The People of the Blue Mountains
H.P. Blavatsky
Contents
Chapter I............ Page 7
Chapter II ............... 59
Chapter III ............. 107
Chapter IV ............. 149
Chapter V ............. 183
Chapter VI ............ 213
CHAPTER IV
As I am forced in this story to rest upon the testimony
of Mrs. Morgan and her family for everything concerning the exceptional powers
of the Todds and the Kouroumbs, I feel that, in the eyes of the unbelieving
crowd, this support is fragile. Perhaps we shall be told: "Theosophists,
spiritists, psychists, you are all the same, you believe in facts that science
will not admit and that it will even reject with the contempt they deserve.
Your phenomena are only hallucinations experienced by you all and things
that no reasonable being will take seriously."
We have for a long time been ready to submit to all
these objections. Since the scientific world, and after it the crowds
following the paths it has traced, have denied the value of the work of certain
great scientists, certainly we do not pretend to convince the public.
When the testimony of Professors Hare, Wallis, Crookes and numerous other
lights of science has been denied, and when we know how those, pronouncing
the day before, with a servile passion, the names of these great inventors,
utter them today with a smile of disdainful pity as if they were speaking
of men having all at once lost their reason - our suit can be considered
as lost.
Where is the man, deeply interested in the psychological
problems of the day, who does not remember the long, deep and conscientious
studies of the chemist Crookes? He proved by irrefutable experiments
made with scientific apparatus, that absolutely unexplainable phenomena are
often produced in the presence of people called mediums. And he demonstrated
by that very thing, the existence of forces and of faculties in man, still
unstudied, of which no one in the Royal Society had dreamed. As a
reward for this discovery, which moved believing and especially unbelieving
Europe and America, this Royal Society, blind and deaf to everything psychic
and spiritual, and following the example of the French University in regard
to Charcot - nearly expelled from its circle the honest Mr. Crookes.*
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*The fact that Crookes belongs to the Theosophical
Society will do still more harm to his reputation. Woe, however, to
the Royal Society. Its members are beginning, one after the other,
to follow the example of the great chemist and to join psychic or theosophical
groups. Lord Carnarvon, Balkaren, the Professors Wallis, Sidjouik,
Banet, Oliver Lodge, Balfour, Stuart, and others all are either "psychists"
or Theosophists, often both. If the Royal Society of England continues
her expulsions in the same fashion, she soon will have left for a member
only her janitor.
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We ask the reader to remember that this account has
in no way the propaganda of spiritism for its goal. We are content
with proclaiming facts. We are attempting to open the eyes of the mass
by showing it the reality of abnormal, strange, still unexplained, but not
at all supernatural phenomena. The Theosophists believe in the truth
of the mediumistic fact - the true experiment, not the trickery which,
unfortunately, takes place in seventy per cent of the cases; but they
repudiate the theory of the "spirits." I who write these lines, do
not believe in the materialization of the souls of the dead, and I do not
admit spiritistic explanations, still less their philosophy. All the
phenomena spoken of in this last quarter of a century, are as real and irrefutable
as, perhaps, the existence of the mediums. But these phenomena possess
as much of what can be called "spirituality" as do these honest cabinet-makers
and blacksmiths considered in the South of France and of Germany as apostles
in village mysteries, and chosen by the church representatives for their
muscular arms and their substantial stature.
This belief in the reality of facts and distrust in
regard to all charlatanism is shared by all men called spiritualists and
by the members of the Theosophical Society; the Brahmans of India on
one side and on the other a few hundreds of sci-entists very competent in
judging spiritism. The chemist Crookes belongs to the latter category,
"n'en de'plaise aux spirites," who spread all through their publications the
false rumor that he is a convinced spiritist.
The spiritists are greatly mistaken. Formerly
when we had not yet made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Crookes, these
reports about him perplexed us. But in April, 1884, at his home in
London, in the presence of many witnesses, and later when we were alone, we
spoke to him plainly about all these rumors. Mr. Crookes answered directly
and without hesitation that he believed as firmly as ever in the mediumistic
phenomena described by him in his "radiant matter"; he had shown and
explained the latter to us - but he had not had any faith for a long
time in spirits' manifestation although he had formerly leaned towards such
an explanation.
"Then, who was Katie King?" we asked.
"I do not know. Very probably the double of Miss
Cook [the medium]," answered the scientist and added that he had the serious
hope of seeing biology and physiology soon convinced of the existence in
man of this semi-material double.
The following objection can also be raised: the
very fact that there are scientists believing in a double and in spiritism
does not show the reality of these doubles or of mediumistic phenomena.
Moreover, these scientists are in a minority, while those who deny the facts
not yet demonstrated by contemporary science constitute an overwhelming majority.
I will not discuss this. I shall content myself with making the remark
that there is, for the present, only a small percentage of intelligent human
beings, not only in the whole of humanity but among the cultivated classes
themselves. The majority possesses only an evident superiority over
the minority, that of gross, animal force. It disregards the minority
and tries to crush it or, at least, to stifle its voice. The fact
is observed everywhere. The masses of partisans of public opinion
exert a pressure upon those who prefer truth. The Royal Society of
England and the University of France persecute the scientists who dare to
cross - in the name of disgraced truth - the limits rigorously
fixed by them around their narrow materialistic conceptions. The spiritists
are trying to defeat and even to suppress the Theosophists. All of
that is in the order of things. We are sure that there are also many
intelligent men among those who believe in the personal presence of dead
people's souls in spiritistic seances, in "spirits" clothing themselves in
matter, in their revelations, in the philosophy of Allan Kardeck, and even
in the infallibility of professional and public mediums. While we
express the respect due to each individual belief, we do not share the convictions
of the spiritists. We take the liberty to remain within our personal
convictions. Time alone, and the help of science, when it has modified
its tactics, will show who is right and who is wrong.
Definitely convinced that the influential institutions
- the Royal Society of England and the other learned academies of Europe
- will never come to our help (at least now, during our lives), certain that
the majority of scientific men has determined to deny for centuries all
of these psychological phenomena, knowing that the mass always judges things
superficially, deeming as gross superstition anything it does not understand
(while many fear to understand); convinced finally that all will agree
in calling truth and fact only any conclusion formulated by themselves without
great reason, while it is a fact that almost all the scientific theories
determined by men have at all times been abandoned one after the other;
certain of not being able, in spite of all our efforts, to change the trend
of thought of our century, we decided to act alone and to seek the necessary
explanations ourselves.
For two years we accumulated all the information possible
and studied the "witchcraft" of the Kouroumbs, and for five more years we
sought to know the manifestations of this same force in the various tribes
of India. A committee was constituted by the Central Council of the
Theosophical Society and we took all measures to avoid possible trickeries.
Our colleagues, chosen among the worst skeptics, formulated this same conclusion:
"All that is said concerning these tribes is founded on real facts.
With the exclusion, of course, of the enormous exaggerations of the superstitious
mass of the people, all these facts have been demonstrated more than once.
How the Todds, the Kouroumbs, the Jannades, and other tribes, have, by virtue
of these faculties, power over men, we do not know and do not take it upon
ourselves to explain. We only declare what we have seen."
These are the words of our colleagues, Hindus reared
according to contemporary English standards of education, that is to say,
materialists,
in the full meaning of the term, and believing neither in personal gods,
nor in the spirits of the spiritists. We state the same conclusion,
but we suspect - and this suspicion is equivalent to a certainty
- that this force of the Nilguirian sorcerers is our old friend "the psychic
force" of Doctors Carpentier and Crookes. We made very careful, impartial,
serious experiments upon ourselves and upon others. And we think that
before Doctors Charcot, Crookes, and Tsellner, as before our eyes, when it
was a question of the "sorcerers," the same and only force was acting;
the diversity of its manifestations depends above all upon the differences
of the human organisms, then on the surroundings, on the ambient sphere in
which this force is manifested, much also on climatic conditions, and finally
on the intellectual tendencies of the people called "mediums."
Other people have written before me on the Todds and
the Kouroumbs. But in the descriptions of the Englishmen, it is impossible
to find anything, to understand anything outside of the hypotheses already
quoted.
Despairing of ever being able to leave this labyrinth
and to again see the celestial light, I wanted to question native pandits
who have a reputation for circulating "historical accounts and legends."
The pandits referred me to an ascetic Baddague. This anchoret, who
never washed himself, was very kind and hospitable. For a few bags of
rice he told one of the natives, a member of our Society, legends of his race,
for three days and three nights without interruption. It is useless
to say that the Anglo-Hindus know nothing of the facts I am about to give
the reader.
The word Baddague is Kanaresian and, like the Tamil
word "vadougan" means "septentrional": all the Baddagues came
from the North. When six hundred years ago they arrived in the "Blue
Mountains" they found the Todds and the Kouroumbs already there. The
Baddagues are certain that the Todds had already been living on the Nilguiri
for centuries.
The dwarfs (Kouroumbs) declare in turn that their ancestors
placed themselves in the service, or agreed to become the slaves of the Todds'
ancestors still in Lanka (Ceylon), "in order to possess the right to live
on their land" with the condition "that their descendants would remain always
under the eyes of the Todds."
Otherwise, the Baddagues remark, "these devils would
soon have had everybody on the earth dead with the exception of themselves."
The Kouroumbs, when they are reproached for their devil-like wickedness,
do not contradict this declaration of the Baddagues; on the contrary
they are proud of their power. Gnashing their teeth, in their powerless
rage against the Todds, they are ready, like scorpions, to sting themselves,
to kill themselves with their own poison. General Morgan, who has often
seen them in their fits of fury, told me that he, a positivist, "feared to
be forced to believe in the devil against his will."
On the other hand, the Baddagues affirm that the close
association of their tribe with the Todds is very antique.
"Our ancestors already served them under the King Rama,"
they affirm. "That is why we also serve them."
"But the Todds do not believe in your fathers' devas?"
I asked one day of a Baddague.
"It is not so; the Todds do believe in their
existence," was the answer given me. "But they do not render them
any honor, because they themselves are devas."
The Baddagues say that the year when the god Rama advanced
upon Lanka apart from the great army of monkeys, many people from Central
and Southern India wanted to obtain the honor of becoming the allies of the
great "avatar." Among these were the Kanarasians, ancestors of the
Baddagues, from whom the Baddagues claim they descend. In fact, the
Baddagues divide their tribe into eighteen castes, among which are Brahmans
of high birth, as for example the "Vodei," a branch of the family reigning
today in Maissour. The English have been able to convince themselves
of the justice of these claims. In the ancient chronicles of the house
of Maissour, documents have been kept to this day, showing: First that
the Vodei and the Baddagues make up one and the same tribe, that they are
all native of Karnatic; second, that the natives of this country took
part in the great holy war of the King Aoude Rama against the Rackchas, giants,
and demons of the island of Lanka (Ceylon).
And it is these same Brahmans, proud of their noble
and ancient origin, who maintain among the Baddagues this sentiment of veneration
- not for themselves, as it is done by all the other Brahmans in the rest
of India - but in regard to the Todds who reject their gods.
To find the true cause of this exceptional respect is a very difficult thing,
and this mystery continues to spur the curiosity of the English. It
is almost impossible to solve this problem when one knows the laws of the
Brahmans. Indeed, this proud caste which refuses to work for the British
for any sum of money; these Brahmans who will not, themselves, carry
a package from one house to another, seeing a personal humiliation in this
act - are precisely the ones among the Baddagues who are the most zealous
partisans of the Todds. Not only do they work for the Todds without
any remuneration, but they will not stop at the meanest kind of work, in
their estimation, if it must be done upon the desire of the Todds, or more
exactly, on the order of these freely-chosen masters. These Brahmans
are ready to serve the Todds as masons, servants, cabinet makers and even
parias. While these haughty Hindus remain full of pride towards the
other people, even the English, while they wear the triple holy insignia of
the Brahmans, they alone possess the right to officiate in the ceremonies
of sowing and harvesting (although they often yield it with fear to the Kouroumbs),
they all prostrate before the Todds.
Yet, they also, these Brahman Baddagues, possess this
marvelous "force" in its magical manifestations.
Thus, every year, during the feasts of the last harvest
of the year," they must give the irrefutable proof that they are direct descendants
of initiate Brahmans, twice born. That is why they walk slowly two and fro,
barefoot, and without experiencing the least harm, over a wide trail of
live coals or of iron at white heat. This fiery track passes along
the facade of the Temple - that is from 29 to 35 feet - and
the Brahmans stand motionless on it or walk upon it as on a floor.
Each Baddague - Vodei - must, for the very honor of his caste,
cross the whole track at least seven times.
The English affirm that these Brahmans know the secret
of a vegetal essence making the skin of the hands and feet invulnerable to
fire - to rub the extremities with this liquid would be sufficient.
But the missionary Metz affirms that in that, also, there can be only thaumaturgy.
"What can it be that induces this proud caste of Brahmans
to humiliate themselves so far as to adore a tribe inferior by its level
of culture and its intellectual faculties? - this is for me an undecipherable
enigma," writes Captain Harkness. (The Hill Tribes of Nilguerry.) "Certainly
the Baddagues are timid by nature; besides, they have become savages
after centuries lived in the solitude of the mountains; however, the
mystery can be pierced by establishing that they are superstitious people,
like all the mountaineers of India. Yet, such a manifestation of the
individual is very curious to a psychologist."
It is incontestable. However, the primitive reason
for this veneration is still more "curious," although the English -
still less the skeptics - are unable to know it. First of all,
the Todds are not inferior to the Baddagues in intelligence nor in birth;
on the contrary, in that respect also they are infinitely superior to them.
Moreover, the true origin of the adoration of the Todds by the Baddagues
must be sought not in the present, but in a very remote antiquity, in that
age of the history of the Brahmans which our modern scientists not only refuse
to study seriously, but in which they refuse to believe. Although
this work is difficult, it is not impossible. The disseminated fragments
of Baddague legends are documents, the accounts of their Brahmans -
in decline since the Mussulman invasion, but who still possess glimmers of
the knowledge of the mysteries enjoyed by their ancestors - Brahmans
of the epoch of the Rishis and of the thaumaturgical adepts of "white magic"
- this remaining "history" permits us to build a logical work, entirely solid.
The only thing to do is to begin to work methodically, to gain the confidence
of the Baddagues and not to be English or "baar-saab," whom the Baddagues
fear still more than the Kouroumbs. Because, with the help of gifts,
they can appease the Moulou-Kouroumbs whose evil enchantments and eye will
cease to act; while they consider the English as their deadly enemies.
Therefore the Baddagues, like the other Brahmans of
India, consider it their sacred duty to leave the English in complete ignorance
of the facts concerning their history, past and present, substituting fiction
for reality.
The Nilguirian Baddagues alone have kept the memory
of this past, a memory lacking in fulness it is true. The Todds are
silent on this subject and they have never uttered a word about it.
Perhaps, outside of a few elder "priests," they are all ignorant of this
"antiquity." The Baddagues
affirm that, before he dies, each teralli must transmit the tradition
he knows to one of the young candidates to his functions.
As for the Kouroumbs, although they remember the century
of their enslavement, they know nothing about the Todds. The Erroulars
and the Chottes are more animals than half-savage men. From this fact
it results that among the five Nilguirian tribes, the Baddagues are the only
ones recalling their past and furnishing proofs of it. We can conclude,
therefore, that the knowledge they have of the Todds' past is not built
on fiction. All their affirmations concerning their own history, their
descent from the North, their descendance from Kanaresian colonists who
came about a thousand years ago from Karnatik, a country known today under
the name of Maissour of the south, and which in the remotest antiquity (historical)
was a part of the kingdom of Konkan - were found exact. Why
would they not also have kept fragments of the history of the Todds' remote
past?
The origin of the strange relations between these three
races, entirely different one from the other, remains absolutely indeterminable
to this day. The English give the assurance that these relations were
established following a long co-residence in these lonely mountains.
Isolated from the rest of humanity, the Todds, the Baddagues and the Kouroumbs
would gradually have created for themselves a universe of their very own
made up of superstitious ideas. But the tribes themselves claim something
entirely different. And what they tell, as having taken place in the
remotest antiquity and not without direct rapport with the legends and the
ancient hagiographies of the Hindus, remains very significant.
The traditions of these three tribes whose destinies
were linked throughout the ages are the more interesting that in listening
to them and in penetrating them, it seems to us that we are reading a detached
page of the "mythic" poem of India, the Ramayana.
When I think of the Ramayana, I confess that I have
never understood the motive constraining the historians to place on such
different levels this work and the poems of Homer. For, according to
me, their character is almost identical. We will be told certainly
that everything supernatural is rejected alike from the Iliad, the Odyssey
and the Ramayana. But our scientists who accept, almost without hesitation,
as historical personages, all such characters as Achilles, Hector, Ulysses,
Helen and Paris - why do they relegate to the rank of empty "myths"
the figures of Rama, of Lakchmana, of Sita, of Ravana, of Khanoumana, and
even of the king of Aoude? Either all these people are simply heroes,
or it is a duty to restore them to the "rank" due them. Schliemann
has found in the Troiade obvious proofs of the existence of Troy and of its
leading characters. The antique Lanka (Ceylon) and other places mentioned
in the Ramayana could be found in the same way if the trouble were taken
to look for them. And above all, the relations and the legends of the
Brahmans and the Pandits should not be rejected with such contempt.
Whoever has read the Ramayana, even once, has been
able to convince himself, by rejecting the allegories and the symbols inevitable
in an epic poem of a religious character, that it was possible to find in
it an evident, irrefutable, historical background.
The supernatural element in a narrative does not exclude
historical matter. It is so in the Ramayana. The presence in
this poem of the giants and of the demons, of talking monkeys and of wisely
speaking feathered animals, does not give us the right to deny the existence,
in the remotest antiquity, either of its greatest heroes, or even of the "monkeys"
of the innumerable army. How is it possible to know, with absolute
certainty, exactly who the authors of the Ramayana had in view under the
allegorical appellations of "monkeys"* and of "giants"? In chapter VI
of the Book of Genesis it speaks of the sons of God, who, having fallen in
love with the daughters of the Earth, married them. From this union
the race of the "giants" was born on Earth. The pride of Nimrod, the
Tower of Babel, the "confusion of tongues," are identical to the pride and
the actions of Ravana, to the "confusion of the tribes" to the time of the
wars in the Mahabharata, to the revolt of the Daaths (giants) against Brahma.
But the main problem resides in the real existence of the "giants."
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*In many pages of the Pourana the accounts refer to
these same kings, with the same names of kingdoms (identical terms to those
employed in the Ramayana). But in these relations the word "monkey"
is replaced by that of man.
-----------------------
The events related in a few verses in Genesis
- detailed in the book of Enoch - concerning the giants, extend over
the whole epic poem of the Ramayana. Without other names and with deep
details, we see in it all the fallen angels mentioned in the visions of Enoch.
The naghis, the apsaris, the gandarvis, and the rackchasis teach the mortals
all that was taught to the daughters of man by the fallen angels of Enoch.
Samiaza, the chief of the sons of heaven, calling his two hundred warriors
to the oath of alliance on Ardiss (the summit of the Armon mountain), teaching
afterwards to human kind the secrets of the sin of witchcraft, has his double
in the king of the naghis or of the serpent-gods. Azaziel showing men
how to forge weapons, and Amazaraka, sorcerer healer by the mysterious forces
of the different herbs and roots, acted in the same way as the apsaris and
the azouris acted on the river Richhaba, and the gandarvas "Khacha and Khachou"
on the crest of the Gandharnadana. Where are the traditions of a race
in which we do not find the gods, teachers of men, giving them the tales
of the knowledge of good and evil, the demons, the giants?
The duty of every conscientious historian is to penetrate
to the very roots of the profoundly philosophical narrative which the Ramayana
of Valmiki is. Not being stopped by the form which may repel western
realism, the historian must dig deeper and deeper.
In the book of Enoch it is said of giants whose size
is 300 cubits: "They ate all that was edible on the earth, then they
began to eat even the men. The Ramayana speaks of the "Rakchis" who
are the same giants we learn about in the history of the Greek and Scandinavian
people, and that we find again in the legends of North and South America.
The Titans, "sons of Bour," are the giants of the Popol-Vuh of the Ikstliksochitlia,
the primitive races of humanity.
The problem is to answer the following question:
is it possible for such giants to have really lived on our earth? We
think that it is; and our opinion is shared by many scientists.
The anthropologists have not yet been able to decipher the first letter of
the alphabet giving the key of the mystery of the origin of man on earth.
On one side, we find enormous skeletons, gigantic cuirasses, and helmets
made for real giants' heads. On the other hand, we see mankind diminish
in size and degenerate from epoch to epoch.
The Todds say - and they ordinarily speak little
and reluctantly, indicating the cairns of the "Hill of the Sepulchres":
"We do not know what these tombs are; we found them already here.
But each one of them would easily have contained half a dozen people of our
size. Our fathers were twice as big as we are." These words allow
us to think that the legend they tell us is not fiction: the Todds
could not have invented it, because they know neither the Brahmans nor their
religion, and are ignorant of the Vedas and other sacred books of India.
And, although they kept it from the Europeans, they told it to the Baddagues,
that is to say, to the fathers of the present Baddagues, just as the anchoret
Baddague transmitted it to me.
It seems to have been taken from the Ramayana.
Moreover, the Todds are not the only ones having retained the memory of
it. This tradition is the common heritage of the Todds, the Baddagues
and the Kouroumbs.
To clarify the narration, I give herewith, with the
traditional relation of the "elder" Nilguirian, extracts of the Ramayana
and the true names somewhat corrupted by the Todds, though they remain recognizable.
A truth is clearly perceived in this tradition: it concerns Ravana,
king of Lanka, monarch of the Rakchis, a people of hero athletes, unrighteous
and sinners; his brother, Ravana Bibchekhan, and his four ministers
of whom the king speaks in the following terms in the Ramayana, when presenting
himself to Rama "Dasaratide, son of the King of Aoude and avatar of the God
Vishnu"!
"I am the younger brother of Ravana of the ten heads.
I was offended by him because I gave him good counsel: that of returning
thee Sita, thy wife, of the lotus eyes. With my four comrades, men
whose strength is without measure and who are named: Anala, Khara, Sampati
and Prakchacha, I left Lanka, my estates, my friends and have come to thee,
whose magnanimity repels no creature. I wish to owe only to thee all
that may befall me. I offer myself as an ally to thee, O hero of great
wisdom, and I will lead thy armies to the conquest of Lanka and the death
of the unrighteous Rachchis."
Let us now compare this quotation with the Todds' tradition:
"It was at the time when the king of the orient, without
monkey-men [no doubt the armies of Songriva and of Khanoumon] was about to
kill Ravana, the powerful but unrighteous demon, king of Lanka. The
population of Lanka was composed entirely of demons (Rachchis), giants and
powerful thaumaturges. The Todds were then at their twenty-third generation*
on the island of Lanka. The king Ravana was at heart a Kouroumb [that
is to say, a wicked sorcerer]: he had made wicked demons out of the
major part of his rackchis subjects. Ravana had two brothers:
Koumba, giant of the giants, who, after having slept hundreds of years, was
killed by the king of the Orient, and Vibia the kind-hearted, loved by all
the Rackchis."
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*That is to say, "199 or 200 generations" ago, which
represents at least 7,000 years. Aristotle and other Greek sages,
speaking of the war of Troy, affirmed that it had taken place 5,000 years
before their time. Two thousand years have gone by since, that is
to say, 7,000 altogether. History, naturally, rejects this chronology.
But what does this denial prove? Is not Universal History before Christ
and its chronology made up solely of hypotheses and likelihoods, of suppositions
set up as axioms?
See also the "Mission of the Jews" by St. Yves d' Alveydre.
- Translator.
---------------------
Is it not evident that the "Koumba" and "Vibia" of
the Todds' tradition are but the Koumbhakarna and Vibkhechane of the Ramayana?
Koumbhakarna cursed by Brahma and put to sleep by this malediction until
the fall of Lanka, when Rama killed him, after long and intense duelling,
with a magical arrow from Brahma, "invincible dart which affrights the gods,"
and which Indra himself considered as the scepter of death.*
-------------------
*The relation of the fight is found in the "Mission
of the Jews." - Translator.
-------------------
The Todds say that Rama is a good rakchi who was obliged
to condemn Ravana after his crime against the king of the Orient (Rama),*
whose wife he stole. Vibia crossed the sea with his four faithful servants
and helped Rama to recover his queen. This is why the king of the
Orient named Vibia king of Lanka.
-------------------
*He is thus called by the Brahman Baddagues.
They say that "the king of the Orient" is Rama.
-------------------
It is word for word the history of Bibchekhane, the
ally of Rama, and of his four ministers, the rakchis.
The Todds reveal afterwards that these ministers were
four anchoret terallis and benevolent demons. They did not consent
to fight against demon-brothers, even cruel ones. Therefore, after the
end of the war, during which they did not cease to pray the gods for the
victory of Vibia, they asked to be relieved of their duties. Accompanied
by seven other anchorets and one hundred lay rakchis with their wives and
children, they left Lanka forever. Wishing to reward them, the king
of the Orient (Rama) created, upon a barren land, the "Blue Mountains" and
made a present of them to the rakchis and their descendants for eternal enjoyment.
Then the seven anchorets, wishing to spend their lives in feeding the toddouvars
and in rendering harmless the enchantments of the bad demons, changed themselves
into buffaloes. The four ministers of Vibia kept their human forms
and are living invisible to all except the initiated terralis in the forests
of the Nilguiri and in the secret sanctuaries of the "tiriri." Having
occupied the Nilguiri, the thaumaturge-buffaloes, the demon-anchorets and
the chiefs of the lay toddouvars elaborated laws, determined the number of
Todds and of future sacred and profane buffaloes. Then, they sent one
of their brothers to Lanka with an invitation to some other good demons to
come to Nilguiri with their families. There, on the throne of Ravana
who had been killed, he found the king Vibia, the master of them all.
Such is the legend of the Todds. That the "King
of the Orient" is Rama, although the Todds do not name him - there
can be no doubt about it. Rama, it is known, possesses hundreds of names.
In the Ramayana he is indifferently called "King of the Four Seas," "King
of the Orient," "King of the West, the South, and the North," "Son of Ragon,"
"Dassaratide," "Tiger of the Kings," etc. For the inhabitants of Lanka
or Ceylon, he evidently would be "King of the North." But if the Todds,
as we think, came from the West, the appellation "King of the Orient or of
India" becomes comprehensible.
But let us get back to the legend and let us see what
it can tell us about the Moulou-Kouroumbs. What connection did the
dwarf sorcerers have with the Todds in antiquity and what fate brought them
to the "Blue Mountains" under the severe orders of the Todds? - we shall
know, thanks to the continuation of the account concerning the sending to
Lanka of the "demon-brother."
When he arrived in his fatherland, he found it invaded,
defeated and everything changed since his departure from the island with
all his brothers. The new king of Lanka, devoted friend and ally of
the King Rama, was trying then, with all his might, to destroy the evil sorcery
of the rakchis in the island, by substituting for it the benevolent science
of the anchorets magi. But the gift of Bramavidia "is acquired only through
personal qualities, purity of life, love for all that lives, men as well
as dumb creatures, and also by rapport with benevolent, invisible magi who,
after having left the earth, live in the country under the clouds, where the
sun sets.* Vibia knew how to soften the hearts of the old rakchis and
they repented. But a new evil arose in Lanka. The greater part
of the warriors of the oriental army, the monkey-warriors, the bear-warriors
and the tiger-warriors, in their joy at having con-quered the Queen of the
Seas and vanquished its demon-inhabitants, became intoxicated to such an
extent that it took them many years to regain their equilibrium. In
that unsettled, obscured state of mind, they took rakchis for wives, demons
of the female sex. From these ill-assorted unions dwarfs were born,
the most stupid and most wicked creatures in the world. They were the
ancestors of the present Nilguirian Moulou-Kobroumbs. In them were concentrated
all the gifts of the dark knowledge of sorcery possessed by their mothers,
mixed with the craftiness, the cruelty, the stupidity of their fathers, the
monkeys, the tigers and the bears. The king Vibia resolved to kill
all these dwarfs and he was ready to execute his plan, when the principal
thaumaturge left his buffalo form and asked that the king grant them forgiveness,
promising to take them along with him to the "Blue Mountains." He saved
the lives of the dwarfs on the following condition: that they and
their descendants would eternally serve the Todds, recognizing in the latter
their masters and chiefs having over them the right of life and death.
-------------------
*The Todds point to the West when they speak of the
country where their dead go. Metz calls the Occident "the fantastic
paradise of the Todds." Some tourists have concluded from that, that
the Todds, like the Parsis, are sun worshipers.
-------------------
It is thus that Lanka was delivered of a terrible evil
by the thaumaturge who, accompanied by about a hundred rakchis, belonging
to a foreign tribe, came back to the "Blue Mountains." Allowing Vibia
to destroy the most cruel and incorrigible of the dwarf demons, he chose
three hundred creatures among the least bad of this new tribe and took them
with him to the Nilguiri.
Since that time, the Kouroumbs who made their homes
in the most impassable jungles of the mountains, multiplied to such an extent
as to become the great tribe known today under the name of Moulou-Kouroumbs.
As long as they, with the Todds and the buffaloes, were the only inhabitants
of the "Blue Mountains," their bad inclinations and their innate gift of
sorcery could harm no one except the animals, which they enchanted for the
purpose of eating them afterwards. But the Baddagues arrived fifteen
generations afterwards and hostilities began between them and the dwarfs.
The ancestors of the Baddagues, that is to say of the antique people of Malabar
and of Karnatik, after the war also entered the service of the "good" giants
from Lanka. Therefore, when colonies of these men from the North had
quarreled with the Brahmans of India, on the "Blue Mountains," the Todds,
as honor and the buffaloes commanded, took them under their protection:
the Baddagues were the servants of the masters of the Nilguiri, just as their
ancestors had served the ancestors of the Todds.
Such is the legend of the aborigines of the "Blue Mountains."
We have collected it piece-meal and with the greatest difficulty. Who
then among the readers of the Ramayana would not recognize in this legend
the events related in this poem? How could the Baddagues - still
less the Todds - have invented it? Their Brahmans are only the
shadows of the antique Brahmans and have nothing in common with the representatives
of this caste in the valleys. Not knowing Sanskrit, they have not read
the Ramayana and some among them have not even heard about it.
Perhaps we shall be told that the Mahabharata, like
the Ramayana, based upon vague reminiscences of events lived long ago, possesses
a fantastic principle prevailing by far over the historical element.
Therefore, it is impossible to admit as likely the least fact described in
these epopees. Those speaking thus are the very ones who dare to maintain
the following: before Pannini, the greatest grammarian in the world,
India had no conception of the written word; Pannini himself did not
know how to write and had not heard of the sacred writings; and the
Ramayana and the Bhagavad-Gita have probably been written after Christ!
Will the day never dawn when the Hindu Aryans
- this people fallen very low politically, but still very great by its past
and its remarkable virtues - and the sacred literature of the Brahmans
will have taken the rank they deserve in history? When will iniquity
and partiality founded upon race pride give place to entire uprightness so
that the orientalists may at last cease to present the ancestors of the Brahmans
to their readers as superstitious ignorants and the Brahmans themselves as
lying and presumptuous people? Can it still be believed that this literature,
unique in the world by its grandeur, including all knowledge and the sciences
known and unknown, long forgotten (as all of those who have impartially
studied its philosophy say), is solely based upon creative imagination and
empty metaphysical dreams?
Let the orientalists affirm what they like. We
who have studied this literature with the Brahmans, do not stop at the dead
letter. We know that the Ramayana is not a fairy tale as is believed
in Europe: it possesses a double meaning, religious and purely historical,
and the initiate Brahmans alone are able to interpret the complex allegories
of this poem. He who reads the holy books of the orient with the key
of its secret symbols, recognizes that:
(1) The Cosmogony of all great ancient religions is
the same. They are distinguished among themselves by their exterior
forms. All these teachings, contradictory in appearance, proceed from
the same source - the universal Truth, which has always manifested
under the aspect of a Revelation to all primitive races. Later
- and in the measure that humanity was developing its intellectual faculties
to the detriment of spiritual capacity - the knowledge of the beginning
was becoming transformed and was evolving in different directions. All
these events took place under the influence of climatic, ethnological and
other conditions. Here is a tree whose branches grow under an ever-changing
wind; they take the most irregular forms, twisted and ugly - yet
they all belong to the same original trunk. This fact is exhibited in
the divers religions: they are all born of the same seed: Truth,
because Truth is one.
(2) The histories of all the religions are not only
based upon geological, anthropological and ethnological facts of remote prehistoric
periods; they are also transmitted quite faithfully in their allegorical
form. All these purely historical "legends" were lived as events in
their time. But to unveil them without the help of the key I spoke
of and which can be found only in the "Houpta-Vidia," or "secret science"
of the ancient Aryans, Chaldeans and Egyptians, is an absolute impossibility.
In spite of this difficulty, many among us remain convinced that the day
will come, more or less distant, when all the legends of the Mahabharata
will become, thanks to the progress of science, historical reality in the
eyes of all people. The mask of allegory will fall and living men will
appear; and the events of the past will explain all the enigmas and
remove all the difficulties of modern science.
Our scientists deny the antique method of Plato which
goes from the general to the particular - they claim it is anti-scientific,
forgetting that it is the only possible method in the only positive and infallible
science, mathematics. Now, the inductive method of these scientists
is insufficient in biology and in psychology. These men of science
will certainly pay no attention to our researches concerning the history
of the Brahmans in general and ethnology in particular. So much the
worse for them. "In doubt, abstain," the golden rule of universal wisdom,
was not written for them. They abstain only from the knowledge which
might contradict their personal preconceptions. To what end can the
orientalists and the students of Sanskrit come so long as they reject the
interpretations of antique Brahman books given by the Brahmans themselves?
To errors as evident and as gross as those committed by the learned ethnologists
concerning the Todds, and because the ethnographers forget very opportunely
that "universal" history upon which they rest to study this original tribe,
is founded almost entirely upon unproven hypotheses, and is moreover made
up by these very ethnographers, that is to say, by western scientists.
And who is ignorant of the fact that all these historians and ethnologists,
not fifty years ago, knew nothing concerning the Brahmans and their immense
literature? Has not one of the great European authorities in historical
matters affirmed recently that facts such as described in the books of the
Brahmans were only "inventions of a superstitious and grossly ignorant people"?
(History of Sanskrit Literature by Weber.)
The events related by the orientalists almost never
concur with the facts of the Brahmans. "Universal History" has no room
for the whole of "history." Either the East or the West must give
in. And how would not the learned Pandits be constrained to study their
own history with the help of the many colored glasses of the Anglo-Saxon
students of Sanskrit? It is thus that, thanks to the European scientists,
the time when the Mahabharata was written is brought almost in the century
of the Musselman invasion,* while the Ramayana and the Bhagavad-Gita become
the contemporaries of the catholic Golden Legend!
Let the Europeans affirm what they like! Our
conviction remains the same; of our three Nilguirian races, two indisputably
descend from primitive prehistorical races about which our Universal History
never heard, even in a dream.
*At the beginning of the VIIIth century of the Christian era.
To Chapter 5
More by H.P. Blavatsky