Benares, Prayaga (now Allahabad), Nassik, Hurdwar, Bhadrinath,
Matura--these were the sacred places of prehistoric India which we were
to visit one after the other; but to visit them, not after the usual
manner of tourists, a vol d'oiseau, with a cheap guide-book in our hands
and a cicerone to weary our brains, and wear out our legs. We were well
aware that all these ancient places are thronged with traditions and
overgrown with the weeds of popular fancy, like ruins of ancient castles
covered with ivy; that the original shape of the building is destroyed
by the cold embrace of these parasitic plants, and that it is as
difficult for the archaeologist to form an idea of the architecture
of the once perfect edifice, judging only by the heaps of disfigured
rubbish that cover the country, as for us to select from out the thick
mass of legends good wheat from weeds. No guides and no cicerone could
be of any use whatever to us. The only thing they could do would be to
point out to us places where once there stood a fortress, a castle, a
temple, a sacred grove, or a celebrated town, and then to repeat legends
which came into existence only lately, under the Mussulman rule. As to
the undisguised truth, the original history of every interesting spot,
we should have had to search for these by ourselves, assisted only by
our own conjectures.
Modern India does not present a pale shadow of what it was in the
pre-Christian era, nor even of the Hindostan of the days of Akbar,
Shah-Jehan and Aurungzeb. The neighborhood of every town that has been
shattered by many a war, and of every ruined hamlet, is covered with
round reddish pebbles, as if with so many petrified tears of blood. But,
in order to approach the iron gate of some ancient fortress, it is not
over natural pebbles that it is necessary to walk, but over the broken
fragments of some older granite remains, under which, very often, rest
the ruins of a third town, still more ancient than the last. Modern
names have been given to them by Mussulmans, who generally built their
towns upon the remains of those they had just taken by assault. The
names of the latter are sometimes mentioned in the legends, but the
names of their predecessors had completely disappeared from the popular
memory even before the Mussulman invasion. Will a time ever come
for these secrets of the centuries to be revealed? Knowing all this
beforehand, we resolved not to lose patience, even though we had to
devote whole years to explorations of the same places, in order to
obtain better historical information, and facts less disfigured than
those obtained by our predecessors, who had to be contented with a
choice collection of naive lies, poured forth from the mouth of some
frightened semi-savage, or some Brahman, unwilling to speak and desirous
of disguising the truth. As for ourselves, we were differently situated.
We were helped by a whole society of educated Hindus, who were as deeply
interested in the same questions as ourselves. Besides, we had a promise
of the revelation of some secrets, and the accurate translation of some
ancient chronicles, that had been preserved as if by a miracle.
The history of India has long since faded from the memories of her sons,
and is still a mystery to her conquerors. Doubtless it still exists,
though, perchance, only partly, in manuscripts that are jealously
concealed from every European eye. This has been shown by some
pregnant words, spoken by Brahmans on their rare occasions of friendly
expansiveness. Thus, Colonel Tod, whom I have already quoted several
times, is said to have been told by a Mahant, the chief of an ancient
pagoda-monastery: "Sahib, you lose your time in vain researches. The
Bellati India [India of foreigners] is before you, but you will
never see the Gupta India [secret India]. We are the guardians of her
mysteries, and would rather cut out each other's tongues than speak."
Yet, nevertheless, Tod succeeded in learning a good deal. It must be
borne in mind that no Englishman has ever been loved so well by the
natives as this old and courageous friend of the Maharana of Oodeypur,
who, in his turn, was so friendly towards the natives that the humblest
of them never saw a trace of contempt in his demeanour. He wrote before
ethnology had reached its present stage of development, but his book
is still an authority on everything concerning Rajistan. Though the
author's opinion of his work was not very high, though he stated that
"it is nothing but a conscientious collection of materials for a future
historian," still in this book is to be found many a thing undreamed of
by any British civil servant.
"Let our friends smile incredulously. Let our enemies laugh at our
pretensions to penetrate the world-mysteries of Aryavarta," as a certain
critic recently expressed himself. However pessimistic may be our
critics' views, yet, even in the event of our conclusions not proving
more trustworthy than those of Fergusson, Wilson, Wheeler, and the rest
of the archeologists and Sanskritists who have written about India,
still, I hope, they will not be less susceptible of proof. We are daily
reminded that, like unreasonable children, we have undertaken a task
before which archaeologists and historians, aided by all the influence
and wealth of the Government, have shrunk dismayed; that we have taken
upon ourselves a work which has proved to be beyond the capacities of
the Royal Asiatic Society.
Let it be so.
Let everyone try to remember, as we ourselves remember, that not very
long ago a poor Hungarian, who not only had no means of any kind but was
almost a beggar, traveled on foot to Tibet through unknown and dangerous
countries, led only by the love of learning and the eager wish to
pour light on the historical origin of his nation. The result was that
inexhaustible mines of literary treasures were discovered. Philology,
which till then had wandered in the Egyptian darkness of etymological
labyrinths, and was about to ask the sanction of the scientific world
to one of the wildest of theories, suddenly stumbled on the clue of
Ariadne. Philology discovered, at last, that the Sanskrit language is,
if not the forefather, at least--to use the language of Max Muller--"the
elder brother" of all classical languages. Thanks to the extraordinary
zeal of Alexander Csoma de Koros, Tibet yielded a language the
literature of which was totally unknown. He partly translated it and
partly analyzed and explained it. His translations have shown the
scientific world that (1) the originals of the Zend-Avesta, the sacred
scriptures of the sun-worshippers, of Tripitaka, that of the Buddhists,
and of Aytareya-Brahmanam, that of the Brahmans, were written in one and
the same Sanskrit language; (2) that all these three languages--Zend,
Nepalese, and the modern Brahman Sanskrit--are more or less dialects of
the first; (3) that old Sanskrit is the origin of all the less ancient
Indo-European languages, as well as of the modern European
tongues and dialects; (4) that the three chief religions of
heathendom--Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Brahmanism--are mere heresies
of the monotheistic teachings of the Vedas, which does not prevent them
from being real ancient religions and not modern falsifications.
The moral of all this is evident. A poor traveler, without either money
or protection, succeeded in gaining admittance to the Lamaseries of
Tibet and to the sacred literature of the isolated tribe which inhabits
it, probably because he treated the Mongolians and the Tibetans as
his brothers and not as an inferior race--a feat which has never been
accomplished by generations of scientists. One cannot help feeling
ashamed of humanity and science when one thinks that he whose labors
first gave to science such precious results, he who was the first sower
of such an abundant harvest, remained, almost until the day of his
death, a poor and obscure worker. On his way from Tibet he walked to
Calcutta without a penny in his pocket. At last Csoma de Koros became
known, and his name began to be pronounced with honor and praise whilst
he was dying in one of the poorest parts of Calcutta. Being already very
ill, he wanted to get back to Tibet, and started on foot again through
Sikkhim. He succumbed to his illness on the road and was buried in
Darhjeeling.
It is needless to say we are fully aware that what we have undertaken is
simply impossible within the limits of ordinary newspaper articles.
All we hope to accomplish is to lay the foundation stone of an edifice,
whose further progress must be entrusted to future generations. In order
to combat successfully the theories worked out by two generations of
Orientalists, half a century of diligent labor would be required. And,
in order to replace these theories with new ones, we must get new facts,
facts founded not on the chronology and false evidence of scheming
Brahmans, whose interest is to feed the ignorance of European
Sanskritists (as, unfortunately, was the experience of Lieutenant
Wilford and Louis Jacolliot), but on indubitable proofs that are to
be found in inscriptions as yet undeciphered. The clue to these
inscriptions Europeans do not possess, because, as I have already
stated, it is guarded in MSS. which are as old as the inscriptions and
which are almost out of reach. Even in case our hopes are realized and
we obtain this clue, a new difficulty will arise before us. We shall
have to begin a systematic refutation, page by page, of many a volume
of hypotheses published by the Royal Asiatic Society. A work like
this might be accomplished by dozens of tireless, never-resting
Sanskritists--a class which, even in India, is almost as rare as white
elephants.
Thanks to private contributions and the zeal of some educated Hindu
patriots, two free classes of Sanskrit and Pali had already been
opened--one in Bombay by the Theosophical Society, the other in Benares
under the presidency of the learned Rama-Misra-Shastri. In the present
year, 1882, the Theosophical Society has, altogether, fourteen schools
in Ceylon and India.
Our heads full of thoughts and plans of this kind, we, that is to say,
one American, three Europeans, and three natives, occupied a whole
carriage of the Great Indian Peninsular Railroad on our way to Nassik,
one of the oldest towns in India, as I have already mentioned, and
the most sacred of all in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Western
Presidency. Nassik borrowed its name from the Sanskrit word "Nasika,"
which means nose. An epic legend assures us that on this very spot
Lakshman, the eldest brother of the deified King Rama, cut off the nose
of the giantess Sarpnaka, sister of Ravana, who stole Sita, the "Helen
of Troy" of the Hindus.
The train stops six miles from the town, so that we had to finish our
journey in six two-wheeled, gilded chariots, called ekkas, and drawn by
bullocks. It was one o'clock A.M., but, in spite of the darkness of the
hour, the horns of the animals were gilded and adorned with flowers,
and brass bangles tinkled on their legs. Our waylay through ravines
overgrown with jungle, where, as our drivers hastened to inform
us, tigers and other four-footed misanthropes of the forest played
hide-and-seek. However, we had no opportunity of making the acquaintance
of the tigers, but enjoyed instead a concert of a whole community of
jackals. They followed us step by step, piercing our ears with shrieks,
wild laughter and barking. These animals are annoying, but so cowardly
that, though numerous enough to devour, not only all of us, but our
gold-horned bullocks too, none of them dared to come nearer than the
distance of a few steps. Every time the long whip, our weapon against
snakes, alighted on the back of one of them, the whole horde disappeared
with unimaginable noise. Nevertheless, the drivers did not dispense with
a single one of their superstitious precautions against tigers. They
chanted mantrams in unison, spread betel over the road as a token of
their respect to the Rajas of the forest, and, after every couplet,
made the bullocks kneel and bow their heads in honor of the great gods.
Needless to say, the ekka, as light as a nutshell, threatened each time
to fall with its passenger over the horns of the bullocks. We had to
endure this agreeable way of traveling for five hours under a very dark
sky. We reached the Inn of the Pilgrims in the morning at about six
o'clock.
The real cause of Nassik's sacredness, however, is not the mutilated
trunk of the giantess, but the situation of the town on the banks of
the Godavari, quite close to the sources of this river which, for some
reason or other, are called by the natives Ganga (Ganges). It is to
this magic name, probably, that the town owes its numerous magnificent
temples, and the selectness of the Brahmans who inhabit the banks of
the river. Twice a year pilgrims flock here to pray, and on these solemn
occasions the number of the visitors exceeds that of the inhabitants,
which is only 35,000. Very picturesque, but equally dirty, are the
houses of the rich Brahmans built on both sides of the way from the
centre of the town to the Godavari. A whole forest of narrow pyramidal
temples spreads on both sides of the river. All these new pagodas
are built on the ruins of those destroyed by the fanaticism of the
Mussulmans. A legend informs us that most of them rose from the ashes
of the tail of the monkey god Hanuman. Retreating from Lanka, where
the wicked Ravana, having anointed the brave hero's tail with some
combustible stuff set it on fire, Hanuman, with a single leap through
the air, reached Nassik, his fatherland. And here the noble adornment
of the monkey's back, burned almost entirely during the voyage, crumbled
into ashes, and from every sacred atom of these ashes, fallen to
the ground, there rose a temple.... And, indeed, when seen from
the mountain, these numberless pagodas, scattered in a most curious
disorderly way, look as if they had really been thrown down by handfuls
from the sky. Not only the river banks and the surrounding country, but
every little island, every rock peeping from the water is covered
with temples. And not one of them is destitute of a legend of its
own, different versions of which are told by every individual of the
Brahmanical community according to his own taste--of course in the hope
of a suitable reward.
Here, as everywhere else in India, Brahmans are divided into two
sects--worshippers of Shiva and worshippers of Vishnu--and between the
two there is rivalry and warfare centuries old. Though the neighborhood
of the Godavari shines with a twofold fame derived from its being the
birthplace of Hanuman and the theatre of the first great deeds of Rama,
the incarnation of Vishnu, it possesses as many temples dedicated to
Shiva as to Vishnu. The material of which the pagodas consecrated to
Shiva are constructed is black basalt. And it is, exactly, the color
of the material which is the apple of discord in this case. The black
material is claimed by the Vaishnavas as their own, it being of the
same color as the burned tail of Rama's ally. They try to prove that
the Shivaites have no right to it. From the first days of their rule
the English inherited endless lawsuits between the fighting sectarians,
cases decided in one law-court only to be transferred on appeal to
another, and always having their origin in this ill-omened tail and its
pretensions. This tail is a mysterious deus ex machina that directs all
the thoughts of the Nassik Brahmans pro and contra.
On the subject of this tail were written more reams of paper and
petitions than in the quarrel about the goose between Ivan Ivanitch and
Ivan Nikiphoritch; and more ink and bile were spilt than there was mud
in Mirgorod, since the creation of the universe. The pig that so happily
decided the famous quarrel in Gogol would be a priceless blessing to
Nassik, and the struggle for the tail. But unhappily even the "pig" if
it hailed from "Russia" would be of no avail in India; for the English
would suspect it at once, and arrest it as a Russian spy!
Rama's bathing place is shown in Nassik. The ashes of pious Brahmans are
brought hither from distant parts to be thrown into the Godavari, and so
to mingle for ever with the sacred waters of Ganges. In an ancient MS.
there is a statement of one of Rama's generals, who, somehow or other,
is not mentioned in the Ramayana. This statement points to the river
Godavari as the frontier between the kingdoms of Rama, King of Ayodya
(Oude), and of Ravana, King of Lanka (Ceylon). Legends and the poem of
Ramayana state that this was the spot where Rama, while hunting, saw a
beautiful antelope, and, intending to make a present to his beloved Sita
of its skin, entered the regions of his unknown neighbor. No doubt Rama,
Ravana, and even Hanuman, promoted, for some unexplained reason, to
the rank of a monkey, are historical personages who once had a real
existence. About fifty years ago it was vaguely suspected that the
Brahmans possessed priceless MSS. It was reported that one of these
MSS. treats of the prehistoric epoch when the Aryans first invaded the
country, and began an endless war with the dark aborigines of southern
India. But the religious fanaticism of the Hindus never allowed the
English Government to verify these reports.
The most interesting sights of Nassik are its cave-temples, about five
miles from the town. The day before we started thither, I certainly
did not dream that a "tail" would have to play an important part in
our visit to Nassik, that, in this case, it would save me, if not from
death, at least from disagreeable and perhaps dangerous bruises. This is
how it happened.
As the difficult task of ascending a steep mountain lay before us,
we decided to hire elephants. The best couple in the town was brought
before us. Their owner assured us "that the Prince of Wales had ridden
upon them and was very contented." To go there and back and have them in
attendance the whole day--in fact the whole pleasure-trip--was to cost
us two rupees for each elephant. Our native friends, accustomed from
infancy to this way of riding, were not long in getting on the back of
their elephant. They covered him like flies, with no predilection for
this or that spot of his vast back. They held on by all kinds of strings
and ropes, more with their toes than their fingers, and, on the whole,
presented a picture of contentment and comfort. We Europeans had to use
the lady elephant, as being the tamer of the two. On her back there
were two little benches with sloping seats on both sides, and not the
slightest prop for our backs. The wretched, undergrown youngsters seen
in European circuses give no idea of the real size of this noble beast.
The mahout, or driver, placed himself between the huge animal's ears
whilst we gazed at the "perfected" seats ready for us with an uneasy
feeling of distrust The mahout ordered his elephant to kneel, and it
must be owned that in climbing on her back with the aid of a small
ladder, I felt what the French call chair de poule. Our she-elephant
answered to the poetical name of "Chanchuli Peri," the Active Fairy, and
really was the most obedient and the merriest of all the representatives
of her tribe that I have ever seen. Clinging to each other we at last
gave the signal for departure, and the mahout goaded the right ear of
the animal with an iron rod. First the elephant raised herself on her
fore-legs, which movement tilted us all back, then she heavily rose on
her hind ones, too, and we rolled forwards, threatening to upset the
mahout. But this was not the end of our misfortunes. At the very
first steps of Peri we slipped about in all directions, like quivering
fragments of blancmange.
The journey came to a sudden pause. We were picked up in a hasty way,
replaced on our respective seats, during which proceeding Peri's trunk
proved very active, and the journey continued. The very thought of the
five miles before us filled us with horror, but we would not give up
the excursion, and indignantly refused to be tied to our seats, as was
suggested by our Hindu companions, who could not suppress their merry
laughter.... However, I bitterly repented this display of vanity. This
unusual mode of locomotion was something incredibly fantastical, and,
at the same time, ridiculous. A horse carrying our luggage trotted
by Peri's side, and looked, from our vast elevation, no bigger than a
donkey. At every mighty step of Peri we had to be prepared for all sorts
of unexpected acrobatic feats, while jolted from one side to the
other by her swinging gait. This experience, under the scorching
sun, unavoidably induced a state of body and mind something between
sea-sickness and a delirious nightmare. As a crown to our pleasures,
when we began to ascend a tortuous little path over the stony slope of
a deep ravine, our Peri stumbled. This sudden shock caused me to lose my
balance altogether. I sat on the hinder part of the elephant's back,
in the place of honor, as it is esteemed, and, once thoroughly shaken,
rolled down like a log. No doubt, next moment I should have found myself
at the bottom of the ravine, with some more or less sad loss to my
bodily constitution, if it had not been for the wonderful dexterity and
instinct of the clever animal. Having felt that something was wrong she
twisted her tail round me, stopped instantaneously and began to kneel
down carefully. But my natural weight was too much for the thin tail
of this kind animal. Peri did not lose hold of me, but, having at last
knelt down, she moaned plaintively, though discreetly, thinking probably
that she had nearly lost her tail through being so generous. The mahout
hurried to my rescue and then examined the damaged tail of his animal.
We now witnessed a scene that clearly showed us the coarse cunning,
greediness and cowardice of a low-class Hindu, of an outcast, as they
are denominated here.
The mahout very indifferently and composedly examined Peri's tail, and
even pulled it several times to make sure, and was already on the point
of hoisting himself quietly into his usual place, when I had the unhappy
thought of muttering something that expressed my regret and compassion.
My words worked a miraculous transformation in the mahout's behavior. He
threw himself on the ground, and rolled about like a demoniac, uttering
horrible wild groans. Sobbing and crying he kept on repeating that the
Mam-Sahib had torn off his darling Peri's tail, that Peri was damaged
for ever in everybody's estimation, that Peri's husband, the proud
Airavati, lineal descendant of Indra's own favourite elephant, having
witnessed her shame, would renounce his spouse, and that she had better
die.... Yells and bitter tears were his only answer to all remonstrances
of our companions. In vain we tried to persuade him that the "proud
Airavati" did not show the slightest disposition to be so cruel, in vain
we pointed out to him that all this time both elephants stood quietly
together, Airavati even at this critical moment rubbing his trunk
affectionately against Peri's neck, and Peri not looking in the least
discomfited by the accident to her tail. All this was of no avail! Our
friend Narayan lost his patience at last. He was a man of extraordinary
muscular strength and took recourse to a last original means. With one
hand he threw down a silver rupee, with the other he seized the mahout's
muslin garment and hurled him after the coin. Without giving a thought
to his bleeding nose, the mahout jumped at the rupee with the greediness
of a wild beast springing upon its prey. He prostrated himself in the
dust before us repeatedly, with endless "salaams," instantly changing
his deep sorrow into mad joy. He gave another pull at the unfortunate
tail and gladly declared that, thanks to the "prayers of the sahib," it
really was safe; to demonstrate which he hung on to it, till he was torn
away and put back on his seat.
"Is it possible that a single, miserable rupee can have been the cause
of all this?" we asked each other in utter bewilderment.
"Your astonishment is natural enough," answered the Hindus. "We need
not express how ashamed and how disgusted we all feel at this voluntary
display of humiliation and greed. But do not forget that this wretch,
who certainly has a wife and children, serves his employer for twelve
rupees a year, instead of which he often gets nothing but a beating.
Remember also the long centuries of tyrannical treatment from Brahmans,
from fanatical Mussulmans, who regard a Hindu as nothing better than an
unclean reptile, and, nowadays, from the average Englishman, and maybe
you will pity this wretched caricature of humanity."
But the "caricature" in question evidently felt perfectly happy and
not in the least conscious of a humiliation of any kind. Sitting on the
roomy forehead of his Peri, he was telling her of his unexpected wealth,
reminding her of her "divine" origin, and ordering her to salute the
"sahibs" with her trunk. Peri, whose spirits had been raised by the gift
of a whole stick of sugar-cane from me, lifted her trunk backwards and
playfully blew into our faces.
On the threshold of the Nassik caves we bid good-bye to the modern
pigmy India, to the petty things of her everyday life, and to her
humiliations. We re-entered the unknown world of India, the great and
the mysterious.
The main caves of Nassik are excavated in a mountain bearing the name
of Pandu-Lena, which points again to the undying, persistent, primaeval
tradition that ascribes all such buildings to the five mythical (?)
brothers of prehistoric times. The unanimous opinion of archaeologists
esteems these caves more interesting and more important than all the
caves of Elephanta and Karli put together. And, nevertheless--is it not
strange?--with the exception of the learned Dr. Wilson, who, it may be,
was a little too fond of forming hasty opinions, no archaeologist has,
as yet, made so bold as to decide to what epoch they belong, by whom
they were erected, and which of the three chief religions of antiquity
was the one professed by their mysterious builders.
It is evident, however, that those who wrought here did not all belong
either to the same generation or to the same sect. The first thing which
strikes the attention is the roughness of the primitive work, its huge
dimensions, and the decline of the sculpture on the solid walls, whereas
the sculpture and carvings of the six colossi which prop the chief cave
on the second floor, are magnificently preserved and very elegant.
This circumstance would lead one to think that the work was begun
many centuries before it was finished. But when? One of the Sanskrit
inscriptions of a comparatively recent epoch (on the pedestal of one of
the colossi) clearly points to 453 B.C. as the year of the building. At
all events, Barth, Stevenson, Gibson, Reeves, and some other scientists,
who being Westerns can have none of the prejudices proper to the native
Pundits, have formed this conjecture on the basis of some astronomical
data. Besides, the conjunction of the planets stated in the inscription
leaves no doubt as to the dates, it must be either 453 B.C., or 1734
of our era, or 2640 B.C., which last is impossible, because Buddha and
Buddhist monasteries are mentioned in the inscription. I translate some
of the most important sentences:
"To the most Perfect and the Highest! May this be agreeable to Him! The
son of King Kshaparata, Lord of the Kshatriya tribe and protector of
people, the Ruler of Dinik, bright as the dawn, sacrifices a hundred
thousand cows that graze on the river Banasa, together with the river,
and also the gift of gold by the builder of this holy shelter of gods,
the place of the curbing of the Brahmans' passions. There is no more
desirable place than this place, neither in Prabhasa, where accumulate
hundreds of thousands of Brahmans repeating the sacred verse, nor in the
sacred city Gaya, nor on the steep mountain near Dashatura, nor on the
Serpents' Field in Govardhana, nor in the city Pratisraya where
stands the monastery of Buddhists, nor even in the edifice erected by
Depana-kara on the shores of the fresh water [?] sea. This place, giving
incomparable favors, is agreeable and useful in all respects to the
spotted deerskin of an ascetic. A safe boat given also by him who built
the gratuitous ferry daily transports to the well-guarded shore. By him
also who built the house for travelers and the public fountain, a gilded
lion was erected by the ever-assaulted gate of this Govardhana, also
another [lion] by the ferry-boat, and another by Ramatirtha. Various
kinds of food will always be found here by the scanty flock; for this
flock more than a hundred kinds of herbs and thousands of mountain
roots are stored by this generous giver. In the same Govardhana, in the
luminous mountain, this second cave was dug by the order of the same
beneficent person, during the very year when the Sun, Shukra and Rahu,
much respected by men, were in the full glory of their rise; it was in
this year that the gifts were offered. Lakshmi, Indra and Yama having
blessed them, returned with shouts of triumph to their chariot, kept on
the way free from obstacles [the sky], by the force of mantrams. When
they [the gods] all left, poured a heavy shower....." and so on.
Rahn and Kehetti are the fixed stars which form the head and the tail
of the constellation of the Dragon. Shukra is Venus. Lakshmi, Indra and
Yama stand here for the constellations of Virgo, Aquarius and Taurus,
which are subject and consecrated to these three among the twelve higher
deities.
The first caves are dugout in a conical hillock about two hundred and
eighty feet from its base. In the chief of them stand three statues of
Buddha; in the lateral ones a lingam and two Jaina idols. In the top
cave there is a statue of Dharma Raja, or Yudhshtira, the eldest of the
Pandus, who is worshipped in a temple erected in his honor, between Pent
and Nassik. Farther on is a whole labyrinth of cells, where Buddhist
hermits probably lived, a huge statue of Buddha in a reclining posture.
and another as big, but surrounded with pillars adorned with figures of
various animals. Styles, epochs and sects are here as much mixed up and
entangled as different trees in a thick forest.
It is very remarkable that almost all the cave temples of India are to
be found inside conical rocks and mountains. It is as though the ancient
builders looked for such natural pyramids purposely. I noticed this
peculiarity in Karli, and it is to be met with only in India. Is it
a mere coincidence, or is it one of the rules of the religious
architecture of the remote past? And which are the imitators--the
builders of the Egyptian pyramids, or the unknown architects of the
under ground caves of India? In pyramids as well as in caves everything
seems to be calculated with geometrical exactitude. In neither case are
the entrances ever at the bottom, but always at a certain distance from
the ground. It is well known that nature does not imitate art, and, as
a rule, art tries to copy certain forms of nature. And if, even in this
similarity of the symbols of Egypt and India, nothing is to be found but
a coincidence, we shall have to own that coincidences are sometimes very
extraordinary. Egypt has borrowed many things from India. We must not
forget that nothing is known about the origin of the Pharaohs, and
that the few facts science has succeeded in discovering, far from
contradicting our theory, suggest India as the cradle of the Egyptian
race. In the days of remote antiquity Kalluka-Bhatta wrote: "During the
reign of Visvamitra, first king of the Soma-Vansha dynasty, after a five
days battle, Manu-Vena, the heir of ancient kings, was abandoned by the
Brahmans, and emigrated with his army, and, having traversed Arya and
Barria, at last reached the shores of Masra....."
Arya is Iran or Persia; Barria is an ancient name of Arabia; Masr or
Masra is a name of Cairo, disfigured by Mussulmans into Misro and Musr.
Kalluka-Bhatta is an ancient writer. Sanskritists still quarrel over his
epoch, wavering between 2,000 years B.C., and the reign of the Emperor
Akbar (the time of John the Terrible and Elizabeth of England). On the
grounds of this uncertainty, the evidence of Kalluka-Bhatta might be
objected to. In this case, there are the words of a modern historian,
who has studied Egypt all his life, not in Berlin or London, like some
other historians, but in Egypt, deciphering the inscriptions of the
oldest sarcophagi and papyri, that is to say, the words of Henry
Brugsch-Bey:
"... I repeat, my firm conviction is that the Egyptians came from Asia
long before the historical period, having traversed the Suez promontory,
that bridge of all the nations, and found a new fatherland on the banks
of the Nile."
An inscription on a Hammamat rock says that Sankara, the last Pharaoh of
the eleventh dynasty, sent a nobleman to Punt: "I was sent on a ship to
Punt, to bring back some aromatic gum, gathered by the princes of the
Red Land."
Commenting on this inscription, Brugsch-Bey explains that "under the
name of Punt the ancient inhabitants of Chemi meant a distant land
surrounded by a great ocean, full of mountains and valleys, and rich
in ebony and other expensive woods, in perfumes, precious stones and
metals, in wild beasts, giraffes, leopards and big monkeys." The name of
a monkey in Egypt was Kaff, or Kafi, in Hebrew Koff, in Sanskrit Kapi.
In the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, this Punt was a sacred land,
because Punt or Panuter was "the original land of the gods, who left
it under the leadership of A-Mon [Manu-Vena of Kalluka-Bhatta?] Hor and
Hator, and duly arrived in Chemi."
Hanuman has a decided family likeness to the Egyptian Cynocephalus, and
the emblem of Osiris and Shiva is the same. Qui vivra verra!
Our return journey was very agreeable. We had adapted ourselves to
Peri's movements and felt ourselves first-rate jockeys. But for a whole
week afterwards we could hardly walk.