To see the direct bearing of the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to “European Universal History,” meagre though its details and possible knowledge, yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given.  Some fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are preserved in Josephus; and Tyre’s activity begins 1100 B.C., in the earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called.  And in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of their power; their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near.  Even on Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red Sea, while trading on Solomon’s account about a millennium before the Western era.  These data no man of science can deny.  Leaving entirely aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western world are alone here given.  Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of which—­on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem proofs of its modern fabrication in the words “Yavana” and others—­has been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!), we find:  (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated (before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe; and (2) that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,).  With such proofs of international communication, and more than proved relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.

Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission?  And even if the Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write—­to every educated Hindu an absurdity—­they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000 years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics.  Negative proof, perhaps?  Granted:  yet no more so than their own, and most suggestive.