Zirkoff B. - Compiler’s Notes (1)

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Compiler’s Notes

by Boris de Zirkoff

H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writtings, vol. 5, page(s) 263-275

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263

COMPILER’S NOTES

[These notes correspond to the respective superior numbers in the text.]

1 All references to A. P. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism are paged according to the original edition, London, Trübner and Co., 1883.

2 “An English F.T.S.” refers to Frederick W. H. Myers.

Frederick William Henry Myers was born in 1843 at Keswick in Cumberland, England. His father was the Rev. Frederick Myers, perpetual curate of St. John’s, Keswick. His mother was Susan Harriet, youngest daughter of John Marshall of Hallstead. He was educated at Cheltenham College. He had a brilliant mind from early youth, and had learnt Virgil by heart before he passed his school age. He won the senior classical scholarship in his first year in College. In 1859, he entered for the national “Robert Burns Centenary” competition with a poem, and won second prize. Later he went to Cambridge. There he won various honors, including two scholarships, graduating in 1864.

After graduation, he toured the European continent and spent a year in the United States. In the years 1865-69 he was classical lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1872 to within a few weeks of his death, he served on the staff of School Inspectors. Outwardly, his life was uneventful, the earlier years being devoted to poetical work in which he achieved considerable fame, and the last twenty years of his life being spent mainly in psychical research.

At Trinity College he established close relations with Professor Henry Sidgwick who became his valued friend. The early religious views of Frederick Myers underwent great modification, owing to disillusionment caused by wider knowledge. In 1882, he became one of the co-founders of the Society for Psychical Research, others being Prof. Balfour Stewart, Prof. W. F. Barrett (Univ. of Dublin), Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Stainton Moses, Edmund Gurney, Dr. G. Wyld. The Society was formed as a result of a conference convoked by Prof. Barrett, for the purpose of making “an organized and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical and spiritualistic.”

In 1886, Myers published a work entitled Phantasms of the Living (London: Trübner & Co.), the two bulky volumes of which were the combined production of Myers himself, Frank Podmore and Edmund Gurney. This work was devoted to the establishment of the claim that telepathy, i.e., the transference of thought and feeling from one individual to another, by other than the recognized sense 264 channels, is a proved fact of nature; and that phantasms (or impressions) of persons, especially undergoing a crisis, such as death, are perceived with a frequency inexplicable by chance, and are probably telepathic.

One of the great pioneer-theorists of modern parapsychology, Frederick Myers published a valuable series of papers on what he termed the “Subliminal Self” in the Society’s Proceedings. His purpose, certainly the first of its kind to be found in Western academic research, was, as William James describes it in his Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), “to consider the phenomena of hallucinations, hypnotism, automatism, double personality, and mediumship, as connected parts of one whole subject.” This inquiry, after fifteen years of critical examination, was ably concluded by Myers in his posthumous Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (London: Longmans, Green & G., 1903). These two volumes, extensively documented, represent the conviction that the waking consciousness of man is but a small part of a greater consciousness, and that this unseen self, manifesting in every form of normal and supernormal mental phenomena, is the source and origin of much, if not most, of the remarkable evidence generally attributed to the agency of disembodied spirits. Myers maintains that, instead of making the possibility of human survival less likely, the mere possession by the living of such remarkable and potential, but little-used, faculties evidences a purpose and program beyond the physical body and its death.

Myers became interested in Theosophy and the work of the Founders, and joined the Theosophical Society on the 3rd of June, 1883. It was largely through his interest and instrumentality that the Society for Psychical Research, in 1884, undertook an inquiry into the phenomena connected with Madame Blavatsky. History records that the preliminary conclusion of the investigating Committee was, on the whole, favorable; but that the final decision, as based on the personal Report of Dr. Richard Hodgson, was utterly inimical. In later years Myers spoke bitterly of the claims for H. P. Blavatsky and classed them among the hoaxes of the age, an attitude greatly to be deplored, when contrasted with his earlier sympathetic attitude.

Myers died in 1901 in Rome, and was buried in Keswick churchyard, within sight of his old home. He was a man of “rare intellectual gifts, original, acute and thoughtful, subtle in insight, abundant in ideas, vivid and eloquent in expression. A person at once forcible, ardent and intense.” It was his intuition and intellectual courage that had attracted to him in the early days the attention of the Teachers; and it must be said, in spite of his later change of heart, that he did a great deal of useful work for the Movement.

3 This has reference to the researches of Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), distinguished British chemist and physicist, Fellow of the 265 Theosophical Society, and Councillor of its London Lodge. His painstaking study of electrical discharges in high vacua (Crookes’ tube) led him to infer the existence of a “fourth state of matter,” which he called “Radiant Matter,” and paved the road for the discovery of the electron. His fearless investigation of psychic phenomena under strict test conditions, in the face of scientific disapprobation and ridicule, attracted to him the attention of the Masters who, as would appear from their letters, helped him in certain occult ways.

The student is referred in this connection to the following passages: The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, pp. 271-272, 341-342; The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, pp. 224-226, 235; The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 546-554, 580-587, 620-626.

In the present article, written as it was in the fall of 1883, reference is to Crookes’ two outstanding and revolutionary pronouncements on the subject of “Radiant Matter.” One is his Address before the Sheffield Meeting of the British Association, August 22, 1879 (See Chemical News, vol. xl, 1879, pp. 91-93, 104-107, 127-131; and Nature, London, vol. xx, 1879, pp. 419-423, 436-440); and the other is his Letter to the Secretary of the Royal Society of London, Prof. G. G. Stokes, dated April 29, 1880 (See Proceedings Roy. Soc., 1880, vol. xxx, pp. 469-472; Chem. News, vol. xli, 1880, pp. 275-276; and Nature, vol. xxii, 1880, pp. 153-154).

4 Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner, famous German astro-physicist, was born in Berlin, November 8, 1834, and died at Leipzig, April 25, 1882. After matriculating from the “Köllnische Gymnasium” in his native city, he entered the Berlin University, 1855, as a student of Physics and Natural Sciences. After some studies at the Univerity of Basel, 1857, he returned to Berlin and built for himself a small private observatory on a plot of ground belonging to his father, who was a designer and calico-printer. In 1862, he went to Leipzig as an assistant at the Observatory. In 1865, he delivered a dissertation at the University of Leipzig on the Relative Intensity of Light of the Phases of the Moon, and the following year became assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. In December, 1866, he delivered his thesis entitled Über die universelle Bedeutung der mechanischen Principien. In 1872, he was appointed Professor of Astrophysics.

Zöllner made innumerable contributions to astronomical science, which included the determination of the reflective capacity (albedo) of many planets, and a study of their thermal conditions. He made photometric investigations of the Mercurial phases, and conducted observations on the intensity of solar radiations at their source, and of solar temperature. His Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Photometrie des Himmels (Berlin, 1861, 4to.) contains a description of a new instrument, the astrophotometer, for the measurement of the light and color of stars. This new invention was soon adopted by the 266 best known Observatories. He furnished many valuable papers to the publications of the Royal Saxonian Scientific Society, on the constitution of the sun and stars, and published other scientific papers in the Astronomische Nachrichten and the Poggendorff’s Annalen. In his work Über die Natur der Kometen. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erkenntniss, written for the 300dth anniversary of Kepler’s birth, Dec. 27, 1871 (2nd ed., 1872; 3rd ed., 1883), Zöllner expounded the remarkable theory that the brightness of the comets was not due to the alleged fact that they were incandescent through heat, but to the fact that they were glowing with electricity. He also showed that many of the findings of modern science had been anticipated by true philosophers. He gave considerable study to various types of illusions produced on our senses, especially optical illusions, and greatly enlarged the electro-dynamic theory of Wilhelm Weber.

Among his other works, mention should be made of his Principien einer electrodynamischen Theorie der Materie, 1876; and his Naturwissenschaft und Christliche Offenbarung. Populäre Beiträge zur Theorie und Geschichte der vierten Dimension, Leipzig, 1886.

In 1877, Zöllner stopped contributing to scientific publications, and began to issue the results of his research in a series of separate volumes entitled Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen (4 vols., Leipzig, 1878-81), which he published at his own expense. He thought this method would preserve a better continuity of presentation.

Zöllner was seriously interested in mediumistic phenomena and conducted extensive research along this line with the celebrated medium, Dr. Henry Slade. His theory of the four-dimensional world and its inhabitants deserves a far greater attention than it has received on the part of scientists. His experiments with Slade are fully described in his Transcendental Physics, translated from the German by Charles C. Massey (London, 1880), and reviewed at length by H. P. B. in The Theosophist, Vol. II, February, 1881, pp. 95-97.

Zöllner’s work with Dr. Henry Slade was one of the direct results of the efforts of H. P. B. and Col. Olcott, who had selected Slade as the most reliable medium for the investigations conducted in 1876-77 at the Imperial University of St. Petersburg. It was after this that Slade resided in London and Leipzig.

Zöllner’s interest in psychic matters brought him bitter opposition from various scientific quarters, and he was considered by some of his own former colleagues as merely a crank. The persecution to which he was subjected must have produced a considerable effect upon his general health, as intimated by the remarks in the text to which this note is appended. He died suddenly of a stroke, seated at his desk, only 48 years of age.

Biographical data can be found in F. Körber’s study of Zöllner’s life (Berlin, 1899), and Moritz Wirth’s essay (Leipzig; 1882) which 267 contains a portrait of Zöllner; also in Aksakoff’s Psychische Studien, 1882 and 1883.

5 This passage from Magia Adamica of Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan) appears on the unnumbered eleventh page of the section entitled “To the Reader,” and not on page 11 of the text itself. H. P. B. emphasizes the fact that the italics are the author’s own. Her proofreader, however, was not too particular about this. The passage has been checked with the original edition, London, 1650, and corrected to correspond to it in every particular. See the Biographical Index for a summary of the life and work of Thomas Vaughan.

6 These quotations are from an essay by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), LL.D., F.R.S., entitled On the Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars, London, 1801, pp. 3 and 5. The italics do not appear in the original, and so must indicate special emphasis laid on these words by H. P. B.

7 These quotations are from Sir John Herschel’s Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects (London and New York, Alexander Strahan & Co., 1866, xii, 507 pp.), pp. 83-84. The words: “as separate and independent,” and “some sort of solidity,” as well as the last sentence beginning “yet we do know that . . .,” are not italicized in the original.

8 These quotations are from The Sun: Ruler, Fire, Light, and Life of the Planetary System, by Richard A. Proctor, B.A., F.R.A.S., London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1871, pp. 382, 384, 386-87.

9 Tyndall’s quotations have not been found for purposes of checking.

10 Province of N. E. Iran. Present name for the “Salt Desert” is Dasht-i-Kavir.

11 This may be the paging of the first edition, Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, Boston, 1848. The passage has been checked by the revised ed. of 1851, p. 237.

12 The text of this passage has been compared with the original edition published at Calcutta, in 1819, and the older spellings of Sanskrit names, as well as the rather quaint punctuation, have been kept intact.

13 The History of Indian Literature, Albrecht Friedrich Weber, p. 224, fnote 237. Transl. from the 2nd German edition by John Mann, M.A., and Theodor Zachariae, Ph.D., Trübner & Co., London, and Houghton, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1878, xxiii, 360 pp.

14 Also spelled Hiouen Thsang, Hsuan-Tsang, Yuan-Chwang, etc.

15 T. Subba Row Garu was a Vedântin of the Niyoga caste of the Smârta (Adwaita) Brâhmanas. He was born at Cocanâda, July 6, 1856. His native country was the Godâvarî District on the Coromândel Coast of India. His vernacular tongue was Telugu. His grandfather was the Sheristâdâr of the District, and his maternal 268 uncle was Diwan (Prime Minister) to the Râjah of Pithâpuram. His father died when he was but six months old, and his uncle brought him up. He attended the Cocanâda Hindû School, where he showed no unusual talents. After passing his matriculation examination at that school, he went in 1872 to the Madras Presidency College, where he showed great brilliancy in his studies and won his B.A. in 1876 at the top of his class.

Later in the same year, Sir T. Madhava Row, then Diwan of Baroda, offered him the position of Registrar of the High Court in that State, where Subba Row remained for about a year, returning thence to Madras, where he passed his B.L. examination. Having chosen the law as his profession, he served his apprenticeship under Messrs. Grant and Laing, and was enrolled a Vakil (Pleader) of the High Court in the latter part of 1880. His practice became very lucrative, and probably would have continued to bring him a good income, had he not given most of his attention to philosophy, drawn to it, as he told Col. Olcott, by an irresistible attraction. His brilliant mental ability is well illustrated by the fact that he successfully passed an examination in geology for the Statutory Civil Service in 1885, though this was a new subject to him and he had only one week to prepare himself.

Subba Row gave no early signs of possessing any mystical knowledge and even Sir T. Madhava Row did not notice any such while he was serving under him at Baroda. Col. H. S. Olcott writes:

“I particularly questioned his mother on this point, and she told me that her son first talked metaphysics after forming a connection with the Founders of the Theosophical Society: a connection which began with a correspondence between himself and H. P. B. and Damodar, and became personal after our meeting him, in 1882, at Madras. It was as though a storehouse of occult experience, long forgotten, had been suddenly opened to him; recollection of his last preceding birth came in upon him; he recognised his Guru, and thenceforward held intercourse with him and other Mahatmas; with some, personally at our Headquarters, with others elsewhere and by correspondence. He told his mother that H. P. B. was a great Yogi, and that he had seen many strange phenomena in her presence. His stored up knowledge of Sanskrit literature came back to him, and his brother-in-law told me that if you would recite any verse of Gîtâ, Brâhma-Sûtras or Upanishads, he could at once tell you whence it was taken and in what connection employed. Those who had the fortune to hear his lectures on Bhagavad-Gîtâ before the T. S. Convention of 1886 at Adyar, can well believe this so perfect seemed his mastery of that peerless work. . . . As a conversationalist he was most brilliant and interesting; an afternoon’s sitting with him was as edifying as the reading of a solid book. But this mystical side of his character he showed only to kindred 269 souls. What may seem strange to some is the fact that, while he was obedient as a child to his mother in worldly affairs, he was strangely reticent to her, as he was to all his relatives and ordinary acquaintances, about spiritual matters. His constant answer to her importunities for occult instruction was that he ‘dared not reveal any of the secrets entrusted to him by his Guru.’ He lived his occult life alone. That he was habitually so reserved, gives the more weight to the confidential statements he made to the members of his own household” (The Theosophist, Vol. XI, July, 1890, pp. 577-578.)

H. P. B. and Subba Row were pupils of the same Adept, Master M. As evidence of the very high esteem that H. P. B. had for Subba Row’s occult knowledge, we might recall her editorial remark (The Theosophist, Vol. IV, February, 1883, p. 118) to the effect that “we know of no better authority in INDIA in anything, concerning the esotericism of the Adwaita philosophy” than Subba Row. It should also be remembered that she associated his name with her own on the printed announcement of the forthcoming publication of The Secret Doctrine which appeared on several occasions in the pages of The Theosophist in 1884. At the time, her book was to be “A New Version of Isis Unveiled. With a New Arrangement of the Matter, Large and Important Additions, and Copious Notes and Commentaries.” As she wrote herself to A. P. Sinnett, in the early part of 1884: “And now the outcome of it is, that I, crippled down and half dead, am to sit up nights again and rewrite the whole of Isis Unveiled, calling it The Secret Doctrine and making three if not four volumes out of the original two, Subba Row helping me and writing most of the commentaries and explanations.” (Letters of H.P.B. to A. P. Sinnett, p. 64.) This original plan, however, did not materialize. Later, after H. P. B. had received from Master M., on January 9, 1885, a plan for The Secret Doctrine, and had worked on it for quite some time, she sent portions of the MSS. to Subba Row for his opinion and corrections. This was in 1886, when she was in Germany. His judgment was a disappointment to H. P. B., because he found the draft both diffuse and chaotic. This forced H. P. B. to begin all over again, and may have been partially instrumental in producing a grander and more magnificent text.

Approximately at this time, differences arose between Subba Row and H. P. B., mainly on what would appear to be minor points of a philosophical kind, connected primarily with the classification of human principles. While it is not possible to state anything positive in connection with this controversy, there is sufficient evidence to show that the two variants of the teachings concerning the principles were presented in the pages of The Theosophist by order of Master M., who, as will be remembered, was the Teacher of both H. P. B. and Subba Row; and that this so-called controversy was to a very large extent a “put up job.”

270However, even if this be true, and we think it is, there remains another, and much more valid reason, for misunderstanding between the two. We must bear in mind that Subba Row was a most conservative and rigid Brâhmana, an initiate into the more esoteric aspect of the ancient Brâhmanical teachings. He was greatly disturbed by the vulgar profanation of the Masters’ names which had then taken place, and, as a Brâhmana, he strongly disapproved the fact that H. P. B. revealed to the public some of the inner meanings of the Hindu Scriptures, concealed until then in the secrecy of the inner temples. It is probable that he overlooked the fact that in doing so H. P. B. obeyed her superiors, who were Subba Row’s superiors as well.

That this should be done by a woman of European descent was another fact difficult for a rigid Brâhmana to accept. Hence the inner conflict within Subba Row’s mind and heart, a conflict which, to judge by outward circumstances at least, brought about his temporary withdrawal from active participation in the affairs of The Theosophical Society. Writing to Mrs. and Miss Arundale, on June 16. 1885, H. P. B. says:

“Such as Subba Row—uncompromising initiated Brahmins, will never reveal—even that which they are permitted to. They hate too much Europeans for it. Has he not gravely given out to Mr. and Mrs. C[ooper] O[akley] that I was henceforth ‘a shell deserted and abandoned by the Masters’? When I took him for it to task, he answered: ‘You have been guilty of the most terrible of crimes. You have given out secrets of Occultism—the most sacred and the most hidden. Rather that you should be sacrificed than that which was never meant for European minds. People had too much faith in you. It was time to throw doubt into their minds. Otherwise they should have pumped out of you all that you know.’ And he is now acting on that principle.” (Ltrs. of H.P.B. to A.P.S., pp. 95-96.)

It is important to bear in mind that in spite of his attitude towards H. P. B. at this later period, Subba Row had not the least doubt that H. P. B. possessed occult power and knowledge, and that she was in constant touch with the Adepts H. P. B.’s occult integrity and the validity of her teachings were at no time doubted by Subba Row. This endorsement by an orthodox Brâhmana is of immense importance.

Subba Row, as a representative, at Madras, of the Sringeri Matham, had considerable influence among the orthodox Hindûs. Therefore his attitude towards H. P. B. did have a profound effect on many minds, to the distress of those who remained faithful to her.

In 1888, Subba Row withdrew from The Theosophical Society. Very soon after this a painful illness descended upon him. The cause 271 of this affliction was unknown. He died in 1890, only 34 years of age.

Regarding this, Col. Olcott writes as follows (Old Diary Leaves, IV, pp. 234-35):

“On the 3rd of June I visited T. Subba Rao at his request and mesmerized him. He was in a dreadful state, his body covered with boils and blisters from crown to sole, as the result of blood poisoning from some mysterious cause. He could not find it in anything that he had eaten or drank, and so concluded that it must be due to the malevolent action of elementals, whose animosity he had aroused by some ceremonies he had performed for the benefit of his wife. This was my own impression, for I felt the uncanny influence about him as soon as I approached. Knowing him for the learned occultist that he was, a person highly appreciated by H. P. B., and the author of a course of superb lectures on the Bhagavad-Gîtâ, I was inexpressibly shocked to see him in such a physical state. Although my mesmeric treatment of him did not save his life, it gave him so much strength that he was able to be moved to another house, and when I saw him ten days later he seemed convalescent, the improvement dating, as he told me, from the date of the treatment. The change for the better was, however, only temporary, for he died during the night of the 24th of the same month, and was cremated at 9 on the following morning. From members of his family I obtained some interesting particulars. At noon on the 24th he told those about him that his Guru called him to come, he was going to die, he was now about beginning his tapas (mystical invocation), and he did not wish to be disturbed. From that time on he spoke to no one. . . .”

The circumstances involved in the passing of T. Subba Row seem to point to some unexpended Karmic debt which he had to meet and overcome before proceeding further along the path of enlightenment.

The only work of T. Subba Row’s which stands as a unity is his series of Lectures entitled Notes on the Bhagavad-Gîtâ. The introductory lecture of this series was given by him at the Anniversary Convention at Adyar, December, 1885, and was published in The Theosophist, Vol. VII, No. 77, February, 1886, pp. 281-285. The four actual lectures were delivered a year later, namely, at the Anniversary Convention at Adyar, December 27-31, 1886. They appeared originally in The Theosophist, Vol. VIII, February, March, April and July, 1887. They were published in book-form by Tookaram Tatya, Bombay, 1888, though some omissions occur in this edition. The best edition of these Lectures is the one published by Theosophical University Press, Point Loma, Calif., 1934, which incorporates corrections in the text which Subba Row himself considered necessary at the time (See The Theosophist, Vol. VIII, May, 1887, p. 511).

272T. Subba Row wrote a great many invaluable articles and essays for The Theosophist, some of which were, no doubt, inspired by his Teacher. To some of them H. P. B. appended valuable footnotes and comments which are to be found in their correct chronological order in the present series of volumes. Soon after his death, these scattered writings were collected together by Tookaram Tatya, and published by the Bombay Theosophical Publication Fund, under the title of Esoteric Writings of T. Subba Row (Bombay, 1895; rev. and enl. ed., Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, 1931).

In his obituary notice of Subba Row, Col. H. S. Olcott wrote as follows:

“Between Subba Rao, H. P. Blavatsky, Damodar, and myself there was a close friendship. He was chiefly instrumental in having us invited to visit Madras in 1882, and in inducing us to choose this city as the permanent Headquarters of the Theosophical Society. Subba Rao was in confidential understanding with us about Damodar’s mystical pilgrimage towards the north, and more than a year after the latter crossed into Tibet he wrote him about himself and his plans. Subba Rao told me of this long ago, and reverted to the subject the other day at one of my visits to his sick-bed.” (The Theosophist, Vol. XI, July, 1890, pp. 577-578.)

While recognizing the subtle dangers which exist on the path of the true occultist, and the fact that T. Subba Row, in spite of his great advance along occult lines, fell prey to some of them, he undoubtedly was one of the most valuable workers of the early Theosophical Movement through whose mind certain teachings of the Adepts were delivered parallel with those coming through H. P. B., until such time when their paths appeared temporarily to diverge.

16 Quotation could not be found.

17 A History of ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the primitive religion of the Brahmans, Friedrich Max Müller, p. 13 (Williams and Norgate, London, 1859, 8vo, xix, 607 pp.).

18 Op. cit., p. 13.

19 These quotations could not be checked.

20 These quotations could not be found.

21 Op. cit., p. 14. Italics are H. P. B.’s.

22 Op. cit., p. 6

23 0p. cit., p. 16. Italics are H. P. B.’s.

24 Quotation could not be found.

25 0p. cit., p. 31.

26 Op. cit., p. 11.

27 0p. cit., p. 14.

28 Op. cit., pp. 32 & 33. Italics are H.P.B.’s.

27329 Hist. of Ind. Lit., p. 307, fnote 360.

30 Op. cit., p. 309, fnote 363.

31 Rig-Veda, Mandala III, Anuvaka III, Sûkta xxxiv, verse 9: “He gave horses, he gave also the sun, and Indra gave also the many-nourishing cow: he gave golden treasure, and having destroyed the Dasyus, he protected the Arya tribe.”

Rig-Veda, Mandala II, Anuvaka I, Sûkta xi, verse 18: “Indra, hero, keep up the strength wherewith thou hast crushed Vrita, the spider-like son of Danu, and let open the light to the Arya: the Dasyu has been set aside on thy left hand.”

See Rig-Veda Sanhitâ, a Collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, transl. from the original Sanskrit by H. H. Wilson, publ. under the patronage of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, London, Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1850, 4 vols.

32 Parapamisos (more correctly Paropanisus), from old Persian paru—mountain. Mountain chain running from West to East through the center of the Southern portion of the Central Asian highlands. It is a prolongation of the chain of Anti-Taurus. The ancients applied this name to that part of the chain which lies between the Sariphi Mountains (mtns. of Kohistan) on the West, and the Imaus Mountains (Himâlayas) on the East, or from about the sources of the river Margus in the West, to the point where the Indus breaks through the chain in the East. It divides that part of the continent which slopes towards the Indian Ocean from the great central table-land of Tartary and Tibet. In the time of Alexander, it was known as Caucasus Indicus, whence the name Hindu-Kush.

33 The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 10(46), July, 1883, pp. 253-256.

34 A Hist. of Anc. Sanskrit Lit., p. 274.

35 Op. cit., p. 266. Italics are H.P.B.’s.

36 Main text and quoted material seem to be somewhat confused at this point. The following passage is to be found in Prof. Weber’s Hist. of Ind. Lit., pp. 202-203, fnote: “According to Kern, Introd. to hisedition of the Brihat-Samhitâ of Varâha-Mihira, 5ff. (1866), the use of the so-called Samvat era is not demonstrable for early times at all, while astronomers only begin to employ it after the year 1000 or so.”

37 Weber, op. cit., p. 203, fnote. The last sentence has been italicized by H.P.B.

38 Max Müller, op. cit., p. 275. Italics are H.P. B.’s.

39 These passages could not be found.

40 This passage could not be found.

41 Weber, op. cit., p. 251, fnote 276.

42 Weber, op. cit., p. 253. Italics are H.P.B.’s.

43 Weber, op. cit., pp. 220-221.

27444 Italics by H.P.B.

45 Weber, op. cit., p. 274, fnote 321a. The words of R. L. Mitra are quoted from his work The Antiquities of Orissa, Calcutta, 1875. Italics are H.P.B.’s.

46 Weber, op. cit., p. 268, fnote 307. All italics are H.P.B.’s. The reference to Roth, as given by Weber, is Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xxvi, 441 & 448, 1872.

47 Weber, op. cit., p. 288, fnote 342.

48 Karmania or Carmania (Καρμανια), mentioned by Strabo (Geography, xv, 726) and Flavius Arrianus (Anabasis of Alexander, vi, 28), was an extensive province of the ancient Persian Empire, along the North side of the Persian Gulf, extending from Carpella on the East, to the river Bagrades (Nabend) on the West. It was bounded on the West by Persis, on the North by Parthia and Ariana, on the East by Drangiane and Gedrosia, and on the South by the Persian Gulf. It was divided into Carmania Propria and Carmania Deserta. Its chief city was Carmana (present Kirman) which gives its name to the province.

Drangiana or Drangiane (Δραγγιανή), mentioned by Strabo (Geography, xi, 516), Ammianus Marcellinus (Rerum gestarum, xxiii, 6) and others, was a province at the Eastern end of the Persian Empire, including part of the present Sejestan. It was bounded on the West by Carmania, on the North by Aria, on the East by Arachosia, and on the South by Gedrosia. It formed for a time a separate satrapy. It was watered mainly by the river Erymanthus (or Erymandrus). In its Northern part, it was inhabited by the war-like Drangae, whose capital was Prophtasia.

49 This quotation could not be found.

50 This quotation could not be found.

51 In spite of the seeming ambiguity of the language at this point, “it” refers to the First Council and not to the Second, as is amply clear from all known historical records, including Mahâvanśa, III, 19.

52 The reference is to Bigandet’s The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Budha of the Burmese, Rangoon, 1866.

53 Müller, op. cit., p. 267. Italics are H.P.B.’s.

54 The first two quotations in this paragraph are from pp. 265-66, and 268 of Müller’s work. The third one could not be traced. There is, however, on page 266, the following passage: “Before that time then chronology is traditional, and full of absurdities.”

55 None of the italics in these quotations appear in the original text of Max Müller.

56 These quotations could not be found.

57 This quotation could not be found.

27558 This quotation is from the work entitled Archaeological Survey of India. Four Reports made during the years 1862-63-64-65, by Alexander Cunningham, C. S. I., Simla, 1871, Vol. I, p. 1. At the end of the quotation immediately following the name of Max Müller, a footnote is appended, which reads: “I have since submitted this date to the scrutiny of my learned friend Bâpu Deva Sâstri, the well known astronomer; according to whose calculation the 1st of Kartik badi in A. D. 1276 was a Friday, and in A. D. 1342 a Monday; but in A. D. 1341 it fell on Wednesday the 7th of October N. S., which would place the beginning of the Buddhist era in B. C. 478.”

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The material contained in the series of “Replies,” to which the above Notes are appended, has been reprinted but once, since its original publication in The Theosophist. It appeared in a work entitled Five Years of Theosophy (London: Reeves and Turner, 1885, 575 pp.) made up of essays and articles on mystical, theosophical and historical subjects selected from the early volumes of The Theosophist. Neither in that work, nor in the brief excerpts from the “Replies” which have appeared at various times in subsequent Theosophical periodicals, can any editorial work be detected. As a matter of fact, all reprints perpetuate a large number of typographical and other mistakes, occurring in the original, and treat all the quotations embodied in the text with obvious disregard for their actual wording and punctuation, as found in the original works from which these quotations were taken.

As is the case with other material contained in the present volume, all proper names, technical terms and quotations occurring in the above series of “Replies” have been carefully checked, as far as was possible to do so, and no amount of labor has been deemed too great to carry this out. In the course of this work a considerable number of errors were corrected. As an instance of this, the following words may be cited: Böckt has been altered to Böckh; Uraha to Urabá; Hiung-un to Hsiung-nu; Pritchard to Prichard; Tuisco to Tuisto; Magus to Magas; Aclo to Acla; Susinago to Sisunâga; Vishma to Bhîshma; Vijiam to Vijaya; Valentinian to Valentinus; Devaha to Devadaha. Serious students of today, and in the future, will understand the literary and historical importance of this policy.