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the incomplete renderings and translations of these Eastern gentlemen but according to the popular version.
(* Cf. the history of Sunahsepha in the Bhagavata, IX, XVI, 35 and of the Ramayana, Bk. I. Cap. 60; Manu,
X, 105; Koulouka Bhatta [the Historian]; Bahwruba and the Aitareya Brahmanas; Vishnu Purana, etc., etc.
Each book gives its own version.) Thus is it that the old bards of Rajasthan sing it, when they come and seat
themselves in the verandah of the traveller's bungalow in the wet evenings of the rainy season. Let us leave
then the Orientalists to their fantastic speculations. How does it concern us whether the father of the selfish
and cowardly prince, who was the cause of the transformation of the white lotus into the blue lotus, be called
Harischandra or Ambarisha? Names have nothing to do with the naive poetry of the legend, nor with its
moral -- for there is a moral to be found if looked for well. We shall soon see that the chief episode in the
story is curiously reminiscent of another legend -- that of the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac in
the Bible. Is not this one more proof that the Secret Doctrine of the East may have good reason to maintain
that the name of the Patriarch was neither a Chaldean or a Hebrew name, but rather an epithet and a Sanskrit
surname, signifying abram, i.e., one is non-Brahman,* a debrahmanised Brahman, one who is degraded or
who has lost his caste? After this how can we avoid suspecting that we may find, among the modern Jews,
the Chaldeans of the time of the Rishi Agastya -- these makers of bricks whose persecution began from eight
hundred to a thousand years ago, but who emigrated to Chaldea four thousand years before the Christian era
-- when so many of the popular legends of Southern India resemble the Bible stories. Louis Jacolliot speaks
in several of his twenty-one volumes on Brahmanical India of this matter, and for once he is right.
* The particle a in the Sanskrit word shews this clearly. Placed before a substantive this
particle always means the negation or the opposite of the meaning of the expression that
follows. Thus Sura (god) written a -Sura, becomes non-God, or the devil, Vidya is
knowledge, and a-Vidya, ignorance or the opposite of knowledge, etc., etc.
We will speak of it another time. Meanwhile here is the Legend of
THE BLUE LOTUS
Century after century has passed away since Ambarisha, King of Ayodhya, reigned in the city founded by the
holy Manu, Vaivasvata, the offspring of the Sun. The King was a Suryavansi (a descendant of the Solar
Race), and he avowed himself a most faithful servant of the God, Varuna, the greatest and most powerful
deity in the Rig-Veda.* But the god had denied male heirs to his worshipper, and this made the king very
unhappy.
* It is only much later in the orthodox Pantheon and the symbolical polytheism of the
Brahmans that Varuna became Poseidon or Neptune -- which he is now. In the Vedas he is
the most ancient of the Gods, identical with Ouranos of the Greek, that is to say a
personification of the celestial space and the infinite gods, the creator and ruler of heaven and
earth, the King, the Father and the Master of the world, of gods and of men. Hesiod's Uranus
and the Greek Zeus are one.
THE BLUE LOTUS 21
Nightmare Tales
"Alas!" he wailed, every morning while performing his puja to the lesser gods, "alas! What avails it to be the
greatest king on earth when God denies me an heir of my blood. When I am dead and placed on the funeral
pyre, who will fulfil the pious duties of a son, and shatter my lifeless skull to liberate my soul from its earthly
trammels? What strange hand will at the full moon-tide place the rice of the Shraddha ceremony to do
reverence to my shade? Will not the very birds of death [Rooks and ravens] themselves turn from the funeral
feast? For, surely, my shade earthbound in its great despair will not permit them to partake of it."
* The Shradda is a ceremony observed by the nearest relatives of the deceased for the nine
days following the death. Once upon a time it was a magical ceremony. Now, however, in
addition to other practices, it mainly consists of scattering balls of cooked rice before the
door of the dead man's house. If the crows promptly eat the rice it is a sign that the soul is
liberated and at rest. If these birds which are so greedy did not touch the food, it was a proof [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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