Page 69 (part 3)

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 O NE 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.