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When, however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin "was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda and of Homer" ( Compar. Theol., p. 318), he has not the slightest " historical basis" for it. He makes history and fact subservient to his [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * So little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of sexes made on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a year or two since, one of that kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The mummy of what had been considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has turned out, thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung on his neck, to be that of Sesostris -- the greatest King of Egypt! [[Vol. 1, Page]] xxx INTRODUCTORY. own conclusions, which may be very "scientific," in the sight of Oriental scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting views on the subject of chronology, in the case of the Vedas, of the various eminent philologists and Orientalists, from Martin Haug down to Mr. Max Muller himself, are an evident proof that the statement has no historical basis to stand upon, "internal evidence" being very often a jack-o'lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science of modern Comparative Mythology any better proof to show, that those learned writers, who have insisted for the last century or so that there must have been "fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind . . . . preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy," were entirely wrong. For this is what all the Eastern Initiates and Pundits have been proclaiming to the world from time to time. While a prominent Cinghalese priest assured the writer that it was well known that the most important Buddhist tracts belonging to the sacred canon were stored away in countries and places inaccessible to the European pundits , the late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India, assured some members of the Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to ancient Brahmanical works. When told that Professor Max Muller had declared to the audiences of his "Lectures" that the theory . . . . "that there was a primeval preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, finds but few supporters at present," -- the holy and learned man laughed. His answer was suggestive. "If Mr. Moksh Mooller , as he pronounced the name, were a Brahmin, and came with me, I might take him to a gupta cave (a secret crypt) near Okhee Math, in the Himalayas, where he would soon find out that what crossed the Kalapani (the black waters of the ocean) from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books. There was a "primeval revelation," and it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reappear; though the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait." Questioned further on this point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut, in 1880. No doubt the mystification played, in the last century at Calcutta, by the Brahmins upon Colonel Wilford and Sir William Jones was a cruel one. But it had been well deserved, and no one was more to be blamed [[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxi INTRODUCTORY. in that affair than the Missionaries and Colonel Wilford themselves. The former, on the testimony of Sir William Jones himself (see Asiat. Res., Vol. I., p. 272), were silly enough to maintain that "the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa were no other than the Christian trinity."* It was a good lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it has also made some of them too shy, and caused, in its reaction, the pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For "that first supply on the Brahmanical market," made for Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern as to give to the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of the opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole Puranic story about Chrishna was plagiarized by the Brahmins from the Bible! But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his Lectures on the " Science of Religion ," concerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to the sorrow, of Col. Wilford, do not at all interfere with the conclusions to which one who studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably come. For, if the results show that neither the New nor even the Old Testament borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of the Brahmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive learning from the Brahmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Col. Vans Kennedy has long since justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanskrit and Brahman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, in the presence of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Muller. What it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal solvent for every identification and "connection" between [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See Max Muller's "Introduction to the Science of Religion." Lecture On False Analogies in comparative Theology, pp. 288 and 296 et seq. This relates to the clever forgery (on leaves inserted in old Puranic MSS .), in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pundits of Col. Wilford had heard from him about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his three sons, etc., etc [[Vol. 1, Page]] xxxii INTRODUCTORY. the gods of many nations.