From the Caves and Jungles of HindostanBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna), 1831-1891; India -- Description and travel; India -- Religion
The "moon" line begins with Pururavas (see the genealogical tree
prepared by Colonel Tod from the MS. Puranas in the Oodeypore archives),
that is to say, two thousand two hundred years before Christ, and much
later than Ikshvaku, the patriarch of the Suryavansa. The fourth son of
Pururavas, Rech, stands at the head of the line of the moon-race, and
only in the fifteenth generation after him appears Harita, who founded
the Kanshikagotra, the Brahman tribe.
The Rajputs hate the latter. They say the children of the sun and Rama
have nothing in common with the children of the moon and Krishna. As
for the Bengalis, according to their traditions and history, they are
aborigines. The Madrasis and the Sinhalese are Dravidians. They have, in
turn, been said to belong to the Semites, the Hamites, the Aryans, and,
lastly, they have been given up to the will of God, with the conclusion
drawn that the Sinhalese, at all events, must be Mongolians of Turanian
origin. The Mahrattis are aborigines of the West of India, as the
Bengalis are of, the East; but to what group of tribes belong these two
nationalities no ethnographer can define, save perhaps a German. The
traditions of the people themselves are generally denied, because they
are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient
manuscripts is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only
the latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle.
The ignorant masses are often blamed and found to be guilty of
superstition for creating idols in the spiritual world. Is not,
then, the educated man, the man who craves after knowledge, who is
enlightened, still more inconsistent than these masses, when he deals
with his favorite authorities? Are not half a dozen laurel-crowned heads
allowed by him to do whatever they like with facts, to draw their own
conclusions, according to their own liking, and does he not stone
every one who would dare to rise against the decisions of these
quasi-infallible specialists, and brand him as an ignorant fool?
Let us remember the case in point of Louis Jacolliot, who spent twenty
years in India, who actually knew the language and the country to
perfection, and who, nevertheless, was rolled in the mud by Max Muller,
whose foot never touched Indian soil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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