Five Years of Theosophy by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2004-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Question VI.—"Historical Difficulty"—Why?

It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans said to have been Atlanteans." The answer is—None whatever. The word "Atlantean" was a generic name. The objection to have it applied to the old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to as a remnant of the Europeans. "The Turks are surely Semites," he might say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." *

———— * This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged. The figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis. ————-

The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder sister"—by no means the mother—of all the modern languages. As to that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race." When asked what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?" When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?" the same impressive voice replies: "In prehistoric ages, the duration of which no one can now determine." Yet it must have been Sanskrit, however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods" in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very threshold of the Christian era; while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time.

Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the "Adepts," sank over 9,000 years before the Christian era.* How then can one maintain that the "old Greeks and Romans" were Atlanteans? How can that be, since both nations are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit? Moreover, the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no existence as nations 11,000 B.C.. Surely they who advance such a proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement!

————— * The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical myth, is rather imprudent.

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