Page 53 (part 8)

As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful "Sorcerer" of the " W HITE I SLAND, which had become B LACK with sin," i.e., of the islands of Atlantis. The "White Island" is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived (see the tradition of Jhana-bhaskara) in Romaka-pura in the West: because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the "Sweat-born" of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race, the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Surya (the Sun-God) himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The [[Vol. 2, Page]] 68 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. fact of " Romaka-pura in the West" being named as the birth-place of this hero of the archaic ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the esoteric teaching about the "Sweat-born" Races, the men born from the pores of their parents. " R OMAKUPAS" means "hair-pores" in Sanskrit. In Mahabharata XII. 10,308, a people named Raumyas are said to have been created from the pores of Virabhadara, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root Races. The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a footnote marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Arya Samaj school: -- I. From the beginning of cosmic evolution,* up to the Hindu year Tarana (or 1887) .................... 1,955,884,687 years. II. The (astral) mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have taken to evolve** ........ 300,000,000 years. III. Time, from the first appearance of "Humanity" (on planetary chain)..........................1,664,500,987 years.*** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The esoteric doctrine says that this "cosmic evolution" refers only to our solar system; while exoteric Hinduism makes the figures refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole Universal System. ** Another point of disagreement. Occultism says: "The astral prototypes of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man have taken that time (300 million years) to evolve, re-forming out of the cast-off materials of the preceding Round, which, though very dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatively ethereal as compared with the materiality of our present middle Round. At the expiration of these 300 million years, Nature, on the way to the physical and material, down the arc of descent, begins with mankind and works downwards, hardening or materialising forms as it proceeds. Thus the fossils found in strata, to which an antiquity, not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of millions of years, must be ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Round, which, while living, were far more ethereal than physical, as we know the physical. That we perceive and disinter them as tangible forms, is due to the process of materialization or crystallization referred to, which took place subsequently, at the beginning of the Fourth Round, and reached its maximum after the appearance of man, proceeding parallel with his physical evolution. This alone illustrates the fact that the degree of materiality of the Earth changes pari passu with that of its inhabitants. And thus man now finds, as tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present senses) ethereal forms of the lower kingdoms. The above Brahmanical figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and in the First Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round." *** This difference and the change of cyphers in the last three triplets of figures, the writer cannot undertake to account for. According to every calculation, once the three hundred millions are subtracted, the figures ought to stand, 1,655,884,687. But they are given as stated in the Tamil calendar above-named and as they were translated. The school of the late Pandit Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, gives a date of 1,960,852,987. See the "Arya Magazine" of Lahore, the cover of which bears the words: "Aryan era 1,960,852,987." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 69 THE VARIOUS PRALAYAS. IV. The number that elapsed since the " Vaivasvata Manvantara " * -- or the human period -- up to the year 1887, is just ......................... 18,618,728 years. V. The full period of one Manvantara is ..... 308,448,000 years. VI. 14 "Manvantaras" plus the period of one Satya Yuga make ONE DAY OF B RAHMA, or complete Manvantara and make ................. 4,320,000,000 years. Therefore a Maha-Yuga consists of ............. 4,320,000 years.** The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali-Yuga ..................................................... 4,989 years. To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the " Theosophist " of November, 1885. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mortal years. 360 days of mortals make a year ........................................... 1 Krita Yuga contains ................................................. 1,728,000 Treta Yuga contains ................................................. 1,296,000 Dwapara Yuga contains .............................................. 864,000 Kali Yuga contains ...................................................... 432,000 The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Maha Yuga ............................................................... 4,320,000 Seventy-one of such Maha-Yugas form the period of the reign of one Manu .......................... 306,720,000 The reign of 14 Manus embraces the duration of 994 Maha-Yugas, which is equal to .............. 4,294,080,000 [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * V AIVASVATA Manu is the one human being -- some versions add to him the seven Rishis -- who in the Matsya Avatar allegory is saved from the Deluge in a boat, like Noah in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivasvata Manvantara would be the "post-Diluvian" period.