Had the “Piyadasi inscription” been found on the site of ancient Babylonia, one might suspect the word “Turamaya” as derived from “Turanomaya,” or rather mania.  Since, however, the Piyadasi inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by two kings—­Chandragupta and Dharmasoka—­what has “‘Ptolemaios’ of the Greeks” to do with “Turamaya” or the latter with “Asuramaya,” except, indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under the stupefying “Greek influence” of the Upas Tree of Western Philology?  Then we learn that, because “Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e., ....  Greeks, and explains the formation of the word ‘Yavanani,’ to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, ‘writing,’ must be supplied,” therefore the word signifies “the writing of the Yavanas” of the Greeks and none other.  Would the German philologists (who have so long and so fruitlessly attempted to explain this word) be very much surprised if told that they are yet as far as possible from the truth?  That—­Yavanani does not mean “Greek writing” at all, but any foreign writing whatsoever?  That the absence of the word “writing” in the old texts, except in connection with the names of foreigners, does not in the least imply that none but Greek writing was known to them, or that they had none of their own, being ignorant of the art of reading and writing until the days of Panini? (theory of Prof.  Max Muller).  For Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans, first under penalty of death, and later on of eternal ostracism, were not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known the existence of their secret temple libraries.  So that by the word Yavanani, “to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, ‘writing,’ must he supplied,” the writing of foreigners in general, whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant.  As to the preposterous hypothesis of Prof.  Max Muller that writing “was not used for literary purposes in India” before Panini’s time (again upon Greek authority) that matter has been disposed of elsewhere.

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* Dr. Weber is not probably aware of the fact that this distinguished
astronomer’s name was simply Maya;  the prefix “Asura” was often added
to it by ancient Hindu writers to show that he was a Rakshasa.   In the
opinion of the Brahmans he was an “Atlantean” and one of the greatest
astronomers and occultists of the lost Atlantis.
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Equally unknown are those certain other and most important facts, fable though they seem.  First, that the Aryan “Great War,” the Mahabharata, and the Trojan War of Homer—­both mythical as to personal biographies and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main—­ belong to the same cycle of events.  For the occurrences of many centuries, among them the separation of sundry peoples and races, erroneously traced to Central Asia alone, were in these immortal epics compressed within