the Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as having proceeded from one and the same source; and to thus call it the “Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan” doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion.  “Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet,” was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.

Note ii.

Not necessarily, we say.  The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India.  They were never indigenous to its soil.  There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names.  There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient classics.  The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered by them as forming part of India.  When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost “Atlantis” formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.

Note iii.

To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and historical records—­a people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.).  A people so accurate, and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science were anticipated—­such as the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.—­known and practiced thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans, ought to receive some trust for their records.  And from Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts.  In the “Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese,” by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there is a chapter “On the Tian-TA’I School of Buddhism” (pp. 244-258) which our opponents ought to read.  Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K’hae, called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads “That which relates to the one garment (seamless) worn by the great teachers of the snowy mountains, the school of the Haimavatas” (p. 256), the European translator places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may.  The statistics of the school of the “Haimavatas,” or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in the general census records of India.  Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule relating to “the great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote from men,” the Aranyakas, or hermits.