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Divine Language

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ARTICLES RELATED TO Divine Language

Divine Language: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Upanishad

Upanishad (Sanskrit) [from upa according to + ni down + the verbal root sad to sit]

Following or according to the teachings which were received when sitting down; esoteric doctrine. "Literary works in which the rahasya -- a Sanskrit word meaning esoteric doctrine or mystery -- is imbodied. The Upanishads belong to the Vedic cycle and are regarded by orthodox Brahmans as a portion of the Sruti or 'Revelation.' It was from these wonderful quasi-esoteric and very mystical works that was later developed the highly philosophical and profound system called the Vedanta" (OG 179).

The Upanishads belong to the third division of the Vedas and are appended to the Brahmanas. The number of Upanishads hitherto known is about 170, though probably only a score are now complete without evident marks of excision or interpolation. These Upanishads belong to different periods of antiquity, some being of a much later date than others. Although the Upanishads are usually considered by modern scholars to be as a whole of later date than the Brahmanas, the original Upanishads were composed in an antiquity which anteceded that of the Brahmanas, and are probably coeval with the composition of the Vedas themselves.

"The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. As stated by Professor Cowell in Elphinstone's History of India -- 'they breathe a freedom of spirit unknown to any earlier work except the Rig-Veda . . . The great teachers of the higher knowledge and Brahmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils.' The 'Kshatriya Kings' were in the olden times, like the King-Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors -- the Dhyani Buddhas or Kumaras. There was a time, aeons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one 'lip,' one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments" (TG 354).

Thirteen of the principal Upanishads are: Aitareya, Kaushitaki, Kena, Taittiriya, Maitri, Katha, Brihadaranyaka, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Isa, Chhandogya, and Svetasvatara.

Divine Language: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Book of Dzyan

Book of Dzyan (probably from Sanskrit dhyana intense spiritual meditation, wisdom, divine knowledge)

An archaic work of enormous antiquity upon which Blavatsky based her Secret Doctrine. Dzyan has been variously spelled or transliterated, and under this form is a derivative of the Tibetan. Dzyan, dzen, or ch'an is the general term for the esoteric schools and their literature.

Blavatsky describes the Book of Dzyan, saying: "An Archaic Manuscript -- a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown process -- is before the writer's eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central point" (SD 1:1).

"The 'very old Book' is the original work from which the many volumes of Kiu-ti were complied. Not only this latter and the Siphrah Dzeniouta but even the Sepher Jezirah, the work attributed by the Hebrew Kabbalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the book of Shu-king, China's primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes, the Puranas in India, and the Chaldean Book of Numbers and the Pentateuch itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume.

Tradition says, that it was taken down in Senzar, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the words of the Divine Beings, who dictated it to the sons of Light, in Central Asia, at the very beginning of the 5th (our) race; for there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of the 3rd Race, the Manushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the 2nd and 1st Races. . . . The old book, having described Cosmic Evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including physical man, after giving the true history of the races from the First down to the Fifth (our) race, goes no further" (SD 1:xliii).

See also STANZAS OF DZYAN.

Divine Language: Mysticism Magick Dictionary on VAMPIRE

VAMPIRE

A demon, succubus, incubus, bat, zombie or night-thing between being and non-being who lives off the stolen "blood" of the living. Such blood can be literal blood, divine "Ambrosia," soma, physical energy, menses, semen, life itself or merely the mind or psyche. In languages around the world, words for "cruelty", "red" and "blood" have similar roots: Ainu fure ("red"); Latin burrus ("reddish"); Albanian vras ("hurt"; "kill"); Finnish verta ("blood"); Serbian vampir (vampire); Turkish uber ("witch"); Hungarian vé'r ("blood") and so on.

In his novel, Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer describes a particularly intelligent and horrible Central American vampire bat that has learned how to crawl under the mosquito netting of its sleeping donor.

Vampires, along with other automata and hell-beings created by the sick fantasies of human invention, swell in the qliphotic regions of the nightside of the Tree of Life. The magician crossing the qliphotic path of Characith (whose kala is cunnilingus) is warned to avoid lingering here too long lest he become an addict and vampire. In some black magic practices, the priestess is sacrificed and her soul turned into a familiar for the magician. Here the line between vampire and zombie has been almost deliberately blurred.

(See also: VAMPIRE, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Divine Language: Encyclopedia II - List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series - Hogwarts textbooks

List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series - Arithmancy. book of numerology List of fictional books within the Harry Potter series - Care of magical creatures. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander Chinese(Taiwan): 怪兽及其产地/神奇的怪兽在哪里 Chinese(Taiwan): 怪獸與其產地 Dutch: Fabeldieren en Waar Ze Te Vinden Estonian: Fantastilised elukad ja kust neid leida ...

Divine Language: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Rune, Runa

Rune, Runa [from Swedish runa, Icelandic run]

Originally a mystery, equivalent to the Greek theo-sophia (divine wisdom), which is the goal of human existence and the aim of evolution; later used for a sign or character which, inscribed on a stick, stone, or even furniture, was believed to have magical properties. A grammarian or one versed in the art of language was called runa-meistari (rune-master), one who knew how to read and write runes correctly.

In Havamal -- a long poem of the Elder Edda -- Odin relates how he "hung nine nights in the windtorn tree" (of life), seeking runes of wisdom (in the material worlds), and that he "raised them with song." It is said that Odin first invented runes and carved them on various beneficent agencies that safeguard human life on earth. One is carved on the shield Grimnismal that "stands before the shining god; mountain and billion would burn away should he fall aside."

Another rune is inscribed on the ear of Arvakrand one on the hoof of Allsvinn (the horses that draw the solar disk across the sky); one is on the reins of Sleipnir, Odin's steed, one on the paw of the bear, another on the tongue of Bragi (poetic inspiration), on the claws of the wolf and on the eagle's beak, on the rainbow bridge (Bifrost); on glass, on gold, on wine, on herb; on Vili's heart and Odin's spear, on the nails of the Norns, etc. All were later scraped off, mixed with the holy mead of wisdom, and distributed throughout the three worlds for the benefit of gods and men.

(See also: Rune, Runa, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Divine Language: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Upanishad

Upanishad (Sanskrit). Translated as "esoteric doctrine ", or interpretation of the Vedas by the Vedanta methods.

The third division of the Vedas appended to the Brahmanas and regarded as a portion of Sruti or "revealed" word. They are, however, as records, far older than the Brahmanas the exception of the two, still extant, attached to the Rig -Veda of the Aitareyins.

The term Upanishad is explained by the Hindu pundits as "that which destroys ignorance, and thus produces liberation" of the spirit, through the knowledge of the supreme though hidden truth; the same, therefore, as that which was hinted at by Jesus, when he is made to say, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " (John viii. 32). It is from these treatises of the Upanishads - themselves the echo of the primeval Wisdom-Religion?that the Vedanta system of philosophy has been developed. (See "Vedanta".)

Yet old as the Upanishads may be, the Orientalists will not assign to the oldest of them more than an antiquity of 600 years B.C. The accepted number of these treatises is 150, though now no more than about twenty are left unadulterated. They treat of very abstruse, metaphysical questions, such as the origin of the Universe; the nature and the essence of the Unmanifested Deity and the manifested gods the connection, primal and ultimate, of spirit and matter ; the universality of mind and the nature of the human Soul and Ego.

The Upanishads must be far more ancient than the days of Buddhism, as they show no preference for, nor do they uphold, the superiority of the Brahmans as a caste. On the contrary, it is the (now) second caste, the Kshatriya, or warrior class, who are exalted in the oldest of them. As stated by Professor Cowell in Elphinstone’s History of India - - "they breathe a freedom of spirit unknown to any earlier work except the Rig Veda. . . The great teachers of the higher knowledge and Brahmans are continually represented as going to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils." The " Kshatriya Kings" were in the olden times, like the King Hierophants of Egypt, the receptacles of the highest divine knowledge and wisdom, the Elect and the incarnations of the primordial divine Instructors - the Dhyani Buddhas or Kumaras.

There was a time, eons before the Brahmans became a caste, or even the Upanishads were written, when there was on earth but one "lip ", one religion and one science, namely, the speech of the gods, the Wisdom-Religion and Truth. This was before the fair fields of the latter, overrun by nations of many languages, became overgrown with the weeds of intentional deception, and national creeds invented by ambition, cruelty and selfishness, broke the one sacred Truth into thousands of fragments.

Divine Language: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Zarathustra

Zarathustra (Zend). The great lawgiver, and the founder of the religion variously called Mazdaism, Magism, Parsee?sm, Fire-Worship, and Zoroastrianism.

The age of the last Zoroaster (for it is a generic name) is not known, and perhaps for that very reason. Xanthus of Lydia, the earliest Greek writer who mentions this great lawgiver and religious reformer, places him about six hundred years before the Trojan War. But where is the historian who can now tell when the latter took place? Aristotle and also Eudoxus assign him a date of no less than 6,000 years before the days of Plato, and Aristotle was not one to make a statement without a good reason for it.

Berosus makes him a king of Babylon some 2,200 years B.C.; but then, how can one tell what were the original figures of Berosus, before his MSS. passed through the hands of Eusebius, whose fingers were so deft at altering figures, whether in Egyptian synchronistic tables or in Chaldean chronology? Haug refers Zoroaster to at least 1,000 years B.C.; and Bunsen (God in History, Vol. I., Book iii., ch. vi., p. 276) finds that Zarathustra Spitama lived under the King Vistaspa about 3,000 years B.C., and describes him as "one of the mightiest intellects and one of the greatest men of all time". It is with such exact dates in hand, and with the utterly extinct language of the Zend, whose teachings are rendered, probably in the most desultory manner, by the Pahlavi translation - a tongue, as shown by Darmsteter, which was itself growing obsolete so far back as the Sassanides - that our scholars and Orientalists have presumed to monopolise to themselves the right of assigning hypothetical dates for the age of the holy prophet Zurthust. But the Occult records claim to have the correct dates of each of the thirteen Zoroasters mentioned in the Dabistan.

Their doctrines, and especially those of the last (divine) Zoroaster, spread from Bactria to the Medes; thence, under the name of Magism, incorporated by the Adept-Astronomers in Chaldea, they greatly influenced the mystic teachings of the Mosaic doctrines, even before, perhaps, they had culminated into what is now known as the modern religion of the Parsis. Like Manu and Vyasa in India, Zarathustra is a generic name for great reformers and law-givers.

The hierarchy began with the divine Zarathustra in the Vendidad, and ended with the great, but mortal man, bearing that title, and now lost to history. There were, as shown by the Dabistan, many Zoroasters or Zarathustras. As related in the Secret Doctrine, Vol. II., the last Zoroaster was the founder of the Fire-temple of Azareksh, many ages before the historical era. Had not Alexander destroyed so many sacred and precious works of the Mazdeans, truth and philosophy would have been more inclined to agree with history, in bestowing upon that Greek Vandal the title of "the Great".

Divine Language: Mysticism Magick Dictionary on NAME

NAME

Nomen est numen. No name ever does justice to the person or thing designated by it and so, in the strictest sense, to call anything by its name is to blaspheme it.

The Egyptians -- certainly Ra and Isis -- insisted that the names of the Gods were even more powerful than the Gods themselves. Everything has a secret name which is its real name. "To be" and "to name" are the same thing in the Babylonian language. Amongst the Dogon so means "real" language as distinct from the howling of beasts or the gibberish of foreign tongues.

It was because the ancient Egyptians believed so strongly in the vitality of names that a person's name (ren) was considered one of his "bodies." All magicians experiment with assuming different names because our names determine the nature of the events that gravitate toward us. We must never forget, however, that no one is his name. To identify totally with any name is to turn to stone.

Names are also like clothes -- they can become you or you can become them. Along with all the other bodies we inhabit, the Egyptians also had the renpit ("name" body), an extra post-life soul. "John" or "Mary" are actually manifestations of you. We can assume these masks as we need them -- or not, if we don't. Those who have been disfigured and must undergo plastic surgery and skin grafts must dwell in the lowest circle of their own private hell. They actually become the horrible demon, Yog-Sothoth, God of Infernal Transitions and Lord of the Abyss, with the bulging eyes, tentacles, etc. But what such patients become is really only the renpit body of the monster, so they identify with it only long enough to draw on its hideous strength. Otherwise they wouldn't have anything to hold onto. It is in this way that the ugliest devils and most dangerous dragons can also serve as resources for us. Later on, with a bit of effort, supposedly, we can return to being the Buddha or Odin or Apollo.

Note: To disguise the true nature of a thing, just give it a new name!

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

Jehovah punished this king of Babylon for the hubris of presuming himself to be divine, by causing him to behave like an animal and eat grass.

(See also: NAME, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Divine Language: New Age Spirituality Dictionary on Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

The legendary king of the Sumerian city-state Uruk (biblical Erech) ca. 2650 BC Of the man and his actual achievements nothing certain is known, but within a century of his death he had become a god residing in the underworld, a king and judge. Until the end of Mesopotamian civilization he remained associated with the cult and care of the dead. Gilgamesh also lived on as a great hero of legendary exploits.

Five or six tales were committed to writing ca. 2100 to 2000 BC in the Sumerian language. Around 1800 the Sumerian traditions were united in a single work, written in Babylonian, of at least a thousand lines.

This version spread across the Near East, at times translated into Hittite and Hurrian. Finally, in the late second millennium, it was edited in a standard form of about three thousand lines. In this form, the epic has been transformed into a wisdom tale. It is addressed to a reader who is urged to read and ponder the story of a great man's struggle with life and the human condition.

It is structured around three weeklong rites of passage: rites conferring humanity, rites rejecting humanity, and rites restoring humanity. At first Gilgamesh would overcome death by the immortality of fame. This he achieves by slaying the monster Huwawa. But his dearest friend, Enkidu, dies, and fame becomes worthless. Now he will be satisfied only with the transcendence that belongs to the immortal gods and the one man who shares in this immortality, Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah and sole survivor of the Flood; hence the journey to this unique figure. But Gilgamesh learns that this distinction is due to divine caprice, never to be repeated. At last Gilgamesh accepts his mortality and regains his humanity. At the end, pointing to the city Uruk and its mighty walls, he shows a sense of human achievement as well as human limitation; "He was weary but at peace. "

Divine Language: New Age Spirituality Dictionary on Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Divine Language: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Mystery Schools

Mystery Schools Adopted in theosophical literature from Classical writings, to designate centers which were consecrated to the teaching of the truths of cosmic Being to those who were found fit and ready for their reception; and this body of teaching or instruction and training is imbodied in the ancient wisdom which is the heritage of humanity.

This wisdom was originally given to mankind during the infancy of the human race by celestial teachers. "The mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their celestial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and man-, or hero-worship" (SD 2:281).

Despite this almost universal degeneration of the original wisdom into dogmatic religious or philosophical forms, the heart of the teaching has always been preserved on earth, and the guardians of this heart have from that immemorial age kept the ancient wisdom whole and undefiled. From this heart esoteric centers were during the ages instituted from time to time in different parts of the earth where the holy truths were taught by hierophants, to use the Greek expression. "Alone a handful of primitive men -- in whom the spark of divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to bad purposes -- remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the divine Teachers. There were those among them, who remained in their Kumaric condition from the beginning; and tradition whispers, what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period" (ibid.).

Thus was formed the Great Brotherhood or Great White Lodge, which has remained on earth to this day in its secret retreat, known in Hindu legends as Sambhala. From time to time messengers are sent forth from this Brotherhood into the world, and these emissaries impart the holy doctrine of which they are the carriers to those who prove themselves ready, fit, and worthy to receive it. Such centers of esoteric training and communication have always been called the Mysteries, or Mystery schools; and the emissaries establish new centers or Mystery schools when and where it is found proper to do so.

Every race and nation has had its teachers and their esoteric centers; the one fundamental doctrine of the heart was taught alike in them all, albeit after different manners, in different languages, and by different approaches, according to the psychological readiness and the needs of the people to whom these emissaries came. In later times, when these Mystery schools had to a greater or less degree lost the original impress and inspiration of the first communication, they were called sacerdotal colleges, or even temple-colleges or in ancient Greece the Mysteries. Such esoteric centers, where the original and archaic doctrine is taught, exist even today.

Divine Language: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Cherubim

Cherubim (Hebrew, Jewish) According to the Kabbalists, a group of angels, which they specially associated with the Sephira Jesod. in Christian teaching, an order of angels who are "watchers".

Genesis places Cherubim to guard the lost Eden, and the O.T. frequently refers to them as guardians of the divine glory. Two winged representations in gold were placed over the Ark of the Covenant; colossal figures of the same were also placed in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple of Solomon. Ezekiel describes them in poetic language.

Each Cherub appears to have been a compound figure with four faces - of a man, eagle, lion, and ox, and was certainly winged. Parkhurst, in voc. Cherub, suggests that the derivation of the word is from K, a particle of similitude, and RB or RUB, greatness, master, majesty, and so an image of godhead. Many other nations have displayed similar figures as symbols of deity ; e.g., the Egyptians in their figures of Serapis. as Macrohius describes in his Saturnalia; the Greeks had their triple-headed Hecate, and the Latins had three-faced images of Diana, as Ovid tells us, ecce procul ternis Hecate variata figuris. Virgil also describes her in the fourth Book of the Eneid.

Porphyry and Eusebius write the same of Proserpine. The Vandals had a many-headed deity they called Triglaf. The ancient German races had an idol Rodigast with human body and heads of the ox, eagle, and man. The Persians have some figures of Mithras with a man’s body, lion’s head, and four wings. Add to these the Chimera Sphinx of Egypt, Moloch, Astarte of the Syrians, and some figures of Isis with Bull’s horns and feathers of a bird on the head.

Divine Language: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on G - Letter G

G - Letter G - The seventh letter in the English alphabet. "In Greek, Chaldean, Syriac, Hebrew, Assyrian, Samaritan, Etrurian, Coptic, in the modern Romaic and Gothic, it occupies the third place in the alphabet, while in Cyrillic, Glagolitic, Croat, Russian, Servian and Wallachian, it stands fourth."

As the name of "god" begins with this letter (in Syriac, gad; Swedish, gud: German, gott; English, god; Persian, gada, etc., etc.), there is an occult reason for this which only the students of esoteric philosophy and of the Secret Doctrine, explained esoterically, will understand thoroughly; it refers to the three logoi - the last,the Elohim, and the emanation of the latter, the androgynous Adam Kadmon.

All these peoples have derived the name of "god" from their respective traditions, the more or less clear echoes of the esoteric tradition. Spoken and "Silent Speech" (writing) are a "gift of the gods", say all the national traditions, from the old Aryan Sanskrit-speaking people who claim that their alphabet, the Devanagari (lit., the language of the devas or gods) was given to them from heaven, down to the Jews, who speak of an alphabet, the parent of the one which has survived, as having been a celestial and mystical symbolism given by the angels to the patriarchs. Hence, every letter had its manifold meaning.

A symbol itself of a celestial being and objects, it was in its turn represented on earth by like corresponding objects whose form symbolised the shape of the letter.

The present letter, called in Hebrew gimel and symbolised by a long camel’s neck, or rather a serpent erect, is associated with the third sacred divine name, Ghadol or Magnus (great). Its numeral is four, the Tetragrammaton and the sacred Tetraktys; hence its sacredness. With other people it stood for 400 and with a dash over it, for 400,000.

Divine Language: Theosophy Occultism Mysticism Dictionary on Right-hand Path

A Theosophical definition of Right-hand Path :

Right-hand Path

From time immemorial, in all countries of the earth, among all races of men, there have been existent two opposing and antagonistic schools of occult or esoteric training, the one often technically called the Path of Light, and the other the Path of Darkness or of the Shadows.

These two paths likewise are much more commonly called the right-hand path and the left-hand path, and although these are technical names in the rather shaky occultism of the Occident, the very same expressions have prevailed all over the world, and are especially known in the mystical and esoteric literature of Hindustan.

The right-hand path is known in Sanskrit writings by the name dakshina-marga, and those who practice the rules of conduct and follow the manner of life enjoined upon those who follow the right-hand path are technically known as dakshinacharins, and their course of life is known as dakshinachara. Conversely, those who follow the left-hand path, often called Brothers of the Shadow, or by some similar epithet, are called vamacharins, and their school or course of life is known as vamachara. An alternative expression for vamachara is savyachara. The white magicians or Brothers of Light are therefore dakshinacharins, and the black magicians or Brothers of the Shadow, or workers of spiritual and intellectual and psychical evil, are therefore vamacharins.

To speak in the mystical language of ancient Greece, the dakshinacharins or Brothers of Light pursue the winding ascent to Olympus, whereas the vamacharins or Brothers of the Left-hand follow the easy but fearfully perilous path leading downwards into ever more confusing, horrifying stages of matter and spiritual obscuration. The latter is the faciles descensus averno (Aeneid, 6.126) of the Latin poet Virgil. Woe be to him who, refusing to raise his soul to the sublime and cleansing rays of the spiritual sun within him, places his feet upon the path which leads downwards. The warnings given to students of occultism about this matter have always been solemn and urgent, and no esotericist should at any moment consider himself safe or beyond the possibilities of taking the downward way until he has become at one with the divine monitor within his own breast, his own inner god.

Divine Language: Spiritual Theosophical Dictionary on Vedas

Vedas (Sanskrit). The "revelation". the scriptures of the Hindus, from the root vid, "to know ", or "divine knowledge". They are the most ancient as well as the most sacred of the Sanskrit works.

The Vedas on the date and antiquity of which no two Orientalists can agree, are claimed by the Hindus themselves, whose Brahmans and Pundits ought to know best about their own religious works, to have been first taught orally for thousands of years and then compiled on the shores of Lake Manasa-Sarovara (phonetically, Mansarovara) beyond the Himalayas, in Tibet. When was this done? While their religious teachers, such as Swami Dayanand Saraswati, claim for them an antiquity of many decades of ages, our modern Orientalists will grant them no greater antiquity in their present form than about between 1,000 and 2,000 B.C.

As compiled in their final form by Veda-Vyasa, however, the Brahmans themselves unanimously assign 3,100 years before the Christian era, the date when Vyasa flourished. Therefore the Vedas must be as old as this date. But their antiquity is sufficiently proven by the fact that they are written in such an ancient form, of Sanskrit, so different from the Sanskrit now used, that there is no other, work like them in the literature of this eldest sister of all the known languages, as Prof. Max Muller calls it. Only the most learned of the Brahman Pundits can read the Vedas in their original. It is urged that Colebrooke found the date 1400 B.c. corroborated absolutely by a passage which he discovered, and which is based on astronomical data.

But if, as shown unanimously by all the Orientalists and the Hindu Pundits also, that

(a) the Vedas are not a single work, nor yet any one of the separate Vedas; but that each Veda, and almost every hymn and division of the latter, is the production of various authors; and that

(b) these have been written (whether as sruti, "revelation ", or not) at various periods of the ethnological evolution of the Indo-Aryan race, then - what does Mr. Colebrooke’s discovery prove? Simply that the Vedas were finally arranged and compiled fourteen centuries before our era; but this interferes in no way with their antiquity.

Quite the reverse; for, as an offset to Mr. Colebrooke’s passage, there is a learned article, written on purely astronomical data by Krishna Shastri Godbole (of Bombay), which proves as absolutely and on the same evidence that the Vedas must have been taught at least 25,000 years ago. (See Theosophist, Vol. II., p. 238 et seq., Aug., 1881.) This statement is, if not supported, at any rate not contradicted by what Prof. Cowell says in Appendix VII., of Elphinstone’ History of India: "

There is a difference in age between the various hymns, which are now united in their present form as the Sanhita of the Rig Veda; but we have no data to determine their relative antiquity, and purely subjective criticism, apart from solid data, has so often failed in other instances, that we can trust but little to any of its inferences in such a recently opened field of research as Sanskrit literature. [ a fourth part of the Vaidik literature is as yet in print, and very little of it has been translated into English (1866).] The still unsettled controversies about the Homeric poems may well warn us of being too confident in our judgments regarding the yet earlier hymns of the Rig -Veda. . . . When we examine these hymns . . . they are deeply interesting for the history of the human mind, belonging as they do to a much older phase than the poems of Homer or Hesiod." The Vedic writings are all classified in two great divisions, exoteric and esoteric, the former being called Karma-Kanda, "division of actions or works ", and the Jnana Kanda, "division of (divine) knowledge", the Upanishads (q.v.) coming under this last classification. Both departments are regarded as Sruti or revelation.

To each hymn of the Rig -Veda, the name of the Seer or Rishi to whom it was revealed is prefixed. It, thus, becomes evident on the authority of these very names (such as Vasishta, Viswamitra, Narada, etc.), all of which belong to men born in various manvantaras and even ages, that centuries, and perhaps millenniums, must have elapsed between the dates of their composition.

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