frequent remarks and even prophecies as:—“History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity.” Or, again,—“The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life”; and such broad sentiments expressed as that “there is some truth in Buddhism as there is in every one of the false religions of the world. But . . .”28

The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the philosophies sprung from its soil!<ref>And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may be seen by reading carefully The History of Indian Literature, by Albrecht Weber—a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest authorities. The incessant harping upon the one special string of Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the key-note of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work. Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of Buddhism, and Krishna-worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its legends; it is openly stated that “it is not at all a far-fetched hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian missionaries”!29 The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period—their universal tank of all ancient creeds and of which some Orientalists would fain make a poor-house for all</ref>

The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the philosophies sprung from its soil!<ref>And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may be seen by reading carefully The History of Indian Literature, by Albrecht Weber—a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest authorities. The incessant harping upon the one special string of Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the key-note of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work. Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of Buddhism, and Krishna-worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its legends; it is openly stated that “it is not at all a far-fetched hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian missionaries”!29 The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period—their universal tank of all ancient creeds and of which some Orientalists would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped “Western influence.” Let us hope to the contrary. It can be proved that Buddhist missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in Asia. That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are permeated with Buddhism. Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, “the formula of abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name.”</ref>

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