Mercia, the astronomer royal: A romanceMears, A. Garland
Science
Mercia, the astronomer royal: A romance
Mears, A. Garland
Science fiction; Utopian fiction
This ancient Mahatma was literally saturated with wisdom, without going
through the painful processes that men of that class are usually
compelled in the attainment of their ascetic ambition. By the agency of
this psychic gift he could unfold, without having read its history, the
glories of India in its ancient days; describing the magnificence of its
rulers; their pomp; their immense retinues, which were on such a scale
that the passage through his dominion by their Sovereign caused a famine
in the parts traversed. Only two classes existed in those good old
times, the very rich and the very poor.
He could conjure up pictures of the workmen dropping down dead from
hunger and exhaustion who were engaged upon the erection of the
loveliest mausoleum that the world has ever seen; more like an exquisite
marble palace of fairy land than a resting place for the dead. Art had
indeed attained its highest perfection in those far off days, the
monuments of which the Eastern still gazes upon with pride and
affection.
Or he could project his thought till it reached the mind of ministers in
England, when he could produce a mental negative, so to speak, of the
thought of the ministers respecting the policy they intended carrying
out which would affect India; for it was only on the occasion of some
great national question stirring the mind of the people that he cared to
put out his thought in this direction.
Moreover, he possessed the power of seeing into futurity, for he
foretold that in one hundred years India would have her own supreme
Sovereign, one who would be of their own unbiassed choice, who lived
among them, and studied the happiness of her people. One who was loved
and reverenced throughout the world. Whose rule would bring honour,
dignity and renown to their beautiful and beloved India; and this
unrivalled potentate would be a woman, young, beautiful and talented.
New, this prophecy of the old Mahatma could not refer to Victoria, the
first English Empress of India, for she was gathered to her forefathers
at that time, and King Albert, the First, reigned in her stead.
The descendant of this wonderful Mahatma resided in London, his father
having been appointed by Government to the post of Collector, a position
of some importance in the Civil Service. But the son elected to follow a
profession that was more in accordance with the traditions of his
ancestors, and at the same time would supply a want in his own
generation, that was called into existence by the exigencies of the
times.
The worn-out theories of Theosophy which deemed nirvana the highest
attainable condition of the human soul, had no attraction for him; but
he regarded it with some amount of reverence, inspired by the traditions
of an ancient religion, which cannot fail to cast a halo round it, even
when discarded by the more advanced modern.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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