Wisdom Traditions of East and West, by Charles Johnston

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Wisdom Traditionsof East and West

The R eligion of Ancient Egypt

The Religion of Chaldea

The R eligion of India

The Religion of China

By Charles Johnston


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ContentsThe Religion of A ncient E gypt...............................................5The Religion of C haldea....................................................... 19The Religion of I ndia.... ... ... ... ... ... .... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 35The Religion of China....................................................... ...53


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The Religion of Ancient EgyptTheosophical Quarterly , January, 1906

INTRODUCTORY .

We must study religions from within, ourselves gen uinely believe in spiritual life a nd spiritual law, and havesome knowledge of t he t hings of ou r i mmortality, we shall study togood purpose. If we ar e m erely curious, without conviction, withoutfaith, we b ut lose o ur time, and our work will be w holly val ueless.

The worlds religions are the grand, s uccessive chapters of t he worlds Religion. If with ever-increasing

gradual revelation of divine l ife, and this world of ours as the an teroomof immortal realms.

There was a t ime when it was fashionable t o hold that men cameby their religious beliefs through fancy, m aking their gods fromshadows and clouds, and hearing divine vo ices only i n the l isp of leavesand the ripple of r ain. We shall learn to set t his l ight o pinion aside,coming t o the gr eat truth that mans belief in the s oul springs from thesoul itself; that h e h as f aith in divine beings, becau se there are divinebeings t hat he has s et his h ope on immortality, because the soul isimmortal.

The k nowledge o f the s oul and its realities is a s cience, to be l earned

by experiment, as ar e all sciences. T he great ce ntral thought o f al lreligions, the thought o f s acrifice, is t o be understood only through

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6 Wisdom Traditions of East and W est

sacrifice. Humility and faith reveal their s ecrets o nly to humility and

faith. We m ust pass in faith through sacrifice t o knowledge, before w ecan speak with any cer tainty co ncerning re ligion.The s tudy of r eligions m ust be founded on facts, assembled with

vigilance an d untiring toil. But t he f acts i t most i mports u s t o gatherare t he f acts of spiritual life. The f ield that must first be h arvested is thefield of our ow n souls. Holding as a cl ue t he i nsight thus gai ned, weshall find our way s afely t hrough many a l abyrinth of old-world faiths,

where else we should meet

guide, we s hall find among the an cient religions of the w orld many aland of promise, many an isle o f the b lest. We shall come in time to divan ordered revelation, and a vei led reminiscence, not complete i n anyland, yet w ith a certain unity in all; a memory going back to thespiritual dawn of mankind, in whose p ure, quiet light move d ivine an daugust figures, each the gu ardian genius of a r ace; great ones, to whomthe thought a nd love of l ater m en goes bac k, drawing from theirmemory t he f aith in incarnate go ds.

MOTHER E GYPT .

The E gyptians, wrote H erodotus, were t he f irst among m ankindto teach the i mmortality of the s oul. This is not all the t ruth, for theknowledge o f immortality is as old as man. Yet it is true t hat, amongthe augu st records of the p ast, as we n ow know them, Egypt standsfirst, the m otherland of religious knowledge an d of the M ysteries.

There is a certain stateliness an d beauty in the land itself, whichmarks it as the f itting home o f a g reat spiritual life. The r ich ribbon offertility, w atered by the sacred Nile, is gu arded on either s ide by thevast a nd silent d esert, its w astes of r ock and stone and sand shiningunder the s unlight, or veiled in the gl oom of night. The l ong valley o fthe Nile, in its b oundless f ruitfulness, is a sym bol of creative Nature;and the s acred river w hich brings i t fertility, now flowing, now ebbing,

is an image of t he spiritual life that t hrills t hrough nature, comingfrom a s ecret source beyo nd the h orizon.The w hole l and is clothed in a vei l of beauty, whether it be t he r ich

greenness of the va lley, the g old and grey of the b ordering hills, or t he


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The R eligion of Egypt 7

deep blue, changing to purple, of the o verarching sky. The s unrise i s a

glory, n oontide full of s plendour, and evening veiled in marvellousgloom. Night also speaks of revelation. The s tars tell their s ecrets moreplainly than in northern lands. As the s un dies out of the cl oudless sky,brief twilight w anes i nto darkness, and within an hour t he stars ar eshining, growing to coloured gems of flame i n the vel vety dome o fnight. One-half of the w hole s tarry sphere i s t hus s een, an hour af terthe sun has gone; and, as the n ight draws onward, the splendid domeof s tars t urns s lowly on its al most l evel axis; till, when dawn draws

near, another h emisphere of stars i s al ready revealed. Thus com es i tthat, every n ight of the cl oudless year, the w hole g lory of the s phere o fstars is unveiled, save o nly on each night the n arrow zone l it up by theevening and morning twilight; a zone eq ual to but one-twelfth of the

whole celestial spherThus for those w ho watched in old Egypt it was easy t o discern the

mighty s ecrets of the vi sible h eaven s; to measure t he m ovements of themoon, stealing backward among the s tars, each hour m oving a spaceequal to the w idth of her own disk; it was easy to note t he p lace of thesun among the constellations, to follow his a dvance an d withdrawalthrough the w ide j ewelled belt of the z odiac; as the d awn drew nigh, it

was easy to mark the lasenthe s uns growing light; and, noting this from year t o year, thus to gainthe p recise m easure o f the ear ths r otation round the s un. The g reateryear of the p oles precession through the s tars might also be m easured,many successive g enerations adding their knowledge an d handing itdown.

The spirit of t he day of splendid sunshine and colour, and thenights of solemn star-lit gloom breathes forth from the mightypyramids and pillared temples of ancient Egypt. Full of grandeur andquiet reverence, nothing nobler has e ver b een conceived by the s piritof man, or built by h uman hand . These an cient shrines are p enetratedthrough and through with the breath of con secration. The stonesthemselves seem to worship offering t heir testimony t o the m ight anddivinity of the o ver-shadowing S oul.

In the h istory of Egypt also, with its age-long dynasties of mightykings, whose l ife an d death are r ecorded in stately monuments, who


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alone am ong t he r ulers of men bear always a d ivine n ame as well as a

human name, who follow each other i n stately sequence, like someholy p rocession along t he N ile, we have on ce more embodied t he samespirit of m ajesty and quiet p ower. Nor have we yet a pproachedcompleteness i n our vi ew of t hat gr eat p rocession of ki ngs. Everydecade o f study reveals n ew centuries and new dynasties of Egyptianmonarchs, stretching ever farther back into the d arkness. Beyond theutmost landmark of yesterday, we n ow see cl early t he o utlines of oldertimes an d wider cycl es; a nd the revelations of t oday are already

opening t he w ay f or the gr eater revelations of tomorrow.THE L ATER AND E ARLIER K INGS .

Menes, who united the provinces of E gypt i nto a single empiremany m illenniums ago, was recently t hought to be a m yth, a f ancifulfigure o f tradition. He n ow stands out, a f ully historic p erson, whoseacts and conquests are w ell known to us, whose ver y b urial-place, withthe tomb of his q ueen, e very visitor may see. T he reign of t hisconqueror Menes is now held to have been seven thousand years ago,and we m ay t ake i t as a l andmark in our vi ew of E gyptian history.

After Menes came thirty-in that dynastic period were built t he greatest p yramids, and themost splendid carvings were w rought out of the s tubborn rocks. Thebeauty a g randeur of workmanship of the ear liest dynasties has neverbeen equalled by an y l ater race of men.

Nearly five thousand years, it i s h eld, were filled by the thirty-oneEgyptian dynasties. T hen, t hree centuries before our era, c ameinvasion of Alexander of Macedon, whose o fficer, Ptolemy, founded aGreek dynasty, numbered the thirty-second. That dynasty perished

with Cleopatra, and EgypSeven thousand years ago, conquering M enes gathered together the

provinces of Egypt, and formed t hem into the du al kingdom, the twolands, of U pper a nd Lower E gypt. His f irst c apital was a t T hinis,

called by the G reeks Abydos, far up the N ile. Advancing his powernorthward, he b rought Lower Egypt of the d elta al so under his rule,and founded Menefer, the c ity of M enes, ca lled Memphis by theGreeks, close to the h ead of the delta, where t he Nile separates into


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seven streams spread out like a f an toward the s ea.

Seven millenniums of hu man history lead us back to Menes.Beyond Menes rise t he f igures of older kings, dim and majestic, andextending to a f ar remoter pas t. Ten kings w ho preceded Menes a realready admitted to be fully historic, and they but b ring us t o theclosing epoch of a great prehistoric civilization, which culminated notless than a t housand years earlier. Even here, we d o not approach thebeginning of Egypt, whether for s acred tradition or m odern research.For we know today that t he race of t hese ten earlier k ings who

preceded Menes was an invading r ace, coming b y way of Koptos fromthe shore of t he Red Sea; and finding a far o lder r ace already inpossession of the great Nile valley. That earlier race, fair ofcomplexion, skilled in the ar ts of life, workers in ivory and ebony, hadits k in, perhaps, along the southern Mediterranean, towards A lgeriaand Mount Atlas, and certain tribes belonging to the same f amily ar estill hidden in the i nner oas es of the v ast Sahara. Within a g eneration,it may well be, the h istory of that pre-dynastic r ace w ill be w ell-knownto us; yet, when its s ecrets ar e penetrated, its p eriods m easured andestimated, we sh all still be far f rom the b eginning. For even this r aceon its coming found not a n empty land, but an older race and analready degenerate culture along the valley of t he sacred river. Thatolder race h as its kindred, perhaps, among the H ottentots of southern

Africa today; yet thelarger territory in Egypt than any l ater comers.

Egypt is now a r ainless land. Years pass, along the u pper reaches ofthe r iver, without a r ainstorm or even a shower. Where T hinis stood,there m ay be r ain once i n four o r f ive y ears. But in the d ays of thatearlier race, of which we h ave j ust spoken, Egypt was a l and of torrentrains, of wild storms and floods, drenching what is n ow the d esert,

which then may have been fertonly g uess. Perhaps it was when the w ild sand wastes of the vas t Sahara

were still covered by tcataclysm raised and sank the o cean bed. But however long the agesthat divide u s from that great convulsion, we k now that long b efore i tEgypt was peopled by n umerous tribes. Their knives and axes of flintstill s trew the desert h ills b eyond the fertile valley of t he Nile; an dmany of t hese f lint knives are worn and rounded by the waters of


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torrents t hat ceased to flow millenniums a go. Flint knives of t he d ays

of Menes have been found, still sharp and keen-edged, yet changed bytime to a light or ange colour O ther f lint kn ives o f the far o lder r acehave, by times p assage, been stained deep brown or b lack, so vastlymore ancient are t hey t han the days of Menes, now known to be seventhousand years ago.

THE B IRTH AND D EATH OF O SIRIS .

Thus f ar does modern research conduct us. We l earn a l ike s tory

from ancient sacred tradition. Before M enes, said that tradition, wereten kings of T hinis, whose r eigns are n ow admittedly historic. Theseten king were preceded by dynasties of her oes a nd demigods. Andbefore t hese cam e t wo dynasties of divine k ings. To the ear lier of these,say the t raditions of Egypt, belonged the g reat king Hasiri, whom theGreeks called Osiris.

Osiris is to be cl assed with certain great ones, of whom Krishna an dGautama Buddha m ay stand as types. They were, in one sense, menincarnate u pon earth, and living as men among m en. But they w ere, ina larger s ense, divine and representative beings, the course of whoselives w as sym bolical, t ypifying the great l aws o f s piritual l ife. I n allthese lives t here are two elements: a mission and a sacrifice. T heteaching of Gautama i s but the ou tcome o f the G reat Renunciation.The d eath of Krishna r ounds and completes the d isclosure o f divinesecrets t o Arjuna. And so it w as with Osiris, who belongs t o a farearlier age, to the d im dawn of Egyptian tradition. It is t rue that theBuddha w as regarded, and rightly r egarded, as the vi sible p resentmentof the d ivine A valokiteshvara, the H eaven ly Host. Yet it is not less truethat as prince S iddhartha, he l ived in the ci ty of Kapila, renouncing hiskingdom to follow wisdom, and teaching his disciples in the b amboogarden. So it is t rue t hat Krishna w as the avat ar of Vishnu, who, inthree s trides, traversed the h eavens, and who, with Brahma an d Shiva,completed the holy Triad. But i t i s al so true that Krishna was t heprince o f Dvaraka, the f riend and charioteer of Arjuna.

In the same way, we m ay b elieve, Hasiri was born in remote d ays,in Upper Egypt. He a scended t he t hrone of his kingdom, and reigned,it i s recorded, f or eight an d twenty years. E ven in life, he was


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surrounded with a cer tain divinity. His people l ooked on him as the

teacher of all wisdom and knowledge, winning men to the ar ts of lifeby gentleness and goodness. He was full of kindliness, mildness andgrace, a p ersonality very w insome, though of royal might, yet humbleand simple, who led mens hearts captive b y t enderness.

Such, they say, was Osiris. Towards the cl ose o f his reign, he l eft hiskingdom, t ravelling to distant l ands. A nd during his absence, h isbrother Set, whom the G reeks l ater called Typhon, conspired againsthim, to kill him. Hes, the co nsort of O siris, called Isis b y the G reeks,

sought t o frustrate Sets ev il plans, but w ithout av ail, for o n Osirisreturn to Egypt, Set brought about his death, enclosing his body in acoffin of richly carved wood, and setting it ad rift on the sacred Nile.The w aters carried the ch est with its sacred burden far, and at last bythe T anaitic m outh it passed through the d elta t o the s ea. Isis soughtthe b ody of her lord, with grievous s orrow following every trace an dclue, and at last discovered the co ffin with her l ords b ody enclosed init. But even now she d id not escape t he en mity of Set, who found itshiding place, and tearing open the coffin, cut t he body of Osiris i ntwice s even pieces, and strewed them through the l ength and breadthof t he land. Yet o nce more did Isis g ather t ogether t he scatteredmembers of h er lord with sacred care, burying them at Abydos,destined for l ong ages t o worship him. By miraculous p ower Osirisrose again from the dead into a renewed and spiritual life, and,through his son Horus, vanquished his enemy Set. The beat en foe w asgiven to Isis for safe keeping, b ut the bereaved queen in largegenerosity set him free, though Horus bitterly o pposed her.

Thus l ived and died Osiris. T hereafter i n the hidden, s piritual world, he became the rule

and to his throne co me al l mortals to be j udged. Thus far the n arrative, which, we must believe, embodies

earth, events as actual as K rishnas f riendship for A rjuna, or B uddhasteaching in the bamboo gar den.

Yet there is the other s Gautama, he s tands for the L ogos incarnated, and, after his death andresurrection, for t he L ogos made m anifest in the h eaven s. It is said ofhim that H es or Isis was a t o nce his m other, hi s sister an d his


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daughter, symbolizing clearly the manifestations o f t he one spirit i n

three w orlds, each world having its p roper ves ture. The divine, thespiritual and the mental worlds ar e thus p ersonified in the Easternteachings; and in Set, the foe, yet t he brother o f O siris, we see thesymbol of the p hysical world. Paul spoke o f a l aw in his flesh, warringagainst the l aw of his m ind; and in just this s ense d id Set war agai nstOsiris, in wide n ature, as in man. As Osiris was put to death by Set,hidden in the cas ket of death, and then cut in twice s even pieces andstrewn far an d wide, so is t he s pirit buried in the m aterial world, and,

through the power o f t he material world, divided in many parts,strewn throughout t he manifestations o f l ife. Then Isis, the dutifulspouse, the pure spirit o f as piration, i s s et t he task of o nce moreassembling the fragments of O siris, as s pirit i s drawn forth frommatter, and once more p erfected in one. As in certain other l

Witness that enclosing miraculous r ising from the dead, an event s till celebrated in mysticalrites.

THE W ORSHIP OF R A .

Abydos was the centre of the associated with his name. When Menes carried his capital northwardto Menefer or M emphis, another e xpression was gi ven to the sameteaching, and Memphis was bound up in tradition with the worship ofRa. Ra is t he Sun, born of P tah, t he mystical, a bstract l ight, a ndhimself the f ather of Shu, the s unshine. Yet Ra is something more than tis b ut t he symbol of t he hidden Sun after w hose shining all elseshines. N or c ould any more f itting and beautiful symbol be ch osen,especially in a land of s uch splendid light as E gypt. From the faintdawn, that touched the eastern hills w ith lines of gold and crimson,through radiant morning to perfect noon, when the sun stood at the

crown of the az ure d ome; through the d escending hours, till the sunonce m ore t ouched the r im of the d esert, flooding the h ills with redand the sky with purple light, the whole day was a procession ofmagnificent beauty. And with that abounding b eauty ca me every go od


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and perfect gi ft to the l ife o f man, all fruitfulness, the w heat t hat f ed

him, the l ife o f cattle an d birds that brought him riches. All came f romRa. All was the gi ft of Ra.Nor i s t he symbol of the sunset less f itting and beautiful. As t he

visible sun touches t he rim of t he desert, and then sinks, a disk ofsplendid red, beyond the curtain of the hills, so sink all living thingsinto the d arkness. Then follow the l ong hours of m ystical gloom, lit

with the coloured fire the dome of n ight. At l ast t he sun returns, once m ore tinging the

eastern hills, and pouring his g lad light u pon the earth; and so lifereturns, coming out of the h idden once m ore i nto the vi sible w orld.

No symbol is more u niversal, none m ore b eautiful, than this whichassociates the h idden world of souls with the r ealm beyond the s unset.In all lands souls are t hought of as departing to the w est, whether wetake t he b eliefs of Tibet or of New Zealand. And this from no vagaryof f ancy, but f rom the universal vision of a great t ruth, w hich inthought f ollows t he sun beyond his setting to a hidden world thatsupplements t he world of d ay. As lord of t he hidden world theEgyptians paid honour to Amen-Ra, the h idden sun. Here i s a ve rsionof one of their hymns:

Hail to thee, Ra! Lord of truth, whose s hrine i s hidden; Lordof the go ds, Creator, sailing i n thy b ark; at whose c ommand thegods were made; maker of m en, that supportest t heir w orks,that gi vest t hem life, that kn owest h ow one differeth from

another, that l isteneth to the poor w ho is i n distress; that ar tgentle of hea rt when a man crieth unto thee; thou whodeliverest t he fearful man from the violent, who judgest t hepoor a nd the oppressed; Lord of w isdom, whose p recepts are

wise; at whose pleasure the Nilmercy, most loving, at whose com ing m en live, opener of everyeye, proceeding from the f irmament, cause o f joy and light, at

whose goodness the gods rejoice,

see thee! A few lines may be quoted from a verse hymn:


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Son of Ptah, both fair and good,

Lo! the go ds adore a nd loveBy t he god s is honour paidTo t he God who al l things made,Things below and things above.Lo, he p asses through the s ky,Sailing in tran quillity,Blessing both the l ands with light,King o f north and king o f south,

Giving l aw with truthful mouth.He who takesThe earth, and makesIt like to his d ivinity.In his beauties go ds rejoice,To his p raise th ey lift their vo ice

And adore his name, When he comes from his abode,

Rising cr owned with flame,Glorious the t wo lands above.He whose f ragrances they l ove,Incense-born and dewy-sweet,

When he comes from Araby, When his feet

Over p lains of Asia f ly, And his smile

Beams along t he l and divine, Where the Red Sea waters shine,

Southward of the l and of Nile. At his feet the gods

In acknowledgement they bendTo his awful majesty.Lord of fear and victory,Mighty o ne of will,Master of the c rowns, and king,Making gr een the of fering,Giver of the h oly f ood,Pure and good,


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We adore with salutation

Thee, who called into creationEven the go ds, and by t hy s kill,In beneficence a nd loveHast outstretched the h eavens above,

And hast set the earths Gracious ruler, rising b right,Crowned w ith crown of silver white,Lord of rays,

Great Creator of the l ight,Unto him the god s give pr aise, An he stretches from above

Hand of love t o them that love.Hail to thee, Lord God of law,Thee, whose shrine n one ever saw,Sailing in thy b oat along,By whose word the gr eat gods are,

Thee we hai l in song, Atmu, maker of mankind.

It i s cl ear t hat w ith the visible sun is h ere blended the Logos, thespiritual giver o f light and life, and that the sun is b ut one s ymbol ofthat for w hich Osiris is another symbol. As Osiris contended with Setthe ad versary and prince o f this world, so contends the s un with theSerpent of Darkness; and so the l ight contends w ith the d arkness i nthe h eart.

THE S YMBOL OF THE N ILE .

Other images were t aken by t he w ise m en of ancient Egypt, alwaysto embody the same truth. Of these o ne o f the most beautiful andfitting was the s acred Nile, like t he s un a g iver of life an d sustenance t othe w hole l and, a v isible d ivinity beari ng ever p lentiful blessings. Hereagain Egypt was happy in possessing a s ymbol in all ways s o fitting.

For, like t he s piritual power, the N ile w as i n its s ource re condite an dmysterious, though very ev ident in its manifestations. From far beyondthe rim of the kn own world it came, and entered the kingdom ofUpper Egypt by t he r ed granite gat e o f the f irst cataract at Syene, now


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called Assuan. Then for h undreds of miles it flowed through the l ong

Egyptian valley, bringing fert ility, till at l ast i t s pread into the sevenstreams of the d elta, and was lost in the s ea. At the summer solstice the of far d istant tropical lands, and then, for a f ortnight, great m asses o fgreen water-growths were car ried down from hidden equatorial lakes.Then the waters r ose until the inundation, some two months l ater,

when the Nile once more streancient bed. At the au tumnal equinox it r eached its gr eatest h eight,

covering the w hole l and with rich earth, washed over it by the w aters. And then, for nine months

lowest l evel, resting there for a f ew days o nly, and then once ag ainbeginning t o rise.

The s ummer solstice, when the r iver t hus t ouched it l owest level, was a time of solemn rit

referred only to the vi sible N ile an d the ap proaching inundation, butfor those m ore i nformed, embodied the t eaching o f the Logos, and the

working of spiritual hearts of men. We m ay gi ve a f ew verses from one of the hym ns to theNile, which s how this double meaning:

Hail, all hail, O Nile, to thee!To the l and thyself thou showest,Coming t ranquilly t o giveLife, that Egypt so may l ive;

Amen, hidden is thy source, Hidden thy m ysterious course,But it fills our h earts with glee!Thou the gar dens overflowest,

With their flowers beloved Thou for all the b easts that are,Glorious r iver,

Art life-giver,

To our f air f ields cea selesslyThou thy w aters dost supply, And dost come

Through the middle pl ain descending,


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Like t he s un through middle s ky,

Loving, good, and without ending,Bringing co rn for granary,Giving light to every h ome,O thou mighty Ptah!

THE J UDGMENT OF THE D EAD .

We can see the unity in spirsymbol, if we compare with the hym ns to the Su n and the N ile t hese

words of a hymn to OsirisManifester o f go od, full of go odness an d truth, beneficent

spirit, b eneficent i n will a nd words, m ild of h eart, f air andbeloved of all who see h im, he brings f orth plenteousness a ndgives i t to all the ea rth; all men rejoice becau se o f him, heart s ar ein sweetness because o f him, and bosoms are in joy; all menadore h im and glorify his goodness, sanctifying and beneficent is

his name!The teaching of Osiris p enetrated deeper i nto the spiritual world,

and with him was bound up the f ate o f the soul after dea th. At thebirth of Osiris, it was s aid, a v oice was h eard, saying: The l ord of allthe ear th is born! an d after his death, as lord of the h idden world, hebecam e t he j udge o f all souls. Isis stood beside h is throne i n the H all ofTruth with two and forty an gels surrounding h im. Horus, his son, ledforward the s ouls of the d ead to judgement, and Anubis, director ofthe w eight, brought forth the scales f or t he trial. In one scal e was s etthe i mage of Truth, and in the o ther a vas e con taining the go od deedsof the soul on trial, and Thoth stood with his t ablets t o record theresult of the w eighing.

If the g ood deed weighed the h eavier, the b lessed soul, purged byfire, entered the s olar boat and was carried to the h appy f ields of Aahluand the p ools of peace. Dwelling there f or t hrice a t housand years, the

soul was once or e born upon earth, to gain a n ew lesson in wisdomand life, when the cycl e w as completed, the s oul, justified and madeperfect, attained the cr owning joy of union with God, absorbed intothe d ivine es sence an d thus reach ing the f ull perfection of being.


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For above Osiris, above Ra, above Amen, there was always t he

ineffable O NE who was thus addressed in prayer:Hail t o the One in his works, s ingle among the divine

powers, chief of al l the divine powers. Father o f t he divinepowers, Maker of the d ivine p owers, Lord of Divine P owers, theOne m aker of existences, the O ne, alone, without peer, the t rueKing of d ivine powers. Sole producer o f al l things, both inheaven and upon earth, Himself not produced of any, the on lytrue l iving God, who has made all things, but Himself was notmade!

We find the sentences of tis p art o f t he mighty genius o f E gypt, that h er s pirit s erved as aninspiration for yo unger l ands and younger f aiths. In the r eligion of theGreeks, and most of all, in the M ysteries, of Orpheus, of Eleusis, thevoice o f ancient Egypt is once m ore h eard, and heard not for t he l asttime. In later days, Synesius, Iamblichus a nd Plotinus brou ght a p art

of the sacred lore of Egypt once more t o the l ight of common day. Let u s t hink, then, of the ancient r eligion of Egypt, the lore ofOsiris, of Amen, of Ra, as a g reat flame b urning in secret, from which

were lit many lessemany symbols, consecrating to its w orship the splendour o f s unriseand noon and evening, and the h oly s tream of the N ile w ith its gift offert ility, thus m aking all life a symbol of Life.


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The Religion of ChaldeaTheosophical Quarterly , April, 1906

The land long known as Chaldea, wherein many nationssuccessively grew and ruled, bears striking resemblances to the l and ofEgypt. Like E gypt, it is a l ong river valley, hemmed in between rockymountain ridges on the eas t and vast expanses of sandy wilderness onthe w est. Like E gypt, it is of immense f ertility, or might once m ore b e,

were its ancient sys warmed into sudden luxuriance, Again like Egypt, it

the n orth and the s outh land, sometimes under a s ingle r uler, often at war.

In long past a ges t he resemblance w ent e ven further; for t orrentrains t hen deluged Egypt, as t hey still deluge Chaldea in the wintermonths, and the Egyptian desert t hen blossomed in spring into asplendid carpet of flowers, red, blue an d yellow among the l uxuriantgreen grass, as does the Arabian desert which hems in Chaldea on the

west. These analogies and represently see; for t here a re sp iritual as w ell as m aterial bonds of union,and they go back into a r emote a nd wonderful past.

There are certain well-marked differences. Egypt h as on e sacredriver, the N ile, flowing northward. Chaldea h ad two sacred rivers, nowknown as Euphrates and Tigris, flowing southward. At the d awn ofour knowledge o f Chaldea, these t wo rivers flowed into the sea m anymiles from each other; but what was then sea is now dry l and, and the

19


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two rivers, ever approaching each other, as the l and gained on the s ea,

finally ca me t ogether into a s ingle ch annel, and for long centuries theyhave b een united in one, flowing as one s tream into the P ersian Gulf.Here we have our f irst m eans o f dat ing the ancient c ivilization ofChaldea; for cer tain cities, which were at f irst p orts, built o n landrecently won from the s ea, are f ar inland today. They w ere d eserted bythe ever-receding waves, as the Persian Gulf filled up with the mudand sand carried down by t he r ivers.

One o f these an cient seaports was Uru-dugga, the go od city, t he

word uru meaning city i n the m ost ancient known tongue o f theland. Uru-dugga, later cal led Eridu, was t he earl iest home o f religiousand national culture i n the val ley o f the t wo rivers, and the s ea h ad justreceded from its site when it was built. But Uru-dugga is now onehundred and twenty m iles, or even further, from the p resent sea-shore,all the intervening land having been since b uilt up by the sand andmud of the r ivers. We kn ow what point the r eceding sea h ad reachedin the days of A lexander t he Great. We can, therefore, count ho wmuch longer i t t ook for t he sea to withdraw from Eridu, and theperiod thus measured is some t en or twelve t housand years. Eridu was,therefore, founded ten or twelve t housand years ago; not later, becausethe sea withdrew some ten thousand years ago; not m uch earlier,becau se t he s ite o f the ci ty was in earlier periods under the w aves. We have our starting-point thus

without likelihood of land were U ru-uku, the ci ty eternal, an d Uru, the ci ty, so calledbecause i t was a r oyal seat; and these t wo cities, under the n ames ofErech and Ur, are found in the Hebrew scriptures, in the periodimmediately after t he d eluge. The p eople who dwelt i n Uru-duggu,Uru-uku and Uru called themselves the p eople o f Sumer, o r, to usethe modern form of the name, Sumerians. T hey spoke a l anguagevery different f rom most of those known to us; akin to the ancientforms of the Tartar tongues of Central Asia, F innish, M ongol,Manchu and Turkish; one of t he languages of t he sub-races whobridge the gap between the ancient ye llow races of C hina and theyellow-white races of E astern Europe. The Sumerians w ere, in fact,ancient kindred of the T urks, and it is a p art of times cyclic w ork thattheir land is at this moment under Turkish rule.


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The Religion of Chaldea 21

When they founded Uru-dugga, the good city

some t en or twelve t housand years ago, the Sumerians were al ready alearned and highly cultivated race. They w ere f amiliar with many arts.They b uild admirably, using bricks an d ties made o f the r iver-mud.They u sed gold, silver, copper, tin and lead, and perhaps antimony, intheir arts and manufactures. They made can als, irrigated their fields of

wheat and other grain, wove fine s tatues of rock brought from the eas tern mountains. What is more to our purpose, we f

spiritual culture, a religious s ystem presided over b y priest-kings, whoheld civil authority in virtue o f their spiritual power, and who kept theancient r ecords i n writing closely akin to the earliest h ieroglyphics o fEgypt. Moreover we find the m en of Sumer holding the belief thattheir spiritual culture h ad come t o them from the s ea, from the s outh,out of the w aters of t he P ersian Gulf. The great spirit w ho broughtthem wisdom and hidden knowledge, they called Ea or H ea, whomthey h onoured as the Lord of the earth. H ea dw elt in the d eep, andheld sway o ver t he spirits of men. His ho me am id the w aters wasindicated by depicting him with the b ody of a fish, also a s ymbol ofthe Mysteries. Hea alone possessed a knowledge of the supremeName, t he i neffable W ord, before w hich everything bows, in heavenand earth, and in the w aters under the ear th. The s pirits of darknessyield obedience t o this Name. Even the go ds are aw ed by it. Anothertitle of Hea was Z i-ki-a, the Zi or s pirit o f ki-a, the earth and the

waters, and Hea is depilike t he b oat of Ra, in the E gyptian religion. In this holy bark, built ofcedar a nd adorned with seven times seven lions o f t he desert, goforth Hea, who decides destinies, with Damkina, whose w ord is life;Silik-mulu-khi, who utters the beneficent nam e; Munu-abge, whoguides t he l ord of the earth, and Nin-gar, the great pilot of h eaven .Here i s an ancient Sumerian hymn to Hea, in which spiritual powersare s ymbolised:

Who holds his head high before the great vast strength causes?I a m master of the steep mountains which tremble whilst

their summits reach the f irmament.


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The m ountain of alabaster, lapis lazuli and onyx, in my h and

I p ossess it. Archangel of the abyss, in my in my l eft hand I hold my f atal disk.

The s un with fifty faces, the r aised weapon of my divinity, Ihold it.

The w eapon which, like a w aterspout, stretches in a ci rcle t hebodies o f the sl ain, I h old it.

That which breaks the m ountains, Anas powerful weapon, Ihold it.

That which bends the m ountains, the f ish with seven fins, Ihold it.

The f laming blade o f battle, which devastates and afflicts t heland of the reb els, I h old it.

The gr eat sword which overthrows the r anks of the b rave, thesword of my d ivinity, I hold it.

The h and of the p owerful men of battle, from the at tacks of which the mountain cannot escape, The joy of heroes, the lance w hich deals i njury in battle, I

hold it.The club which crushes the dwellings o f the rebel country,

and the s hield of battle, I hold them.The t hunder of battle, the w eapon with fifty p oints, I hold it.Like the enormous serpent w ith seven heads, shaking its

heads, the s erpent with seven heads, I hold it.Like the serpent w hich scours t he waves of t he sea, the

destroyer i n the shock of b attle, extending its power o verheaven and earth, the w eapon with seven heads, I hold it.

The b urning god of the ea st, who makes his glory shine l ikethat of the d ay, I hold him.

The c reator of heaven and earth, the god whose po wer has no

rival, I hold him.One is reminded of t he transfigured Krishna, with disk and

mace, o f the s word of wisdom, i n the m ystical books of India, andof the spiritual powers r epresented by the armour o f righteousness,


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the w hole ar mour of God, the b reastplate o f righteousness, the s hield

of faith, able t o quench all the f iery darts of the w icked, the h elmet ofsalvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the W ord of God, aclose p arallel to the i neffable N ame o f power known to Hea. There ar ealso analogies with the ch akra, or disk, and the s even-headed serpent ofBrahma, on which the C reator r ests amid the waters. We m ay see inthis the s ymbol of a s evenfold serpentine p ower.

Hea, Lord of the ear th, is thus the l ord of wisdom, of spiritual andmagical power. He is r egarded as t he creator of m en, the giver o f

wisdom and spiritual knowledge see in Hea a personification of s piritual wisdom and power, thehosts, as i t w ere, of perfect spirits, possessing magical power an dthe kn owledge o f immortality. Amongst those who go forth with Hea in hincluded a divine being called Silik-mulu-khi, or Silik-mulu-dugga, w ho utters the b eneficent name. S ilik-mulu-dugga i s a t itle,meaning he w ho dispenses good to men, and the pr oper name of theSon of Hea, who bore t his title, was Asari. Asari is, perhaps, the m ostimportant and vital figure i n the an cient religion of the S umerians. Forit is now recognized that the Sumerian Asari, son of the Lord of theearth, is n o other than Asar, or H asiri, prince o f Egypt, called by theGreeks Osiris. The i dentity i s conclusively p roved by t he s ymbols used,

which are identical in Egypplace, accom panied by t he p icture-sign for an eye, b eing used in theone land to represent A sari a nd in the other t o represent A sar.Moreover, the ch aracter of Asari, as known to the an cient Sumerians isidentical with that of Osiris, as known to the m en of ancient Egypt.

Asari, like Osirisknown as the d ispenser of good to men, t he pr ince, an d in EgyptOsiris i s c alled the g ood, and the p rince. It is cl ear t hat the s amedivine-human personage i s m eant; one who, though embodied as aruler among men, was yet of divine n ature; who died and rose agai n;

who leads and guides the We come to this, that the gancient pre-dynastic E gypt is recognized as the g reat divine p ersonage

who brought spiritual knowle


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in their city of Uru-dugga, then on the s hore o f the P ersian gulf. The

Sumerians spoke o f him as the o riginator of their national and spirituallife, and as dwelling with them, a m ediator b etween them and Hea,Lord of the ear th. Sumerian tradition goes back n o further.

This is not the cas e i n Egypt. Asar or Osiris does not stand at thebeginning of Egyptian life. Long ages of the D ivine D ynasties stretchbehind him, and he t akes his place as one i n a s eries of divine k ings.

We are, therefore, older o f t he two; t hat t he Sumerians looked back to Egypt, and

especially to the divine king Osiris, as t he source of t heir sp iritualknowledge; and there m ay well have b een an infusion of the ear lierEgyptian race i n Uru-dugga, the f irst city o f the an cient Sumerians.

There i s a cl ose acco rd in the d ates, so far as we can estimate t hem.Uru-dugga, as we saw, must have be en founded some t en or t welvethousand years ago, when the P ersian gulf lay on e h undred and twentymiles f urther i nland than it d oes t oday. The culture of U ru-duggabegan, therefore, some t en or twelve t housand years ago. On the o therhand, we f ind a date assigned to Osiris, in the reckoning of ancientEgypt, which corresponds closely with this. We s aw the b eginning ofthe historic dynasties i s n ow admitted to have been some seventhousand years ago, and that Menes, the f irst conqueror and unifier ofall Egypt, is n ow dated about 5, 000 years b efore our er a. But t heancient Egyptians reckoned four cycl es of rulers bef ore t hat period ofunification under Menes, and they numbered Osiris among the r ulersof the first of these f our d ynasties. The date t hey gave to his r eign issome t hirteen thousand years ago, agreeing closely with the knownantiquity of U ru-dugga or E ridu, the oldest ci ty of t he Sumerians,

where, under the name of As was reverenced.

Asar, the incarnate s be e steemed as the M ediator bet ween Hea, Lord of the ea rth, and thesouls of mankind. To Asar, in this character, hymns and prayers were

addressed. The f ollowing is one o f them: Thy will is the s ublime s word with which thou rulest heavenand earth.

I commanded the sea, and the sea became calm.


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I commanded the f lower, and the f lower ripened its grain.

I com manded the girdle of the river of Si ppara (Euphrates),and by the w ill of Asar I divert ed its course.Lord, thou art sublime I what mortal being i s like u nto thee?Dispenser of good to men, amongst a ll the gods who are

named, thou givest t he reward. Hero among the gods, whodispensest good to men, lord of battles . . .!

In another hymn, Asar is addressed thus:

Great lord of the l and, king of countries, eldest-born of Hea, who bringest back heaven and eartDispenser of good to men, lord of the l ands, king of peoples,

God of gods,Merciful one among t he gods,Regenerator, who bringest back the d ead to life,Dispenser of good to men, king o f heaven and earth,

To thee are heaven and earth,To thee are heaven and earth round about!To thee i s the b reath of life!To thee ar e d eath and life!To thee i s the s ublime s hore o f the o cean!To thee b elong all the ch ildren of men, all who breathe, all

who, bearing a name, exist on The w hole o f the f our r egions of the w orld, the ar changels of

heaven and earth, how many soever they ar e,Thou art the p ropitious god;Thou art the f avourable s trong o ne;Thou art the l ife-giver;Thou art the s aviour, the m erciful one a mong t he go ds,Thou art the r egenerator, who bringest back the d ead to life!Dispenser of good to men, king o f heaven and earth,I have invoked thy n ame,I have i nvoked thy s ublimity!

Asar is also represented


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I am he who walks before Hea,

I am the W arrior, the el dest son of Hea, his messenger. Asar carried a sacred redescribed i n one of the hy mns:

Golden reed, great reed, tall reed of the m arshes, sacred reed ofthe gods.

. . . I am the m essenger of Him who dispenses good to men,causing all to grow young again. . . .

Above the realm of land and sea ruled Sumerians h eld that there were three zones, or r ealms, or p lanes, inascending order. Between the ea rth and the h eavens was the zon e o rrealm of the p owers of the ai r, where t he w inds blew, the s torms raged,the clouds were spread forth, the lightnings played, the hotthunderbolt whirled, and the w ater-spouts poured forth. Above this cloud-realm was the the s even sacred planets m oved in their c ourses. The p lanetary realm

was called ul-gana , and the p lanets w ere co nceived as l iving things, asbeings p ossessed of life and consciousness, of the power t o live andmove i n this realm where t hey h ad their being.

Higher still was the s ublime h eaven of the f ixed stars, to which wasgiven the n ame of Ana. Ana, as Heaven, was held to be t he gr eatest ofthe go ds, the S upreme, the F ather and fore-runner of all. Or, to speakmore justly, the Sumerians d id not c onceive the Supreme otherwise

than as the Sp irit of Heaven . For ev erything throughout the F ourfold World was held to havenot only its separat e b eing, but its spirit o r life a s well, the w ord Zimeaning life as w ell as s pirit in ancient S umerian. Thus t heSupreme w as called Zi-ana, spirit of Heaven. I n the s ame w ay t here

were the Planetary Spispirits o f the el ements, in the cl oud-world and on earth. So Hea w asZi-ki-a, Spirit of eart h and seas. M en also had their spirits, guardian-

angels, who watched over t hem from birth; and he who was full ofdevotion and aspiration was invariably spoken of as the son of hisgod.

The l ight has its shadow. Each of these h osts was deemed to have


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its negative o r dark aspect. And there was a d ark shadow-land which

stood in this negative r elation to the w hole ear th. This was the gl oomy Abyss, the waters which arDecalogue. The A byss was the d welling of seven spirits of darkness, theforces who resist all good, who destroy t he go od works of nature, whoare at enmity against man; the f orces which resist evolution, and whichcontend against ou r spiritual growth. These are the same powers

which, in Egypt, we saw persOsiris and scatters his dismembered body t hroughout the t wo lands; in

one as pect they ar e t he l aw in the m embers warring agai nst the l aw ofthe m ind; i n another aspect they are t he f orces which bring disease,decay an d death. In yet another sense, the Abyss is what we sometimescall the as tral world, the as tral atmosphere o f the ear th, and one p art ofthe an cient Sumerian religion was dedicated to the p urification of thisastral region, and to averting the dark influences w hich might l urktherein, boding evil to men. These dark influences were of severalkinds. There were el emental spirits, as we should call them, to whom

storms, fires, floods an d natural calamities w ere due. There were theclasses o f el ementals h eld to cause disease, something like the astralcounterpart of our modern microbes, which are supposed to be h ostsof i nvading lives, fastening themselves i n the living body, and to beexorcised by anti-septics, many of them preparations of tar. We m ay,perhaps, see h ere a suggestion of why the ced ar an d other f ir-like t rees

were held especially ancient Sumerians. Yet a t hird class of astral influences were t he s hadesof the d ead; not by any means of all who died, but of certain personsgiven over t o evil, and who thus r everted to the realm of the ab yss.Lastly, there were t he m align wishes and purposes of the l iving. Toguard against these d ifferent dark forces of the as tral world a s ystem ofmagical ceremonies was in use, and its special home seems t o havebeen at Nippur, somewhat to the n orth of Uru-dugga. It appears likelythat t he ghost-lore of Nippur represents a northern system ofspiritualism, handed down from a h igh antiquity among the an cestorsof the T artar n ations, while t he r eligious l ore o f Uru-dugga o r E riducarries us in the o pposite d irection, southward to the E gypt of Osiris.

Two visible p owers, the S un in the h eavens, and Fire o n the h earth, were reverenced as repres


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of t heir di vine power, and as mediators bet ween mankind and the

spiritual world. Here i s part of a h ymn to the S un:O Sun, thou shinest in the d eepest heavens; thou openest the

bolts w hich close the high heavens; thou openest t he gate ofheaven.

O Sun, thou raisest thy h ead above t he l ands,O Sun, thou stretchest the vas t heaven s above t he l ands like a

covering.

Another hymn to the Sun is as Great lord! from the ce ntre o f the h igh heavens thou comest

into our sight.O Sun, valiant hero, from the cen tre o f the h igh heavens, thoucomest into our sight.

At the opening of the high heinto our sight.

The bolts of heaven thou drawest back.In the g reat door of the h igh heavens, in the o pening, which

belongs t o thee, in the highest s ummits o f the high heavens,high in thy rapid course, t he spirits respectfully and joyfullyapproach thee; they ex alt thy cr own, they rai se t hee u p rejoicing.In the r epose o f thy heart the d ays pass.

The s pirits of all countries gr eatly surround thee. The s pirits ofheaven and earth turn toward thee. . . .

The Su n is invoked as the h ealing m essenger of Hea, whenThe m an, the son of his god, is burdened with the l oad of hisomissions and transgressions. . . .

And the prayer is offerBy thy orders may his omissions be forgiven! May his

transgressions b e b lotted out!

These ancient Sumerian prayers end with the word Amen, held tohave d ivine an d magical efficacy. Like t he S un, Fire w as reverenced asthe p urifier, the m essenger of Hea m ade m anifest on earth. A hymnaddresses him thus:

O Fire, supreme ch ief rising high in the l and!


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Hero, son of the O cean, rising h igh in the l and!

O Fire, with thy p ure an d brilliant flame.Thou bringest light into the d wellings of darkness,Thou decidest the f ate o f everything w hich has a n ame.Thou mixest copper and tin,Thou purifiest gold and silver.Thou art the o ffspring of the g oddess of earth.May the works of the m an, the son of hi s god, shine with

purity! May he be hi gh as heaven!May he b e ho ly an d pure as the earth!May h e shine a s the m idst of the h eavens!

Another beautiful hymn to Fire Peace o f the go d Fire, the h ero,May co untries and rivers rest with thee!

May t he T igris and Euphrates rest with thee!May t he s ea r est with thee!May t he p ath of the d aughter of the go ds rest with thee!May t he i nward works of nature r est with thee!May t he hear t of my go d and goddess rest with thee!

There are also hymns t o the two rivers, Tigris an d Euphrates,conceived as spiritual beings, children of the O cean, whose w aters are

sublime, whose waters ar e brilliantly pure, whose waters g listen . . . which strongly call t

analogy between the worship of the Sun, as the m anifested messengerof Asari and Hea among t he a ncient Sumerians of Uru-dugga, and the

worship of the same Sun as manof the Logos, in ancient Egypt. On the ot her hand the h ymns to theSun and Fire, which we h ave j ust given, carry u s eastward, toward theheadwaters of the I ndus, toward the l and of the R ig V eda h ymns.

Many t eachings which appear in later religions had their prototypeamong the ancient Su merians. Thus we find them depicting thebeginning o f manifestation in these ver ses:

When the upper region was not yet ca


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And the lower region was not yet

And the Abyss beneath had not yet Then the c haos of waters gave b irth to all of them.

And the waters were gathered inNo men yet dwelt together, no an imals yet wandered abo ut,None of the god s had yet been born,Their names were not spoken, t heir attributes were not

known.

In like m anner we f ind the s tory o f the gar den of Edin, t he s acredplain of an cient C haldea, with the tree of l ife, the first m an and

woman, and the tempting serpent; and teexplicitly ass ociated Eden with the E uphrates. We f ind also the s tory o fthe Deluge, in a form which was doubtless handed down from theearliest Sumerian times:

I w ill t ell t hee how I was s aved from the flood, says

Hasisadra to the hero Izdubar, also will I i mpart t o thee t hedecree o f the g reat gods. Thou knowest Surippak, the ci ty that isby t he E uphrates. This city was very an cient when the go ds weremoved in their h earts t o ordain a great del uge. The lord ofinscrutable wisdom, the god Hea, was with them, and impartedto me their decision. Listen, h e said, and attend, m an ofSurippak; go out to thy house an d build a ship. The go ds are

willed to destroy the s

bring into the s hip every s eed of life. When I heard this, I spoketo Hea my l ord, If I build the ship as thou biddest me, O Lord,the p eople an d their e lders w ill laugh at me! But Hea o penedhis l ips on ce more, and spoke to me, his servant, Men haverebelled against me, and I will do judgement on them, high andlow. But do thou close the door of t he ship when the timecomes, and I tell thee o f it. Then enter the s hip and bring into itthy store o f grain, all thy property, thy family, thy men-servantsand thy maid-servants, and thy next of ki n. The cattle of thefields, the wild beast s o f t he fields, I s hall send to thee myself,that they m ay b e safe b ehind thy door. Then I built the ship,and provided it w ith stores of f ood and drink; I d ivided the


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interior into compartments. I saw to the ch inks and filled them;

I p oured bitumen over i t without and within. All that Ipossessed I brought together and stowed it in the s hip; all that Ihad of go ld, of s ilver, of t he seed of l ife of e very kind; all mymen-servants an d my maid-servants, the cattle of the f ield, the

wild beasts of the fiethe appointed time was come, a Voice spoke to me: Thisevening the heavens will rain destruction, wherefore go thouinto the s hip and close t hy d oor. The a ppointed time h as come!

And greatly I feared the sun was to begin my voyage. I was sand closed the door beh ind me, to shut off the ship. And Iconfided the g reat s hip to the p ilot, with all its freight.

Then a black cloud rises f rom the depths of h eaven, withthunder and whirlwinds and floods from the depths of t heearth, which quakes a t their vi olence. The waters r ise even toheaven; light is changed into darkness; confusion anddevastation fill the earth. Brother l ooks n ot af ter b rother; menhave n o thought for one an other. In the h eavens, the ver y godsare afraid. . . . For s ix days an d seven nights w ind, flood andstorm reigned supreme; but a t daw n of t he seventh day thetempest decreased, the w aters, which had battled like a m ightyhost, abated their vi olence; the s ea re tired, and storm and floodboth ceased. I steered about the sea, l amenting that t hehomesteads of men were t urned into mud. The corpses driftedabout like l ogs. I opened a p ort-hole, and when the l ight of dayfell on my f ace, I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered overthe co untries which now were a terrible sea. Then a p iece o fland rose o ut of the w aters. The s hip steered towards t he l andNizir. The m ountain of the l and Nizir h eld fast the l and, anddid not let it go. Thus it was on the f irst and on the s econd day,on the t hird and the f ourth, also on the f ifth and sixth days. Atdawn of the s eventh day I took out a d ove a nd sent it forth. Thedove w ent f orth to and fro, but found no resting place, andreturned. Then I t ook out a s wallow and sent i t f orth. Theswallow went forth, to and fro, but found no resting-place, andreturned. Then I took out a r aven, and sent it forth. The r aven


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went forth, and when it saw

near again, cautiously wading through the waters, but did notreturn. Then I l et ou t al l the animals, to the four w inds o fheaven , and offered a sacrifice. I r aised an altar o n the highestsummit of the m ountain, placed the s acred vessels on it seven byseven, and spread reeds, cedar wood, and sweet herbs un derthem.

So far t he r eligion of the an cient land later called Chaldea, in someof its larger aspects. If it be as ked how we com e t o know so much, andin such detail, of the f aith and teaching of a rac e l ong since v anished,the an swer is simple. That race l eft books so made, that neither fire n or

water could injure a m etal point, and then hardened by fire, have com e d own to us intens and even hundreds of thousands. T he first writing washieroglyphic, made o f picture-signs, like t hose o f ancient Egypt. Later,it was conventionalized into what we cal l the cu neiform, or w edge-shaped character, which lasted, in various f orms, f or t housands o fyears. I n that character many different languages were written,beginning with archaic Sumerian, and ending with classical Persian.Through inscriptions i n the l atter l anguage, at Persepolis, in SouthernPersia, some three hundred miles t o the east o f a ncient E ridu, thecuneiform writing was first deciphered. Then the l ater language of theChaldean region, the tongue generally called Assyrian, was s lowlyspelled out; in part b y means o f i ts cl ose relationship with a well-understood group of tongues, of which Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaicare t he m ost important. There s till remained the w holly different andmost mysterious language n ow called Sumerian, in which all the o ldertexts were w ritten. Here, happily, the l ong gone r aces came t o our a id;for gr ammars and dictionaries of Sumerian were found, which hadbeen prepared for, those whose mother-tongue was Assyrian; a ndmany Sumerian texts were found with an Assyrian translation betweenthe l ines. Among these were t hose f rom which the h ymns here gi ven

were translated, Undoubtedly the most i nteresting discovery in this f ield in recentyears is that which shows t he r elation between the ar chaic S umeriansand the E gypt of Osiris. Along this line, much more w ill, perhaps, be


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learned in years t o come. In the m ean time, it i s of h igh interest to

point out that the p eriod, some t en or twelve t housand years ago, in which we must place the foundiof t he Persian gulf, was e vidently marked by a wide alteration ofconditions i n ancient E gypt. At that date, it w ould seem, a changecame o ver t he f ace o f the N ile v alley. The t ropical rains ceased. Theland began to assume i ts present form. We can date this change in Egypt similar to that which fixes t he f ounding of Eridu. It is found that the

Nile d eposits a cer tain amount of sediment after every i nundation, andthat, in a hundred years, this sediment w ill amount t o four or f iveinches. The total depth of t he sediment i s t hirty-eight t o forty feet,

which gives us ten or began to be formed. Perhaps t he ch anges in the face o f Egypt m ayhave ca used some of the p eople o f Osiris to seek a n ew home i n theeast, where t he T wo Rivers fell into the P ersian Gulf; and in the s toryof the Su merian Asari we m ay have t he e cho of their coming.


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The R eligion of IndiaTheosophical Quarterly , July, 1906

I.

When we come to India, the contrast wistrongly marked. O f t he ancient S umerian culture and religion ofChaldea, nothing was known to us a f ew years ago, but a f ew heaps ofruins, in the h ot wilderness of the E uphrates. And in Egypt it is not solong since t he h ieroglyphic i nscriptions w ere o nly less m ysterious t hanthe r iddle o f the s phinx. Even now, we k now comparatively little o fthe Mystery Teaching in ancient E gypt, though the evidence o f i tspresence there is ove rwhelming; and what we do know of de finedphilosophical an d spiritual value, comes t o us rather t hrough theNeoplatonists than direct from the monuments. T o that s ame

wonderful school, the chilshould be n oted, some o f the m ost penetrating light on the t eachingsof ancient Chaldea.

For nearly two thousand years in Egypt, and even longer inChaldea, we have had no articulate voice speaking to us o f t heirancient religions, no new documents added, and no interpreters of thedocuments; only monuments carven on the r ocks, tablets of clay, age-old papyri buried in the s and. In India, the d ifference i s immense. Theancient t eaching is alive today, vi sible and within the reach of al lmen. The archaic scriptures are still studied, reverently andcomprehendingly, by the l ineal descendants of those w ho first wrotethem down millenniums ago. Their language i s still on the t ongues of

35


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36 The Religion of India

learned men of India, a l iving speech , taught to their disciples, chanted

in their t emples, spoken in their discourses, written in modern workson the sacred traditions. If t he spiritual l ife of an cient E gypt b e ahidden fire, glowing in some secret c ave-temple of t he desert, thereligious l ife o f India is a b eacon seen of all men, lighting the p ath ofthe d isciples who seek the w ay t o the t emple.

The western world came to a knowledge o f ancient I ndia, hersacred tongue and her ar chaic scriptures i n the last q uarter o f t heeighteenth century. At that day, the ch ronology drawn by archbishop

Ussher from obscure sentences and genealogies in the Hebrewscriptures was still held to be t he au thentic t ime-record of the w orld. Itset the b eginning of creation some s ix thousand years a go, and fixedthe universal d eluge twenty-four centuries b efore our era. I f t hatchronology were true, a ll e xistent r aces an d civilizations must b ecompressed within some four thousand years, e lapsed since thedestruction of mankind in the f lood and the r enewal of the r aces froma s ingle f amily. And by those w ho explored the t raditions of India, thechronology of archbishop Ussher was held to be absolutely true, inauthority equal to holy writ. Finding in India t raditions a nd records ofa v astly greater past, they felt themselves bo und to lop and prune t hecenturies and millenniums, until they f itted the P rocrustean bed of thearchbishops world-scheme, and, in the early records o f t he AsiaticSociety, one m ay s ee t he H ebrew patriarchs set as the s tandard downone s ide o f the p age, with the I ndian monarchs of the S olar line f orcedinto conformity on the other. T he whole is com pressed into thetwenty-four ce nturies between the supposed universal Flood and thebeginning of our er a. This would be merely a curiosity of research,

were it not that been revised to this d ay; e ach generation of O rientalists accep tingalmost without question or e xamination the dates handed down tothem by the first p ioneers, whose thoughts and imaginations werecramped with the l imits set by archbishop Ussher. The r esult is that,even today, the data assigned to many events in ancient I ndia areimpossibly recent; and the w hole s ystem of chronology of that archaicland is in complete a nd perplexing co nfusion.

Had Providence w illed that the an cient books o f India s hould be withheld until afte


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Wisdom Traditions of East and West 37

secrets, a very different r esult w ould have been reached. With such

data as 5,000 B.C. f or E gyptian Menes and before 4 ,600 B.C. f ora cer tain Sumerian ruler accepted without question, there w ould havebeen less t endency to shrink Indias m illenniums i nto centuries, hercenturies i nto decades; a nd with the epoch-making discoveries o fDarwin recognized in principle, there would have b een less cause t otreat as fables the archaic systems of E volution which fill cer tainscriptures o f India. Yet, while regretting thi

see h ow vital it was for her archaic r ecords to be gi ven to the w orld just when they were. Of all a

key to the w isdom-religion, the m ystery-doctrine; and, for the s piritualdevelopment of the w orld, the gi ving o f the k ey cou ld not be d elayed.

We can see already, and we sfar-reaching has b een the influence of Indian thought, o n thephilosophy and culture of t he last ce ntury, t hroughout t he whole

western world. For such a reIndias chronology i nto t emporary con fusion.

II.

We must in part restore that view of the rel igious l ife o f ancient India; and, for t he p urpose o f thatrestoration, we can take no better d ate than that of t he supremeteacher, Siddhartha t he C ompassionate, known as Gautama B uddha.

When the doctrines and records other countries, like C eylon and China, they w ere i nterlinked with thestate ch ronology and their d ates w ere t hus ef fectively preserved. In this

way we know that the Buddhas work asome twenty-five hundred years ago; a nd this date is fixed andcorroborated in so many w ays, that it is not liable t o be al tered.

In one of h is m ost e loquent s ermons, the Buddha describes t heBrahman priesthood, in ideal, and in actuality; and we have t hus

preserved a grap hic reco rd of the p osition, character, life, and standingof the B rahman caste, twenty-five cen turies ago. That caste h ad growngreat and spread all over n orthern India; its au thority was i mmense,and indeed availed later to overshadow the teaching of the Buddha


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himself. Its spiritual tradition was high, yet it was subject to many and

grave abu ses, which the Buddha vividly enumerates. The Brahmancaste h ad then reached not only f ull development and maturity, but inmany respects w as ov er-ripe, and had fallen far f rom its f ormer i dealsof unworldiness and purity.

In another g reat s eries o f r eligious d ocuments, c lustering aroundthe life o f another gre at spiritual hero of India, we h ave al so a full andgraphic picture of the B rahman caste. Krishna, prince o f Dvaraka, isthe cen tre o f that era; and its r ecords ar e s tored, with much that is of

earlier d ate, and perhaps, something also of a later d ay, in the vastpoem called the Mahabharata . It is n ow conceded that Krishna is agenuine historical personage, and very much of t he Mahabharataauthentically belongs t o Krishnas epoch. Much of this bear s on thestanding of the Brahmans at that time. That standing we f ind to beincomplete, p rovisional, an d far from authoritative in the degreeattained long before the Buddhas d ay. Brahmanical law is b y nomeans supreme; Brahmanical r ules ar e transgressed, i n such vitalmatters as t he marriage relations; and the sacrosanct c haracter o f thecaste i s n ot yet e stablished. The p eriod of Krishna must, therefore, bemany centuries behind that of Buddha; and the g reat religious revival

which has Krishna as itgreat landmark in the s piritual life o f India, very m uch earlier than theepoch of the Buddha, twenty-five ce nturies ago.

So conservative is I ndian life, that even today Krishna has vas tnumbers of votaries, who have exa lted him into the go d of a p opularreligion, f ull of em otional elements, yet i nspired with very genuinedevotion. Indian tradition assigns to the g reat war of the M ahabharataa date almost exactly five thousand years ago, an d this date isconfirmed by a cer tain conjunction of all the p lanets, record ed in thestory o f the G reat War itself. In the d ays when the D eluge w as placedat 2349 B.C., such a d ate as 3100 B.C., for t he G reat War of theMahabharata was incredible; and the P rocrustean process of pruning

was accordingly put in readily admit 3800 B.C. as the date of Sargons c onquest of the f armore ancient Su merian cities, and 5000 B.C. as t he period whenMenes of Egypt amalgamated the T wo Lands into a single empire, themore m odest claims of ancient India should win some cr edence. The


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epoch of Sar gon is f ixed unquestioningly from a single cuneiform

inscription. That of the G reat War of India h as, to support it, a l ivingtradition, s till d ating events from that w ar, an d a vast mass ofhistorical, ethical, astronomical and sociological facts scatteredthroughout a t housand books, and still living am ong m any o f the r acesof India. We have yet another dearly marked period, Upanishads. H ere also a complete view of the standing of theBrahman may be gai ned, as a bas is of comparison with the t wo epochs

already o utlined: that of the G reat War and Krishna o f Dvaraka, andthat o f t he Buddha. So important i s this matter, a nd so littleunderstood, that it may be w ell to quote cer tain of the t exts that bearon it. H ere, for example, is a passage from the ChhandogyaUpanishad:

Shvetaketu, grandson of Aruni, went to the as sembly of thePattchalas. To him king P ravahana, son of Jibala, said:

Youth, hast thou received the t raditional teach ing?I have, worshipful one! said he.Knowest thou how beings ascend, going f orth hence?No, worshipful one! said he.Knowest thou how they r eturn again?No, worshipful one! said he.Knowest thou the d ividing o f the t wo paths, path of the go ds

and path of the f athers?No, worshipful one! said he.Knowest thou how the o ther world is not filled?No, worshipful one! said he.Knowest thou how, at the f ifth offering, the w aters r ise u p,

and speak w ith human vo ice?No worshipful one! said he.Then how sayest thou that thou hast received the t eaching?

For if on e knows not t hese things how an he be calledinstructed?

He went away d isconcerted to his fathers place, and said tohim: After teaching me, t hou, m y father, d idst call m e


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instructed; yet t his R ajanya fellow has as ked me five questions,

and I was not able t o solve o ne of them!His father said: As thou hast told them to me, and as I donot know one of themhad I known them, how should I nothave t old them to thee? So the d escendant of Gotama went tothe p lace of the ki ng; and when he c ame, the ki ng did come t ohim. Early in the morning he went up to the king, who hadentered the as sembly, and the k ing s aid to him:

Choose, worshipful descendant of Gotama, a w ish of human wealth.

Let human wealth be thine, O king! he replied. But t he word which thou saidest in the

declare t hat to me!The k ing k ept silent, ordering h im to dwell there a l ong t ime.

Then t he king said to h im:Be i t as thou hast asked me, O descendant of Gotama! As

before t hee this teaching goes not to the Brahmans, but amongall peoples was the h ered itary t eaching of the K shatriyas. . . .

No more s ignificant passage i s to be f ound in the s acred books ofIndia, when we h ave t he cl ue t o its meaning. The ver y form of thequestions speaks of the Mystery Teaching, and the questionsthemselves contain their answers. The t wo paths, the p ath of the g odsand the p ath of the f athers, are t he w ay o f Liberation and the w ay o fReincarnation. By the f ormer go the p erfect, to divinity; by the o ther,the souls o f men return to this w orld after r eceiving their r eward inparadise i n the l unar world. A nd that world is not filled, because t hesouls of men, going there, return again to this world to be b orn. Theirformer w orks ar e called the waters; and at t he fifth offering, t heoffering of b irth, t he works of the new-born child speak withhuman voice.

So that t hese questions t hemselves, even without t heir an swers,indicate the whole of the Mystery Teaching, t he splendid twindoctrine of r ebirth and of l iberation from rebirth; of S ansara andNirvana. And of this teaching t he Brahman Shvetaketu and his father

were wholly ignorant; a Aranyaka Upanishad says, do


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for before t hee t his teaching never dwelt in any Brahman! Yet we ar e

also told that both Shvetaketu and his father knew by heart the t hreeritual Vedas, t he Rig, the Yajur and the Sama Vedas, a nd wereinstructed in all the w isdom of the B rahmans.

The truth is, t hat i n the days of t hese greatest and oldestUpanishads the Brahmans had not yet learned the M ystery Teaching;and the occasion of t heir first i nitiation into that t eaching is h ererecorded in the t wo greatest Upanishads. We h ave t hus a t hird view ofthe B rahman caste, when the B rahmans were s till the h umble d isciples

of the R ajanyas o r R ajputa; and it is evi dent t hat this ar chaic periodmust lie m any centuries behind the p eriod of the G reat War, when theBrahmans had gone f ar towards establishing t hemselves in a d ominantspiritual position throughout t he greater p art of northern India. It isfurther s ignificant t hat w e find the Upanishads r eflecting a period

when the tribes who possessed tGandhara, the present K andahar, in the m ountains of A fghanistan,

which is now well beyond the

III.

The two Brahmans who came to the Rajanya or R ajput king,Pravahana, son of Jibala, were b oth learned in the T hree V edas, and

were yet wholly ignorant of Rebirth and Liberation. The s tory becomes vastly more significant

when we realize that the hthat one m ay search the R ig, the Yajur and the Sama V edas through,and nowhere find in them any understanding of t he teaching ofreincarnation and liberation, which, nevert heless, is t he heart o f thesecret doctrine o f India. We have, in the religion of one o f these i s the R ig Veda w ith its two subordinate V edas; the o theris the M ystery T eaching contained in the U panishads. The f ormer wasthe p roperty o f the B rahman priesthood; the l atter, the s ecret doctrine,

belonged not to the Brahmans, but to the R ajanyas or Rajputs, and, asking Pravahana said, never before dwelt i n any Brahman, until hehimself revealed it t o the humble father of S hvetaketu. The divisionbetween the two great el ements of t he ancient r eligion of I ndia


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becomes even more s ignificant, when we l earn that it coincides with a

difference of race; that the B rahmans, who possessed the h ymns of theRig Veda, were a w hite r ace, evidently com ing f rom a m ore n orthernregion; while t he R ajanyas or R ajputs were a red race, close k indred ofthe royal race o f ancient Egypt. This r ace d ifference i s cl early markedeven at the present day, the white Brahman belonging to a whollydifferent t ype from the red Rajput; each race h aving been kept p urethrough millenniums b y the rigorous laws agai nst r ace mingling,

which are the basis

The white Brahman race had, in the hymns of the Vedas, a veryprecious p ossession, and one w hich rightly claimed a h igh antiquity.The hym ns, in their original form, made u p the Rig Veda, or Veda o fhymns. Separate l ines taken from different hymns, and woven togetherfor t heir virtue as i ncantations, formed the ch ants, to which the n ameof Yajur V eda, or V eda o f chants, is given; and a cer tain class of thesechants, those u sed at the m ystic Soma ceremony, formed the SamaVeda, the t hird Veda o f Songs. The R ig Veda hymns are, therefore,the o riginal form of this whole V edic m aterial.

The Rig Veda hymns ar e divided into ten circles, assigned todifferent famous seers o f hymns. Thus the t hird circle i s attributed toVishvamitra, t he seventh to his rival V ashistha. I n all, t here aresomething o ver a t housand hymns: and those of the t enth circle seemto belong to a l ater period than the r est. The h ymns are ad dressed tovarious deities, especially I ndra an d Agni, and some o f them are p oemsof great beauty, w hile the greater part are avowedly magicalincantations. When we l ook at them more cl osely, we ca nnot fail to bestruck with the ve ry marked resemblance b etween these V edic h ymnsand certain hymns of the an cient inhabitants of Chaldea, notably t hoseto the deified Fire, who corresponds cl osely to the Vedic Agni, theFire-god. T he mystical conception of F ire on the altar, as t hemanifested deity, among the people of U ru-duggu, is e xactly that of

Agni, the Fire-god mong

Once we note this resemblance, we find many more signs o fkinship. Such is the s even-headed serpent, in a S umerian hymn alreadyquoted. Such are the resemblances bet ween the Chaldean and theBrahmanical stories of the D eluge, with the p ersonification of the d eity


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as a great f ish, in both accounts; t he doctrine of t he central

mountain upholding the heavens, i n both teachings; and theoccurrence o f the f igures 432,000 years i n the m ystical computationsof both the S umerians and the an cient Brahmans. All these i ndicationsat least very s trongly s uggest that one el ement of the an cient Chaldeanteaching and one element of t he ancient B rahman teaching weredrawn from a common source. Both peoples looked backward to ahome among the n orthern mountains, and from this common homethe t wo peoples may w ell have descended, one goi ng t oward the I ndus,

the ot her toward the T igris and Euphrates. When we consider the teaching concerning becomes even more s ignificant. Both the an cient Sumerians and theancient B rahmans were ancestor w orshippers, every year m akingcertain sacrifices t o the spirits o f t he dead, the fathers, who weredeemed to dwell in the gl oomy underworld, and were d ependent forsustenance on the yearly offerings of food made by their piousdescendants. T he fathers were thought o f as spiritually presentamong t heir descendants, and as forming w ith them a s ingle u ndividedfamily, in part in the v isible w orld, in part in the d ark invisible; and allindications go to show that, at a period which may have been tenthousand years ago, t his t eaching of t he fathers was d ominant i nCentral Asia, and spread thence south-westward to the Euphratesvalley, south-eastward to the Indus an d later t he Ganges; and alsonorthward and eastward to the vast C hinese empire, and the landsspiritually dependent on China.

The t eaching of the f athers, t he d eparted spirits p resent behindthe family, overshadowing the family, and drawing sustenance f romthe p ious o fferings o f the f amily, was t he ch ief element i n the religionof the an cient Brahmans, as touching h umanity; and even to this day i tremains a ll-important in Brahmanical life an d Brahmanical law. Thefirst duty of the s on is t o make t he y early offering; and, where a sonhas not been born, or has not survived, it becomes of vital moment toobtain one b y adoption, lest by any means the y early rites might fail,and the fathers f all into the pit o f h ell, cut o ff f rom the rites o f t hecakes a nd water. Hence the immense importance of t he right ofadoption in Brahmanical law. The h eir is supposed to inherit primarilyin order that he m ay have t he m eans to celebrate t he year ly sacrifices to


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the s pirits of the f athers. T hus, on the h uman side, the B rahmanical

religion was co ncerned chiefly with the ri tes for t he f athers, an d thecare f or t heir s piritual well-being, as d ependent on the o fferings m adefor t hem year after year. Exactly the s ame b elief prevailed among onedivision of the an cient Sumerians of Chaldea, and the r esemblance i ndetai l is h ighly significant. It is ev ident t hat t his b elief i s q uite out o fharmony with the doctrine of r eincarnation, and of t he paradisebetween death and rebirth, which is a n integral part of t he MysteryTeach ing; and it is al so evident that the t each ing of the f athers is t he

genuine t raditional doctrine o f the B rahmans, preserved by t hem eventoday, as the co rner-stone o f Brahmanical civil and religious law.On the d ivine s ide, the B rahman teaching em braced the w orship of

Indra an d Agni, and other bright ones, I ndra b eing t he d ome of thesky, a nd Agni the divine principle of F ire. The lord of t he abyss,Varuna, who seems to have bee n also the lord of the d ark dome ofnight; the M aruts, or t he sp irits o f the st orm, the A suras, first spirits o flife, and then fallen spirits o f evil contrasted with the bright s pirits o fgood, all remind us s trongly of t he ancient Su merian worship, thereligious t raditions into which, it would seem, was poured a d ifferentstream of t eaching brought f rom the south, from Egypt, by thevotaries o f the g reat O siris.

IV.

Just as we find the two find them in ancient India. The w hite B rahmans h ad their worship ofthe spirits o f the fathers, and of the Sky-lord, the Fire-lord, and thehosts of bright and dark spirits, the D evas and Asuras. The r ed Rajputsor Rajanyasboth names are very ancienthad their MysteryTeaching of the t wo ways, path of the go ds and path of the f athers; ofthe g reat twin doctrines of Reincarnation and Liberation. And it is ofhigh significance o n the o ne h and, that we f ind the R ajputs c loselyakin in ethnical type to the r oyal race of ancient Egypt; and on theother, that w e find their M ystery Teaching closely resembling thatassociated with the n ame o f the g reat Osiris of Egypt; a t eaching alsoof reincarnation acco rding to righteousness, according to works, an dthe ultimate liberation from rebirth, by the divine way which Osiristaught.


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This divine way, or path of the go ds was the m ain theme of the

Mystery Teaching; and to that supreme go al of Liberation the w isdomand will of the d isciples were d irected. It is the g reat theme w ith whichall the d ivine t eachers of India w ere co ncerned, and again and again wesee i t presented, by teacher af ter t eacher, in age a fter ag e.

The teaching of t he path of t he gods is al ways as sociated, inancient India, w ith certain temptations or trials, cer tain rites ofinitiation. Only after t hese are p assed, is t he d ivine p ath revealed to thedisciple. Thus i n the g reat story of Nachiketas, the s on sacrificed by his

father, who descended into the h ouse o f Death and rose aga in on thethird day, we h ave t he t rial of Nachiketas by D eath the i nitiator, whotempts t he disciple with three wishes. O nly after N achiketas h asovercome these temptations i s t he Mystery revealed to him. Deathspeaks thus to the as pirant:

Even by the go ds of old it was doubted about this; not easilyknowable, and subtle is t his l aw. Choose, Nachiketas, another

wish; hold me not to it, Choose sons and grandsons of a hundred years, and much

cattle, and elephants and gold and horses. Choose t he gr eat abodeof the ear th, and for thyself live as many au tumns as thou wilt.

If thou thinkest this an equal wish, choose w ealth and lengthof days. Be t hou mighty in the world, O Nachiketas; I m akethee an enjoyer o f thy desires.

Whatsoever d esires ar e difficult i n the mortal world, ask all

desires acco rding to thy will.Them beauties, with their ch ariots an d lutes - n ot s uch as

these are to be won by menbe waited on by them, my gifts. Ask me not of death, Nachiketas.

To this Nachiketas replies:Tomorrow then fleeting things wear o ut t he vigour o f a

mortals powers. E ven the whole of l ife is short; t hine are

chariots and dance and song. Not by w ealth can a m an be s atisfied. Shall we cho ose w ealthif we h ave seen thee? Shall we d esire l ife w hile t hou art master?But the w ish I choose i s truly that.


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Coming n ear to the un fading i mmortals, a f ading m ortal here

below, and understanding, thinking on the s weets of beauty andpleasure, who would rejoice i n length of days?This that they doubt about, O Death, what is in the gr eat

Beyond, tell me of t hat. This wish that draws n ear t o themystery, Nachiketas chooses no other wish than that. . . .

The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad gives us a second version of thestory of S hvetaketus father an d king Pravahana, which we havealready quoted from the C hhandogya Upanishad. This other versioncontains certain sentences, which at once suggest the MysteryTeaching. After the b oy had failed to answer the q uestions, the k inginvited him to remain and learn:

But he, refusing to remain, ran away an d came t o his father,and said to h im:

Did not my f ather declare t hat I was instructed?How now, wise youth? said his father.This R ajanya fellow has asked me f ive questions, and I d o

not know even one of them!What are t hey? said he; and he t old them to him.He s aid:As thou knowest us, dear, that whatever I know, I have t old

it all to thee come! Let us go back there, and serve as disciples!Let my f ather go himself! said he. So his father went.

So the des cendant of Gotama came where was the dw elling o fking Pravahana s on of Jibala. The k ing offered him a s eal, andhad water offered to him. And he di d honour to him. And theking said:

To t he worshipful descendant of Gotama we give a wish!He answered:The w ish is promised to me! The word which thou saidst in

the p resence o f the b oy, tell that to me!But the ki ng s aid:That i s among wishes of t he gods, O descendant of the

Gotama! choose t hou a w ish of mortals!But he r eplied: It is well knownTreasure o f elephants and


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gold, of cattle an d horses, slave-girls and vest ures an d robes! But

let n ot t he Master b e niggardly of t he great, the endless, theboundless!The k ing replied to him: This is a h oly wish, O descendant

of Gotama!I o ffer m yself as t hy disciple! said he; for w ith this w ord did

the m en of old offer themselves

Documents

Wisdom Traditions of East and West, by Charles Johnston