Page 85 (part 5)

Meanwhile, what could be easier than an attempt, at least, to verify Puranic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew King Sagara's progeny -- 60,000 men strong -- was undeniably Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the Puranas; although one of them flatly denies the imputation without explaining its esoteric meaning. It is the Bhagavata Purana (IX. viii., 12 and 13), which says that "the report that the sons of the King were reduced to ashes by the mere glance of the sage is not true." "For," as it argues, "how can the quality of darkness, the product of anger, exist in a sage whose goodness was the essence that purified the world -- the earth's dust, as it were, attributed to Heavens! How should mental perturbation distract that sage, identified with the Supreme Spirit, and who has steered here (on earth) that solid vessel of the Sankhya (philosophy), with the help of which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?" The Purana is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to promulgate and a policy to carry out -- that of great secrecy with regard to mystical divine truths divulged for countless ages only at initiation. It is not in the Puranas, therefore, that we have to look for an explanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states of being. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the 60,000 Sons, brutal, vicious, and impious, are the personification of the human passions that a "mere glance of the sage" -- the SELF who represents the highest state of purity that can be reached on earthreduces to ashes. But it has also other significations -- cyclic and chronological meanings, -- a method of marking the periods when certain sages flourished, found also in other Puranas. Now it is as well ascertained as any tradition can be, that it was at Hardwar (or Gangadwara, the "door or gate of the Ganges") at the foot of the Himalayas, that Kapila sat in meditation for a number of years. Not far from the Sewalik range, the "pass of Hardwar" is called to this day "Kapila's Pass"; and the place, "Kapilasthen," by the ascetics. It is there that Ganga (Ganges) emerging from its mountainous gorge, begins its course over the sultry plains of India. And it is as clearly ascertained by geological survey that the tradition which claims that the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 572 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. ocean ages ago washed the base of the Himalayas -- is not entirely without foundation, for there are traces left of this. The Sankhya philosophy may have been brought down and taught by the first, and written out by the last Kapila. Now Sagara is the name of the Ocean, and even of the Bay of Bengal, at the mouth of the Ganges, to this day in India ( Vide Wilson's Vishnu Purana, Vol. III. p. 309). Have geologists ever calculated the number of millenniums it has taken the sea to recede to where it is now, from Hardwar, 1,024 feet above the level of the sea at present? If they did, those Orientalists who show Kapila flourishing from the 1st to the 9th cent. A.D., might change their opinions, if only for one of two very good reasons: the true number of years elapsed since Kapila's day is in the Puranas unmistakably, though the translators fail to see it. And secondly -- the Kapila of the Satya, and the Kapila of the Kali-Yugas may be one and the same INDIVIDUALITY, without being the same PERSONALITY. Kapila, besides being the name of a personage, of the once living Sage and the author of Sankhya philosophy, is also the generic name of the Kumaras, the celestial ascetics and virgins; therefore the very fact of Bhagavata Purana calling that Kapila -- which it showed just before as a portion of Vishnu -- the author of Sankhya philosophy, ought to have warned the reader of a blind containing an esoteric meaning. Whether the Son of Vitatha, as Harivansa shows him to be, or of anyone else, the author of Sankhya cannot be the same as the Sage of the SatyaYuga -- at the very beginning of the Manvantara, when Vishnu is shown in the form of Kapila, "imparting to all creatures true Wisdom"; for this relates to that primordial period when "the Sons of God" taught to the just created men the arts and sciences, which have been cultivated and preserved since then in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are several well-known Kapilas in the Puranas. First the primeval sage, then Kapila, one of the three "Secret" Kumaras; and Kapila, son of Kasyapa and Kadru -- the "many-headed Serpent," (See Vayu Purana placing him on the list of the forty renowned sons of Kasyapa), besides Kapila, the great sage and philosopher of the Kali Yuga. Being an Initiate, "a Serpent of Wisdom," a Naga, the latter was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former ages.