There, In The Golden Temple, Built In The Centre
Of The "Lake Of Immortality," Was To Be Held The First Meeting Of
The Members Of Our Society, Brahmans, Buddhists, Sikhs, Etc.
- In
a word, the representatives of the one thousand and one sects of
India, who all sympathized, more or less, with the idea of the
Brotherhood of Humanity of our Theosophical Society.
Vanished Glories
Benares, Prayaga (now Allahabad), Nassik, Hurdwar, Bhadrinath,
Matura - these were the sacred places of prehistoric India which
we were to visit one after the other; but to visit them, not after
the usual manner of tourists, a vol d'oiseau, with a cheap guide-
book in our hands and a cicerone to weary our brains, and wear
out our legs. We were well aware that all these ancient places
are thronged with traditions and overgrown with the weeds of popular
fancy, like ruins of ancient castles covered with ivy; that the
original shape of the building is destroyed by the cold embrace
of these parasitic plants, and that it is as difficult for the
archaeologist to form an idea of the architecture of the once
perfect edifice, judging only by the heaps of disfigured rubbish
that cover the country, as for us to select from out the thick mass
of legends good wheat from weeds. No guides and no cicerone
could be of any use whatever to us. The only thing they could do
would be to point out to us places where once there stood a fortress,
a castle, a temple, a sacred grove, or a celebrated town, and then
to repeat legends which came into existence only lately, under the
Mussulman rule. As to the undisguised truth, the original history
of every interesting spot, we should have had to search for these
by ourselves, assisted only by our own conjectures.
Modern India does not present a pale shadow of what it was in the
pre-Christian era, nor even of the Hindostan of the days of Akbar,
Shah-Jehan and Aurungzeb. The neighborhood of every town that
has been shattered by many a war, and of every ruined hamlet, is
covered with round reddish pebbles, as if with so many petrified
tears of blood. But, in order to approach the iron gate of some
ancient fortress, it is not over natural pebbles that it is necessary
to walk, but over the broken fragments of some older granite remains,
under which, very often, rest the ruins of a third town, still more
ancient than the last. Modern names have been given to them by
Mussulmans, who generally built their towns upon the remains of
those they had just taken by assault. The names of the latter
are sometimes mentioned in the legends, but the names of their
predecessors had completely disappeared from the popular memory
even before the Mussulman invasion. Will a time ever come for
these secrets of the centuries to be revealed? Knowing all this
beforehand, we resolved not to lose patience, even though we had
to devote whole years to explorations of the same places, in
order to obtain better historical information, and facts less
disfigured than those obtained by our predecessors, who had to be
contented with a choice collection of naive lies, poured forth from
the mouth of some frightened semi-savage, or some Brahman, unwilling
to speak and desirous of disguising the truth. As for ourselves,
we were differently situated. We were helped by a whole society
of educated Hindus, who were as deeply interested in the same
questions as ourselves. Besides, we had a promise of the revelation
of some secrets, and the accurate translation of some ancient
chronicles, that had been preserved as if by a miracle.
The history of India has long since faded from the memories of her
sons, and is still a mystery to her conquerors. Doubtless it still
exists, though, perchance, only partly, in manuscripts that are
jealously concealed from every European eye. This has been shown
by some pregnant words, spoken by Brahmans on their rare occasions
of friendly expansiveness. Thus, Colonel Tod, whom I have already
quoted several times, is said to have been told by a Mahant, the
chief of an ancient pagoda-monastery: "Sahib, you lose your time
in vain researches. The Bellati India [India of foreigners] is
before you, but you will never see the Gupta India [secret India].
We are the guardians of her mysteries, and would rather cut out
each other's tongues than speak."
Yet, nevertheless, Tod succeeded in learning a good deal. It must
be borne in mind that no Englishman has ever been loved so well
by the natives as this old and courageous friend of the Maharana
of Oodeypur, who, in his turn, was so friendly towards the natives
that the humblest of them never saw a trace of contempt in his
demeanour. He wrote before ethnology had reached its present stage
of development, but his book is still an authority on everything
concerning Rajistan. Though the author's opinion of his work was
not very high, though he stated that "it is nothing but a
conscientious collection of materials for a future historian,"
still in this book is to be found many a thing undreamed of by any
British civil servant.
Let our friends smile incredulously. Let our enemies laugh at
our pretensions to penetrate the world-mysteries of Aryavarta,"
as a certain critic recently expressed himself. However pessimistic
may be our critics' views, yet, even in the event of our conclusions
not proving more trustworthy than those of Fergusson, Wilson,
Wheeler, and the rest of the archeologists and Sanskritists who
have written about India, still, I hope, they will not be less
susceptible of proof. We are daily reminded that, like unreasonable
children, we have undertaken a task before which archaeologists
and historians, aided by all the influence and wealth of the
Government, have shrunk dismayed; that we have taken upon ourselves
a work which has proved to be beyond the capacities of the Royal
Asiatic Society.
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