theory that _this language was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations borrowed it_. They are wrong, because, although the _Zohar_ (זהר ZHR), _The Book of Splendour_ of Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, did indeed originate with him—his son, Rabbi Eleazar, helped by his secretary, Rabbi Abba, compiling the Kabalistic teachings of his deceased father into a work called the _Zohar_—those teachings were not Rabbi Simeon’s, as the Gupta Vidyâ shows. They are as old as the Jewish nation itself, and far older. In short, the writings which pass at present under the title of the _Zohar_ of Rabbi Simeon are about as original as were the Egyptian synchronistic Tables after being handled by Eusebius, or as St. Paul’s _Epistles_ after their revision and correction by the “Holy Church.”(315) Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the tribulations of that very same _Zohar_, as we know of them from trustworthy tradition and documents. We need not stop to discuss whether it was written in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D. Suffice it for us to know that there was at all times a Kabalistic literature among the Jews; that though historically it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the _Pentateuch_ down to the _Talmud_ the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of Mystery‐language, were, in fact, a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history—if history it can be called. Now that which we claim—and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced Kabalist, is that although Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ages down to the latest Pre‐Christian Tanaim, and although David and Solomon may have been great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared to write it down till the days of Simeon Ben Iochai. In short, the lore found in Kabalistic literature was never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era.