Two Antediluvian Astronomers.

To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are indissolubly connected with mystic Astronomy, Chronology, and their cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like two giants in the Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to Yugas and Kalpas. When, at what period of pre-history they lived, none save a few men in the world know, or ever can know, with that certainty which is required by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may have been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The mystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic East speaks of Nârada, the old Vedic Rishi, and of Asuramaya, the Atlantean.

It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in the Mahâbhârata and the Purânas, Nârada, the son of Brahmâ in the Matsya Purâna, the progeny of Kashyapa and the daughter of Daksha, in the Vishnu Purâna, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the honourable title of Deva-Rishi (Divine Rishi, rather than Demi-God) by Parâshara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and even by Brahmâ. He informs Kansha that Bhagavân, or Vishnu in exotericism, would incarnate in the eighth child of Devakî, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian Herod upon Krishna's mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated—invisible as a true Mânasaputra—he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatâr's feat of killing the monster Keshin. Nârada is here, there, and everywhere; and yet, none of the Purânas gives the true characteristics of this great enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in Hindû Esotericism, Nârada—who is called in Cis-Himâlayan Occultism Pesh-Hun, the “Messenger,” or the Greek Angelos—is the sole confidant [pg 052] and the executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi-Budha: a kind of active and ever-incarnating Logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the beginning to the end of the Kalpa.

Pesh-Hun is a general not a special Hindû possession. He is the mysterious guiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the impetus of Cycles, Kalpas and universal events.89 He is Karma's visible adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some very uncomplimentary names; such as Kali-kâraka, Strife-maker, Kapi-vaktra, Monkey-faced, and even Pishuna, the Spy, though elsewhere he is called Deva-Brahmâ. Even Sir William Jones was strongly impressed with this mysterious character from what he gathered in his Sanskrit studies. He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and calls him “the eloquent messenger of the gods.”90 All this, besides the fact that the Hindûs believe him to be a great Rishi, “who is for ever wandering about the earth, giving good counsel,” led the late Dr. Kenealy91 to see in him one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track as some imagine.

What Nârada really is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the modern generations of the profane gather much from the information. But it may be remarked, that if there be in the Hindû Pantheon a Deity which resembles Jehovah, in tempting by “suggestion” of thoughts, and “hardening” of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and victims, it is Nârada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a pretext for “plaguing,” and thus showing that “I am the Lord God.” Nor is it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and guide universal progress and evolution.

Nârada is one of the few prominent characters, if we except some Gods, in the Purânas, who visit the so-called nether or infernal regions, Pâtâla. Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand-headed Shesha, the Serpent who bears the Seven Pâtâlas and the entire world like a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of Astronomy,92 that Nârada learned all that he knew, certain [pg 053] it is that he surpasses Garga's Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has charge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas, Pesh-Hun is credited with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic Cycles to come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his astronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of all the Cycles to come, till the end of this Life-Cycle, or the end of the Seventh Race.

There is a work among the Secret Books, called the Mirror of Futurity, wherein all the Kalpas within Kalpas, and Cycles within the bosom of Shesha, or infinite Time, are recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh-Hun-Nârada. There is another old work which is attributed to various Atlanteans. It is these two records which furnish us with the figures of our Cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of Cycles to come. The chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however, those of the Brâhmans, as explained further on: but most of them are also those of the Secret Doctrine.

The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates are based upon the zodiacal records of India, and the works of the above-mentioned Astronomer and Magician—Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught Astronomy, among other things, to mankind.

But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty. We shall be told that our statement is contradicted by Science, in the person of a man regarded as a great authority (in the West) upon all subjects of Sanskrit literature—Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin. This, to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to maintain what is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the earliest Astronomer in Âryâvarta, one to whom “the Sun-God imparted the knowledge of the stars,” in propriâ personâ, as Dr. Weber himself states, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the “Ptolemaios” of the Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this identification than that:

This latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of Piyadasi, became the Indian “Turamaya,” out of which the name “Asura Maya” might very easily grow.

No doubt it “might,” but the vital question is: Are there any good [pg 054] proofs that it has thus grown? The only evidence that is given for this is, that it must be so:

Since... this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in the West.93

The Mâyâ is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans can tell where that locality of Romaka-pura was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere “in the West.” In any case, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brâhmanical teaching, it is useless to take the objections of European Orientalists into consideration. Romaka-pura was “in the West,” certainly, since it was part and parcel of the lost continent of Atlantis. And it is equally certain that it is Atlantis, to which is assigned in the Hindû Purânas the birth-place of Asuramaya, “as great a Magician as he was an Astrologer and an Astronomer.” Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the Hindûs never knew of a Zodiac at all till

They had borrowed one from the Greeks.94

This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must therefore be ignored. We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the learned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work, that:

In addition to the natural obstacles which impede investigation [in India], there still prevails a dense mist of prejudice and preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as with a veil.95

Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have been led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better now.

Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who flourished in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or that which he is claimed to be by the Occultists, in any case his calculations agree entirely with those of the Secret Records.

From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean Astronomer, and found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere mentioned was compiled by two very learned Brâhmans96 in 1884 and 1885. The work is proclaimed by the best Pandits as faultless—from the [pg 055] Brâhmanical standpoint—and thus far relates to the chronology of the orthodox teachings. If we compare its statements with those made several years earlier in Isis Unveiled, with the fragmentary teachings published by some Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some details which may not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation—as unknown to the writer as they are to the reader—would have to be revealed, and that cannot be done.