_The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island [the primitive Shveta‐dvîpa] had perished ages before. Their [Lemuria’s] Elect, had taken shelter on the Sacred Island [now the __“__fabled__”__ Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert], while some of their accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground [__“__cave‐men__”__], when the golden yellow Race [the Fourth] became in its turn __“__black with sin.__”__ From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Shveta‐dvîpa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya [?], east and west, the first, the one and the pure, had become corrupted.... The Demi‐Gods of the Third had made room for the Semi‐Demons of the Fourth Race. Shveta‐dvîpa,_(_717_)_ the White Island, had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black Land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dvîpa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas from the seventh climate replaced the Sâdhus and the Ascetics of the Third Age, who had descended to them from other and higher regions...._ In their dead letter, the _Purânas_, in general, read like an absurd tissue of fairy tales and no better. And if one were to read the first three chapters of Book II of _Vishnu Purâna_ and accept _verbatim_ the geography, geodesy, and ethnology in the account of Priyavrata’s seven sons among whom their father divides the seven Dvîpas (Islands or Continents); and then proceed to study how his eldest son, Agnîdhra, the King of Jambu‐dvîpa, apportioned Jambu‐dvîpa among his nine sons; and then how Nâbhi, _his_ son, had a hundred sons and apportioned lands to all these in his turn—he would most likely throw the book away and pronounce it a farrago of nonsense. But the student of Esotericism will understand that, when the _Purânas_ were written, their true meaning was intended to be clear only to the Initiated Brâhmans, and so the compilers wrote these works allegorically and would not give the _whole_ truth to the masses. And he will, further, explain to the Orientalists—who, beginning with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, have made and still are making such a mess of it—that the first three chapters purposely confuse the following subjects and events: I. The series of Kalpas, or Ages, and also of Races, are never taken into account; and events which have happened in one are allowed to stand along with those which took place in another. The chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying: Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed, they are ascribed ... to differences of Kalpas and the like. II. The several meanings of the words “Manvantara” and “Kalpa” or Age, are withheld, the general signification only being given.