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* Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other
works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly
expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be
imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman.
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I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying.  We know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans.  But I hope to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing.  Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim—­though they will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.

I.—­It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of the Tyrian settlement.

II.—­Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.

III.—­It can be proved that before the final division and classification of languages, there existed two languages in every nation:  (a) the profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries—­the latter being one and universal.  Or, in other, words, every great people had, like the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and later on in a phonetic alphabet.  Now it requires a stretch of prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman Aryans—­mystics and metaphysicians above everything—­were the only ones who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the characters in which it was recorded.  To contradict this gratuitous assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs.  It can be demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we accept Mr. Cunningham’s “Indo-Grecian Period,” for it lasted only from 250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among the initiates).  The Vach—­its alter ego or the “mystic self,” the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman—­became in time the mystery language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe.  The appellation devanagari is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.