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Frank Podmore
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/6/20


Frank Podmore
Born: 5 February 1856, Died 14 August 1910 (aged 54)
Occupation: Parapsychologist, writer

Frank Podmore (5 February 1856 – 14 August 1910) was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on spiritualism.[1]

Life

Born at Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, Podmore was the son of Thompson Podmore, headmaster of Eastbourne College. He was educated at Haileybury and Pembroke College, Oxford (where he first became interested in Spiritualism and joined the Society for Psychical Research – this interest remained with him throughout his life).[2][3]

In October 1883 Podmore and Edward R. Pease joined a socialist debating group established by Edith Nesbit and Hubert Bland. Podmore suggested that the group should be named after the Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who advocated weakening the opposition by harassing operations rather than becoming involved in pitched battles. In January 1884 the group became known as the Fabian Society, and Podmore's home at 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster, became the organisation's first official headquarters.

He was a member of the Oxford Phasmatological Society which dissolved in 1885. In 1886 Podmore and Sidney Webb conducted a study into unemployment, eventually published as a Fabian Society pamphlet, The Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour. Podmore married Eleanore Bramwell in 1891, however, the marriage was a failure and they separated. They had no children.[4]

His major work was a detailed study of the life and ideas of Robert Owen (1906). Podmore resigned from a senior post in the Post Office in 1907. Psychical researcher Alan Gauld wrote that "In 1907 Podmore was compelled to resign without pension from the Post Office because of alleged homosexual involvements. He separated from his wife, and went to live with his brother Claude, rector of Broughton, near Kettering."[5]

Podmore died by drowning at Malvern, Worcestershire, in August 1910.

Researcher Ronald Pearsall wrote that it was generally believed that Podmore was a homosexual and that it was "very strange" that his brother Claude, his wife or any member of the Society for Psychical Research did not attend his funeral.[6]

Psychical research

Podmore's books, giving non-paranormal explanations from much of the psychical research that he studied, received positive reviews in science journals.[7][8][9] His book Studies in Psychical Research received a positive review in the British Medical Journal which described his debunking of fraudulent mediums as scientific and came to the conclusion the "book is well worth reading, and it is agreeable reading, for the style is generally vigorous and not infrequently brilliant."[10]

Podmore who considered most mediums fraudulent, was open minded about the telepathic hypothesis for Leonora Piper's séances. However, Ivor Lloyd Tuckett had "completely undermined" this hypothesis for Mrs. Piper.[11] Podmore was critical of Helena Blavatsky and her claims of Theosophy.[9] He evaluated poltergeist cases and concluded they are best explained by deception and trickery.[12]

Rationalist author Joseph McCabe stated that despite Podmore's "highly critical faculty" he was misled in the Piper case by Richard Hodgson. This was based on a letter he saw in the 2nd edition Spiritualism and Oliver Lodge by Dr. Charles Arthur Mercier, from a cousin of George Pellew to Edward Clodd, alleging that Hodgson claimed that Professor Fiske from his séance with Piper was "absolutely convinced" Piper's control was the real George Pellew, but that when Pellew's brother contacted Fiske about it, he replied it was "a lie" as Piper had been "silent or entirely wrong" on all his questions.[13] However, Alan Gauld, referring to this letter as published by Clodd, stated that it was "wholly unreliable", noted that Hodgson in his original report wrote that Fiske had a negative attitude, and that Hodgson himself considered the Fiske sittings to be of no evidential value.[14]

Podmore's text Mesmerism and Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing received a positive review in the British Journal of Psychiatry, which referred to it as "an excellent account of this interesting and important subject."[15]

Podmore defended the validity of telepathy[16] and ghosts,[17] the latter of which he believed to be "telepathic hallucinations."[18]

Works

Podmore's publications include:

• Phantasms of the Living. (1886, written with Frederick Myers and Edmund Gurney).
• The Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour. (1886).
• Apparitions and Thought-Transference. (1892).
• Studies in Psychical Research. (1897).
• Modern Spiritualism (1902). Reprinted as Mediums of the 19th Century. (1963).
• Robert Owen A Biography. Volume 1; Volume 2. (1906).
• The Naturalisation of the Supernatural. (1908).
• Mesmerism and Christian Science. (1909).
• Telepathic Hallucinations: The New View of Ghosts. (1909).
• The Newer Spiritualism. (1910).

See also

• Eusapia Palladino

References

1. Hazelgrove, Jenny (2000). Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars. Manchester University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-7190-5559-8 "He developed a deeply sceptical attitude towards spiritualist phenomena. His strict criteria for proof soon became legendary at the SPR, and he was known as the Society's 'sceptic in chief' – an epithet not always applied in good humour. The title was well earned, for in his history of mediumship, The New Spiritualism (1910), not one medium passed his exacting tests, and most were dismissed as charlatans."
2. Shepard, Leslie. (1991). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology – Volume 2. Gale Research Company. p. 1303. "Podmore, Frank (1856–1910) "One of the ablest British opponents of Spiritualism, well-known psychical investigator, and distinguished author. He was born 5 February 1856, at Elstree, Hertfordshire, and educated at Elstree Hill School and Haileybury College, leaving in 1874 with a classical scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford University, England. In 1879, he became a higher in the secretary's department of the Post Office."
3. Oppenheim, Janet. (1985). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 145. ISBN 0-521-26505-3
4. Stanley Kunitz, Howard Haycraft. (1973). Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. H. W. Wilson Company. p. 1112
5. Gauld, Alan. (2004). Frank Podmore (1856–1910). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
6. Pearsall, Ronald. (1972). The Table-Rappers. Book Club Associates. p. 221
7. Anonymous. (1909). The Naturalization of the Supernatural by Frank Podmore. (1909). American Journal of Psychology 20 (2): 294–295.
8. Anonymous. (1903). Modern Spiritualism. A History and a Criticism by Frank Podmore. American Journal of Psychology 14 (1): 116–117.
9. Mackenzie, W. Leslie. (1898). Studies in Psychical Research. Nature 58: 5–6.
10. Anonymous. (1898). Studies in Psychical Research by Frank Podmore. British Medical Journal 1 (1931): 25–26.
11. Anonymous. (1912). Review: A Study Of "Psychical Research". Reviewed Work: The Evidence For The Supernatural; A Critical Study Made With "Uncommon Sense" by Ivor Lloyd Tuckett. British Medical Journal 1 (2667): 308–309.
12. Blum, Deborah. (2006). Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Penguin Press. p. 225. ISBN 978-0143038955
13. Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London: Watts & Co. pp. 101–105
14. Gauld, Alan. (1968). Founders of Psychical Research. Schocken Books. pp. 361–363. ISBN 978-0805230765
15. "Mesmerism and Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing By Frank Podmore. 8vo. London: Methuen & Co., 1909. Pp. 306. Price 10s. 6d. net". The British Journal of Psychiatry. 56 (235): 720–721. 1910. doi:10.1192/bjp.56.235.720. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
16. Podmore, Frank. (1895). What Psychical Research Has Accomplished. The North American Review. Vol. 160, No. 460. pp. 331–344
17. Podmore, Frank. (1892). IN DEFENCE OF PHANTASMS. The National Review. Vol. 19, No. 110. pp. 234–251
18. Podmore, Frank. (1909). Telepathic Hallucinations: The New View of Ghosts. New York : F.A. Stokes Co.

External links

• Works by Frank Podmore at Project Gutenberg
• Edward R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society.
• Andrew Lang, "The Poltergeist and his explainers" (Appendix B), The Making of Religion, London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1900, pp. 324–39.
• Alice Johnson. (1903). Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 17: 389–403.

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Babaji [Bawajee] [Bowajee] [M. Krishnamachari] [S. Krishnamachari] [S. Krishnaswami Iyengar or Aiyangar] [Darbhagiri Nath] [Gwala K. Deb] [Babajee D. Nath]
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/6/20

The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett
Letter No. 175
{Wurzburg, Nov.}

B. J. Padshah became indignant that the original letters published in the Xian College Magazine were not shown to Madame Blavatsky for explanation. He asked Mr. Hodgson why they were not shown to her. Mr. Hodgson consented to give Padsha the documents on condition that he would take them personally to Mad. Blavatsky at Wurzburg and keep his eyes wide upon the letters while Madame B. reads them and, taking care that she might not in any way interfere with them, bring them back safe to the S.P.R. This is what Padshah told me, as far as I can remember.

Babajee D. Nath.

Bowajee says, he is not sure whether Hodgson meant that I might destroy them — fraudulently — or phenomenally. You ought to send for Padshah and examine him. If Mr. Hodgson was afraid that I would make away with them phenomenally then it is just what I believe I wrote to Mrs. Sinnett, or to you from Wurzburg and I said and repeat it that in their hearts the Coulombs and the padris believe in the powers of the Masters and also to an extent in my own. This is why they would not allow Hodgson to show to me those letters at Adyar, nor would Myers and Hodgson trust Mr. Sinnett with them for that same reason. Bowajee says Mohini can tell you all; that Hodgson told him secretly that personally he believed in the Mahatmas and even in my occult powers. — Make your inferences.

H. P. B.

I was also, for reasons that will hereafter appear, compelled to discard altogether the evidence of Mr. Babajee D. Nath, who appeared to us at the time of our First Report to be a primary witness for the ordinary physical existence of the Mahatmas.

[Statement of] Mr. Babajee D. Nath. [First published in Richard Hodgson's "Account of Personal Investigations in India, and Discussion of the Authorship of the 'Koot Hoomi' Letters," Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume III, 1885, Appendix IV, pp. 329-330. ]

In reply to the circular inquiry: -

August 30th, 1884.

Having been called upon to state what I know in regard to the Occult Room in the upstairs and its condition on, before, or after the 18th May, 1884, I beg to say that I had before that date examined the Occult Room, the Shrine, and its surroundings several times. I had an interest in so examining, as I wanted to be able to give my unqualified testimony conscientiously to a very prominent skeptical gentleman at Madras, who knows me well and who urged me to state all my experiences about phenomena. Madame Blavatsky herself asked me on several occasions to examine, as she knew my relation to the gentleman. I was also present on the day when Mr. Coulomb gave the charge of the upstairs to our party and when he exposed himself audaciously. I remember very well that, during the last (VIII.) anniversary, I one day tapped well on the papered wall behind the Shrine in various places, and found, from the noise produced, that it was a whole wall. I have tapped on the wall after Coulomb’s contrivances, and found that there is a marked difference between the portion of the wall where he has cut open and between other portions of it. The former when tapped produces now the noise of a hollow, incomplete wall; while the latter portion stands the test of tapping. I know more of the phenomena, of Madame Blavatsky, and of the Coulombs than any outsider; I am in so intimate relations at the headquarters that I have been treated with matters of a confidential nature unreservedly. Even Madame Coulomb herself had been along treating me as a real friend, and telling much and often of what she said she would not tell others. I have, therefore, no hesitation at all in stating for a fact that any contrivances whatever, like trap-doors, &c., that are now found had nothing at all to do with Madame Blavatsky, who had not the remotest idea of them. The Coulombs are the sole authors of the plot. It is worth mentioning here that Mr. Coulomb worked up the walls, set up the doors, and did everything without allowing a single carpenter, mason, or coolie, to go upstairs; and he was furious if any of us went up to see. To prove that Madame Blavatsky was not a party to the scheme, I shall cite one fact. She allowed - nay, requested - Mr. G. Subbiah Chetty Garu, F. T. S., to examine the work done. He went one day to see it. Coulomb was furious, and did not allow him, but drove him out, and told Madame Blavatsky that none of us should go there at all, since he said he was working without clothes alone. This was a mere pretext, as on that occasion he was not so, and as we have all seen him often with only a pair of dirty trousers. Instances can be multiplied. I must conclude by saying that the "phenomena" of the Mahatmas do not stand in need of Coulombian contrivances, as I have witnessed at different times and different places when and where there were no such trap-doors, and I have seen and know those exalted sages who are the authors of the "phenomena." I can therefore assure all my friends that the Coulombs had got up a "Christian plot" during Madame Blavatsky’s absence.

-- The Hodgson Report: Report on Phenomena Connected With Theosophy, by Richard Hodgson and the Society for Psychical Research

Babaji with T. Subba Rao and H. P. Blavatsky

Babaji (also known as M. Krishnamachari, S. Krishnamachari, S. Krishnaswami Iyengar or Aiyangar, and Darbhagiri Nath) was a young Maratha Brahmin of South India. He was at one time a clerk in the Collector's office in Nellore. In the early 1880s, after the arrival of the Founders to India he joined the staff at the theosophical headquarters in Bombay and assumed the name of "Babaji" (also spelled "Bawajee" or "Bowajee").[1] A few months after this he became a probationary chela of Mahatma K.H., assuming the mystery name Dharbagiri Nath.[2] The Master frequently referred to him as "the little man", due to his small stature. Babaji was present at the time of the Hodgson Report at Adyar.[3] He eventually failed as a chela and died in India in obscurity.

Dharbagiri Nath

In late 1882 Gwala K. Deb (an accepted chela of the Master K.H. whose mystical name also was Dharbagiri Nath) was to travel to Simla from Darjeeling to deliver a letter from Mahatma K.H. to Mr. Sinnett. However, Deb could not leave Darjeeling, since his physical body was being prepared for a certain occult work and could not be contaminated with the magnetism of the world. Babaji was then asked to allow him to use his own body on certain occasions, in order to perform the allotted task.[4] In one of his letters, Master K.H. wrote to Sinnett:

And now good-bye, I ask you again — do not frighten my little man; he may prove useful to you some day — only do not forget — he is but an appearance.[5]

It seems that after this event he started to use the name Dharbagiri Nath publicly, which produced confusion in the minds of some members between the accepted and the probationary chelas. Mme. Blavatsky wrote to Mr. Sinnett:

He has as much right to call himself Dharbagiri Nath, as “Babaji.” There is—a true Dh. Nath, a chela, who is with Master K. H. for the last 13 or 14 years; who was at Darjeeling, and he is he of whom Mahatma K. H. wrote to you at Simla. For reasons I cannot explain he remained at Darjeeling. You heard him ONCE, you never saw him, but you saw his portrait his alter ego physically and his contrast diametrically opposite to him morally, intellectually and so on. Krishna Swami’s, or Babaji’s deception does not rest in his assuming the name, for it was the mystery name chosen by him when he became the Mahatma’s chela; but in his profiting of my lips being sealed; of people’s erroneous conceptions about him that he, this present Babaji was a HIGH chela whereas he was only a probationary one. . .[6]

[I]f he had the right to call himself Dharb. Nath he had no right to abuse of this position by assuming an attitude which only the real Dh. Nath would have the right to assume, and which he never would, however . . . he took advantage of the position assigned to him temporarily — to harm me and the Cause, and several Theosophists, who see in him the real, instead of the reflection of Dh. N. the high chela.[7]

Failure as a disciple

In February 1885, he accompanied Mme. Blavatsky and others to Europe and was devoted to her. But in 1886 he turned against her, accusing her of desecrating the Masters’ names by connecting them with psychic phenomena. He caused much trouble in theosophical circles in Europe and England, especially at Elberfeld with the Gebhard family. Babaji exercised considerable influence over Frank Gebhard and other theosophists, largely because he was a Hindu claiming to be an advanced chela.[8]

In a letter dated June, 3, 1886, written by Mme Blavatsky to Col. Olcott from Elberfeld, Germany (and originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. LII, No. 11, August, 1931, pp. 673-675) she writes: "And now since he came here he said to my face before all the Gebhard family that I knew nothing of the esoteric teaching; Isis was full of ludicrous mistakes; my Theosophist articles likewise".[9]

Eventually, Babaji failed to remain a chela. Mme. Blavatsky wrote to C. W. Leadbeater, who at the time was a chela of Mater K.H.:

[Babaji] was sent to Simla to Mr. S [Mr. Sinnett], that is to say, he gave up his personality to a real chela, Dharbagiri Nath, and has assumed his name since then. As I was under pledge of silence I could not contradict him when I heard him bragging that he had lived with his Master in Tibet and was an accepted regular chela. But now when he failed as a “probationary” owing to personal ambition, jealousy of Mohini, and a suddenly developed rage and envy even to hatred of Colonel and myself –- now Master ordered me to say the truth.[10]

When this letter was in transit, the Master K.H. precipitated: "The little man has failed and will reap his reward".[11]

Babaji returned to India and eventually died in obscurity.

See brief biography in Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement, p. 537. See The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett (book) , pp. 286, 335, 336, 340; and Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom I: 132

Online resources

Articles

• The Theosophical Mahatmas. A Critique of Paul Johnson’s New Myth, Part 2, Ch. 8, by David Pratt

Notes

1. The Theosophical Mahatmas. A Critique of Paul Johnson’s New Myth, Part 2, Ch. 8, by David Pratt
2. A. Trevor Barker, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett Letter No. LXX, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1973), 170.
3. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 218
4. Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa, The "K. H." Letters to C. W. Leadbeater (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1980), 76-77.
5. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 44 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), ???.
6. A. Trevor Barker, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett Letter No. LXX, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1973), 170.
7. A. Trevor Barker, The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett Letter No. LXXII, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1973), 174.
8. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 218.
9. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VII (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1988), 50.
10. Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa, K. H. Letters to C. W. Leadbeater, (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980), 85-86.
11. Curuppumullage Jinarājadāsa, The "K. H." Letters to C. W. Leadbeater (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1980), 52.

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Peter Hahn
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/6/20

Peter von Hahn (1799–1873), member of the Russian nobility, remembered in the United States mainly as the father of Helena Blavatsky.

Early Life and Marriage

Son of Lieutenant-General Alexis Gustavovich von Hahn and Countess Elizabeth Maksimovna von Probsen. Father of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

A captain of horse artillery, Peter von Hahn, whose family came originally from the petty nobility of Mecklenburg, married, in 1830, the 16-year-old Helene Fadeev. She was the daughter of Princess Helene Dolgoruki (1789-1860) and Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev (1789-1867), Privy Councillor of the Caucasus, and half his age. Vera, a younger sister of Helene Fadeev, would marry Julius Witte and become the parents to Count Sergei Yulievich Witte.

Polish Campaign and Birth of Helena

Soon after the wedding, the young Captain received orders to join his regiment for service in the notably ruthless campaign to put down the Polish insurrection of 1831. The girl-wife returned to her parents in Ekaterinoslav in the heart of the Ukraine, and it was there that Helena was born on the night of August 12, 1831 (July 31, on the Russian Julian calendar).

Military Life and Death of Wife

At the close of the Polish campaign, Madame Hahn and "Lolo" (her pet name for her daughter Helena), rejoined the Captain at the station in southern Russia where he was leading raids against the mountain tribes of the Caucasus. Captain Hahn had been educated as a member of the Imperial Cadet Corps, limited to the sons of the nobility. On his wife's death, at the age of 28, the Captain, realized that army camps were most unsuitable for little girls. And the two children were escorted back to their grandparents home.

Marriage and Escape of Helena

Colonel Hahn retired, sometime before 1848 and was living near Saint Petersburg when his daughter married Nikifor Blavatsky. This marriage lasted only three months, and Helena ran away, abandoning her husband. Her grandfather promptly shipped her off to her father, but she escaped with a boat captain, "leaving her father fuming on the docks of Odessa". She was not to contact her family for the next ten years. Her future discussions of these years are extremely confused and contradictory and even today have not been satisfactorily explained or researched.

Later life

Shortly afterward, Col Hahn married again to Baroness von Lange and had a daughter Liza. The Baroness died a few years later. Col Hahn was living in 1858 in Saint Petersburg, where Helena's sister Vera was also living, when Helena again showed up. Her sister Vera lived in the small village of Rugodevo, which she had inherited from her late husband. According to reports, Col Hahn was at first aloof from Helena's alleged psychic powers, but later come to believe in them, from certain demonstrations. He died and is buried at Stavropol.

Wives and Children

With Helene Fadeyev

• Helena afterwards Blavatsky, b 1831-1891
• Sasha b 1832 d 1833
• Vera afterwards Vera Zhelihovsky(1835–96)
• Leonid b 1840

With Baroness von Lange

• Liza b 1850/2

References

Sources

• Priestess of the Occult by Gertrude Marvin Williams, Alfred A Knopf, 1946. OCLC 1162835
• HPB: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky by Sylvia Cranston; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. ISBN 0-87477-688-0
• Biographical notes on Peter von Hahn, etc.
• An Interview with Madame Blavatsky
• Reitemeyer, Frank (Summer 2006). "Open questions in HP Blavatsky's genealogy: review: 'Ein deutschbaltischer Hintergrund der Theosophie?' by Peter Lauer". Fohat : The Mystical, the Magical. Edmonton: Edmonton Theosophical Society. 10 (2): 35–. ISSN 1205-9676.
Transcribed in "Open questions in H. P. Blavatsky's genealogy". theosophycanada.com. Edmonton: Edmonton Theosophical Society. n.d. Archived from the original on 2008-05-11. Retrieved 2014-05-18.
Review of Laur, Peter (2005). "Ein deutschbaltischer Hintergrund der 'Theosophie'?". Jahrbuch des baltischen Deutschtums (in German) (2006 ed.). Lüneburg: Carl-Schirren-Gesellschaft. 53: 223–232. ISBN 3-923149-51-4. ISSN 0075-2436.

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N. D. Khandalavala [Khan Bahadur Navroji Dorabji Khandalavala]
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/6/20


Judge Khān Bahādur N. D. Khandalavala

Khan Bahadur Navroji Dorabji Khandalavala was a Parsi Judge and highly respected Indian theosophist. His application for membership in the Theosophical Society was accepted on November 25, 1879, and he was officially admitted on January 4, 1880, at a special meeting in Bombay.[1] He became President of the Poona Theosophical Society, and was a valuable supporter of the Founders.

According to Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett:

Khandalawala, N. D., a provincial judge, member of the TS from its early days in India. A loyal supporter of HSO [Henry Steel Olcott] and HPB in the Coulomb affair which developed in 1884. ML, p. 187.[2]

Correspondence with H. P. Blavatsky

Madame Blavatsky conducted a correspondence with him, through which she disclosed important information about the Mahatmas and other matters.

In July 1888, she confirmed that the Master Hillarion aided Mabel Collins in the writing of Light on the Path:

...she saw before her, time after time, the astral figure of a dark man (a Greek who belongs to the Brotherhood of our Masters), who urged her to write under his diction. It was Hillarion, whom Olcott knows well. The results were Light on the Path and others.[3]

Countess Wachtmeister met Master Morya in Europe before she ever knew of the Theosophical Society. H. P. B. disclosed that fact in a letter to Mr. Khandalavala, dated July 12, 1888:

Constance Wachtmeister joined the T.S. because she recognised in the portrait of my Master her living Master who saved her on several occasions, whom she saw in his physical body years ago when he was in England, whom she saw in his astral body a number of times, and who wrote to her from the first in the same handwriting he uses for our Society. When she assured herself of this, she joined the T.S. at his advice; and now for three years and more she lives with and takes care of me."[4]

In another letter, Mme. Blavatsky told him that a letter from Sriman Swamy to Lucifer contained two "fibs": (a) "Damodar never was at Lhassa nor Sriman Swamy either, and not being permitted to say where he saw Damodar he gave a wrong name"; and (b) "My Master never told him what he says of me, but he heard it from a chela".[5]

Notes

1. Theosophical Society General Membership Register, 1875-1942 at http://tsmembers.org/. See book 1, entry 326 (website file: 1A/15).
2. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 236.
3. Michael Gomes, Theosophical History, vol. 3, no. 7-8, July-October 1991, 194
4. Mary K. Neff, The "Brothers" of Madame Blavatsky (Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1932), 82.
5. Sriman Swamy, "News of Damodar" published online at http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/srimanswamy.htm

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Sriman Swamy
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/6/20

Sriman Swamy was a sannyasin and Honorary Secretary of "The Cow Memorial Fund" of Allahabad, a movement for the protection of cattle and the improvement of agriculture in India.

On August 7, 1889, he wrote the following letter to Lucifer:

In reply to your enquiries I may say that I certify on my word as a Sanyassi that I have twice visited Tibet since the year 1879; that I have personally become acquainted with several Mahatmas, among whom were the two known to the outside word as Mahatma “M” and Mahatma “K. H.”; that I spent some time in their company; that they told me that they and other Mahatmas were interested in the work of the Theosophical Society; that Mahatma “M” told me he had been the (occult) guardian of Madame Blavatsky from her infancy.

And I further certify that in March 1887 I saw Mr. Damodar K. Mavalankar at L’hassa, in a convalescent state. He told me, in the presence of Mahatma “K. H.” that he had been at the point of death in the previous year.[1]

In a letter to her friend N. D. Khandalavala, Mme. Blavatsky told him that this letter contained two "fibs": (a) "Damodar never was at Lhassa nor Sriman Swamy either, and not being permitted to say where he saw Damodar he gave a wrong name"; and (b) "My Master never told him what he says of me, but he heard it from a chela".

Notes

1. Sriman Swamy, "News of Damodar" published online at http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/srimanswamy.htm

******************************

News of Damodar: A Letter from Sriman Swamy
Reprinted from Lucifer (London), Volume 5
September 1889, p. 68.

The following letter has been forwarded to the Theosophist (1) for publication. It is the reply of the Sriman Swamy, the Secretary of “The Cow Memorial Fund” (a movement for the protection of cattle and the improvement of agriculture that promises to become national), to the enquiries of a friend of Damodar, who had heard that the Swamy had lately visited Tibet, and was anxious to know whether he had heard or seen anything of our absent brother. Since then I have had two conversations with the Swamy, in the course of which he corroborated what he had said in his letter, and left on my mind the impression of being an able and sincere man, imbued with patriotic sentiments, and perfectly loyal to the Empress and her Government; anxious only that the true state of affairs should be understood, and perfectly willing to trust to the justice and generosity of the English people to institute remedies for the evils that he believes to exist.

RICHARD HARTE.
Acting Editor of the Theosophist.

Madras, August 7th, 1889
To . . . . . .
DEAR SIR AND BROTHER,

In reply to your enquiries I may say that I certify on my word as a Sanyassi that I have twice visited Tibet since the year 1879; that I have personally become acquainted with several Mahatmas, among whom were the two known to the outside word as Mahatma “M” and Mahatma “K. H.”; that I spent some time in their company; that they told me that they and other Mahatmas were interested in the work of the Theosophical Society; that Mahatma “M” told me he had been the (occult) guardian of Madame Blavatsky from her infancy.

And I further certify that in March 1887 I saw Mr. Damodar K. Mavalankar at L’hassa, in a convalescent state. He told me, in the presence of Mahatma “K. H.” that he had been at the point of death in the previous year.

(Signed) Sriman Swamy.
Hon. Sec. Cow Memorial Fund of Allahabad.

BA [Blavatsky Archives] Editorial Note: In a letter dated "London, 21-Nov., 1889" to Mr. N. D. Khandalavala, Madame Blavatsky made the following comments on the letter written by Sriman Swamy:

"My Dear Mr. Khandalavala,

I have given to your letter of the 25th Oct., the closest attention, though there is nothing in it I did not know before; and now shall answer it with all seriousness. . . . As regards the state of the Indian Sections of the Society, and the complaints against Olcott, I observe the following things. . . .

. . . That Damodar is believed to have been driven away by harsh treatment to live or die as he pleased; and that he is, in fact, dead.

. . . . That the publication of Sriman Swamy's letter by me [in Lucifer] is traceable to Col. Olcott's 'craving for strange stories and his anxiety to publish them without throughly verifying them in the first instance.'

. . . Let me reply. . . .

. . . Damodar is not dead, and Olcott knows it as well as I do. I had a letter from him not more than 3 months ago. . . .

. . . No matter what your lying Sriman Swamy may, or may not be --- one cannot always tell --- he passed successfully through a cross examination by Mr. Subba Row, who pronounced him a real 'chela of the 2nd Class' to several witnesses in Madras --- Judge Srinivas Row among others, Olcott, etc. Without help he [Sriman Swamy] identified the two portraits [of the Masters M. and K.H.] saying which was which, and gave facts not obtainable from books. The certificate he gave was sent [to me] by Harte as a duplicate of what was to appear in the Theosophist, and I printed it [in the September 1889 issue of Lucifer] for reasons of my own, even after Harte had written that he suppressed it (1) (through funk of the disbelieving Hindus) at Adyar. I made no comments on it [when published in Lucifer] because there were two fibs in it: (a) Damodar never was at Lhassa nor Sriman Swamy either, and not being permitted to say where he saw Damodar he gave a wrong name; and (b) My Master never told him what he says of me, but he heard it from a chela. I printed it with the lies, for two reasons --- firstly, since I published it at all I had no right to change one word; secondly, I wanted to see what they would say in India to this; in India where every lie is believed and repeated most readily, while truth is rejected, smothered shot out of the guns (metaphorically) by rulers and by the ruled. Aye, India does crucify truth as readily as it is crucified here [in England]. Therefore, it was not yet intimated to me Mr. Subba Row had discovered his mistake about the Swamy being 'a chela of the 2nd Class,' whatever it may mean in India, as in Tibet it means nothing. . . ." The Theosophist (Adyar, Madras, India), August 1932, pp. 618-619, 623-625.

(1) The letter from Sriman Swamy was never published in the Theosophist. H.P. Blavatsky printed it in Lucifer. See Madame Blavatsky's comments above. ---BA Editor.]

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Franz Hartmann
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/6/20

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombas of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of His Teachings Concerning Cosmology, Anthropology, Pneumatology, Magic and Sorcery, Medicine, Alchemy and Astrology, Philosophy and Theosophy, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

Dr. Franz Hartmann

Franz Hartmann (November 22, 1838 in Donauwörth, Bavaria; August 7, 1912 in Kempten im Allgäu) was a German medical doctor, Theosophist, occultist, astrologer, and author. His works include several books on esoteric studies and biographies of Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus. He translated the Bhagavad Gita into German and was the editor of the journal Lotusblüten. He was at one time a co-worker of H. P. Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott at Adyar. In 1896 he founded a German Theosophical Society.

Early Years

When Franz was about one year old, his parents (his father Dr. Karl Hartmann, was a well-known physician; his mother, Elize von Stack, was of Irish descent) moved to Kempten in Southern Bavaria, where his father had been appointed Government physician. Franz was educated there, first under the guidance of his grandfather who had served the French army under Napoleon, and later in the local public school.

Even when he was very young, Franz Hartmann felt as if he had two distinct personalities in him: one was a mystic, a dreamer and an idealist, while the other was obstinate and self-willed, inclined to all sorts of mischief. He loved solitude, shunned the company of schoolmates, and reveled in the midst of nature, where intercourse with the spirits of nature was to him a very real thing. He was educated in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and his mind was influenced at first by its ceremonies, but none of the priests could give him any satisfactory explanation about the mystery and power back then. He was also interested in natural sciences, especially chemistry, and languages.[1][2]

Youth

At the age of 21 he volunteered for the Bavarian artillery and took part in the war between Austria and Italy in 1959. He then studied medicine and became a physician in 1859. As a student he excelled but he also enjoyed dueling, drinking and other amusements. He emigrated to America in 1865 and became an American citizen in 1867. He traveled around the U.S. and Mexico and worked as a doctor, first in St. Louis and then in New Orleans.

During his travels, Franz Hartmann deliberately associated himself with people of various religious backgrounds. He boarded a whole year in the house of a Jewish Rabbi. He had come to realize the utter emptiness of Christian beliefs, especially among the Protestants.[3]

Around 1871, he was beginning to show an interest in spiritualism:

Though adverse to Spiritualism, his curiosity nevertheless prompted him to visit a certain “materializing séance” held by a medium, where he witnessed very startling phenomena. He became interested and attended lectures by Professor J.M. Peebles, whose philosophy appeared to him to be rational, even though it overthrew all the materialistic theories.[4]

He studied the events and life of a medium in Denver, seeing firsthand the dangers of the occult, as the medium became increasingly under the power of the channeled spirit, and eventually slipped into madness. As his interest in spiritualism continued to develop, he visited a number of American Indian tribes to research their religious beliefs, and at some point was active in the Spiritualist circles of New Orleans.[5]

The Theosophical Society

Leaving the world of travel and spirits for a time, he married a woman from Texas, where they resided on her ranch. It was short lived however, as she died within months. In 1879 he went to Colorado and settled for the time being at Georgetown, feeling very much at home in the Rocky Mountains. During that time, he learned about Theosophy, coming across a copy of A. P. Sinnett’s book The Occult World. He contacted Col. H. S. Olcott, a correspondence ensued, and Col. Olcott invited him to the Theosophical Society's headquarters in Adyar. Hartmann was approved for membership in the Theosophical Society on March 25, 1883.[6]

Before leaving for India he stopped at Salt Lake City to study the life of the Mormons, and then proceeded to San Francisco where he fell desperately in love. A serious inner struggle ensued, but at last the desire for occult knowledge gained the upper hand. Hartmann left California on October 11, 1883 on board the SS Coptic.[7][8]

He arrived in Adyar on December 4, 1883[9] and served as the delegate of the three existing American branches to the December 1883 convention.[10] In February 1884, when the Founders left for Europe, he was appointed chairman of the newly created Board of Control to manage the affairs at headquarters during their absence. The Coulumb Affair came to a head while he was serving in that capacity, but he remained loyal to the TS and the Founders throughout. Later, he published a Report of observations Made During a Nine Months' Stay at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, which is said to be unsurpassed historically because of its objectivity and honesty. Hartmann did play a significant part in that drama. He was an unusual man and the Masters did show interest in him. As far as is known, he received at least ten letters from them, which have been preserved only partially.[11]

Dr. Hartmann left India with H.P.B. and her small party in March 1885 and after they had reached Europe, Dr. Hartmann remained with her at Naples and at Torre del Greco. When H.P.B. moved to Würzburg, he first went to Munich, to see his sister, Countess von Spreti, then to Kempten, in Bavaria, to visit his relatives and to have a look at the place where he had spent his youth.

Subsequently, he visited H.P.B., both at Würzburg and in London before she passed away. There was a time after the drama at Headquarters H.P.B had her doubts about Hartmann, but in the letter she wrote him on April 3, 1886 she told him the “Master’s voice told me I was mistaken in you and had to keep friends”.[12]

Dr. Hartmann longed to go back to America but when he was almost ready to leave he made the acquaintance of an occult student who was the leader of a small body of real Rosicrucians and decided to stay in Kempten to study with a group of mystical students, most of whom were poor people, without scholastic education of any kind, but had experienced within themselves some genuine spiritual conditions. Much of what Hartmann wrote in his later books was based on instructions he received from these people.[13]

Contact with Mahatma Morya

He had the opportunity to see Mahatma M. in his astral form:

On the evening of December 4, 1883, I arrived at Madras and was kindly received by Mr. G. Muttuswami Chettyar, who conducted me to his carriage, and away we went towards Adyar, situated in a suburb of the city of Madras, about six miles from the landing place of the steamer.

Before retiring to rest, I expressed a desire to see the pictures of the Mahatmas, these mysterious beings, superior to man, of whom I had heard so much, and I was taken upstairs, to see the "shrine" in which those pictures were kept. The pictures represented two men with oriental features and in corresponding dress. The expression of their faces was mild and yet serene.

[Some time later] I [saw] Mahatma [Morya] in his astral form. He appeared to me, accompanied by the astral forms of two chelas. His presence left an exhilarating and elevating influence, which did not fade away until several days after.[14]

Letters from Mahatma Koot Hoomi

Even though Sven Eek has written that at least ten letters were sent by the Mahatmas to Dr. Hartmann, only two have been published. During 1884, when Hartmann was involved with the Board of Control and the Coulomb affair, he received two letters of guidance from Mahatma Koot Hoomi, or K.H.

In Letter 28 of Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom First Series, K.H. writes about the qualities that make Damodar valuable.

In Letter 73 of Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom Second Series, K.H. dicussses how best to work with Madame Coulomb.

Lotusblüten

In 1888, Hartmann travelled for a while in the U.S.A. but returned soon to his home country. In 1893 he became the editor of Lotusblüten which appeared between the years 1893-1900, containing sixteen volumes. It was later revived under the title of Neue Lotusblüten (1908-1912, five volumes). [15]The issues of these periodicals contain many interesting articles from able writers, besides Hartmann’s own essays, some of which later appeared in book-form.

Founding of the Internationale Theosophische Verbrüderung [International theosophical fraternization]


German Theosophical magazine THEOSOPHIE HEUTE

Around the turn of the century, Hartmann was living in Austria and was then Director of a sanatorium for tuberculosis. At the time of the so-called “split” in the Theosophical Society, he identified himself with the American Organization headed by William Quan Judge, known then under the name of the Theosophical Society in America. After Judge’s death in 1896, he supported for a while the activities of Katherine Tingley, and was elected, August 1896, President of a Theosophical Group founded by her in Germany while on a round-the-world trip. His association with Katherine Tingley did not last, however, and he soon disbanded the group, and founded in Munich on September 3, 1897, a body known as the Internationale Theosophische Verbrüderung, on lines which he considered to be closer to those indicated by H.P.B. in the early days. It was under the jurisdiction of a three-member Council, the Doctor himself remaining until his passing the Corresponding Secretary of the group. A year after the founding, the seat of this group was transferred to Leipzig.[16]

The Society is still active today under the name Theosophische Gesellschaft in Deutschland e.V., holding summer conferences in Calw, Germany and other events in Berlin, Dresden, Gelsenkirchen, and Heidelberg. They have their own website with general information about the Society and the goals of Theosophy. Anybody who is interested can apply for membership. The yearly fee is 30 Euro.[17]The Society publishes the magazine "THEOSOPHIE HEUTE" (Theosophie Today) three times a year.[18] They also have a library in Heidelberg where members and non-members can borrow books.[19]

Magical Healing from a Distance


Dr. Franz Hartmann

In his autobiography Hartmann shares a personal experience with Dr. J. R. Newton, [20] a spiritual healer who amongst scholars today remains almost completely unknown but who was in the 1860s and 1870s one of the most celebrated and widely recognized non-medical healer of his day. [21] He explains, that Dr. Newton “performed unbelievable medical cures of people who turned to him by writing letters, who he never saw and without any external remedies, simply through his mental will".[22]”. Hartmann had been suffering for 36 years from a skin disease, most likely psoriasis, which was a huge burden in his life which kept him from getting any sleep. He had consulted numerous medical authorities in Europe and America but nobody could help him and eventually he started using chloroform and chloral to get a few hours of sleep every night. He decided to write Dr. Newton a letter and one night he sat at around 8:00 on the veranda of a farm close to an Indian tribe and described what followed: “I suddenly felt an electric shock run through my limbs and at the same moment I had the inner conviction that this was the magic healing power of Dr. Newton. The following night was the first in which I had peace and from that moment on I was completely healed". [23]”. Shortly afterwards he received a letter by Dr. Newton who told him the exact time (which overlapped with the described occurrence) who had written that he had sent him a mild electric shock which would be sufficient to heal him.

Ordo Templis Orientis

Dr. Hartmann was one of the co-founders of Ordo Templis Orientis (O.T.O.), international fraternal and religious organization, along with Carl Kellner, Theodor Reuss, Henry Klein and Charles Détré.

In 1902, Hartmann assisted Reuss in obtaining warrants from John Yarker to form a Sovereign Sanctuary in Germany for the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim, and to form a German Grand Orient for the Cernau Council Scottish Rite. Hartmann initially held high offices in both the Sovereign Sanctuary and the Grand Orient. In 1906, Reuss combined the two organizations under the umbrella of Kellner’s Ordo Templi Orientis, and Hartmann was given the title of “Honorary Grand Master of the Sovereign Sanctuary.”[24]

Later years

Dr. Hartmann died on August 7, 1912, from heart-failure at Kempten, in Southern Bavaria – the place of his birth.

Writings and Lectures

Hartmann was one of the most prolific writers on occultism of his time. The Union Index of Theosophical Periodicals lists 272 articles by or about Hartman. In 1884/1885, Hartmann published in The Theosophist several articles published under the pseudonym "American Buddhist" or "AB." Among these is the series "Practical Instructions for Students of Occultism," which formed the basis for his book, Magic, White and Black.

Hartmann inspired many members and gave hundreds of lectures in Germany. He wrote both in German and English. The Theosophical work was forbidden during the Nazi-regime and many of Hartmann's German books were destroyed by the Nazis but have been reprinted after 1945.[25]

He was the author of the following books in English:

• 'Report of observations Made During a Nine Months' Stay at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society. Madras: [the author], 1884.
• The Talking Village of Urur. A novel lampooning his colleagues at Adyar.
• Magic, White and Black. 1885. Available at Hathitrust.
• The Life and Doctrines of Paracelsus. 1887.
• An Adventure among the Rosicrucians. 1887. Available at Hathitrust.
• Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians. 1888.
• The Principles of Astrological Geomancy. 1889.
• In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom. 1890. Available at Hathitrust.
• The Talking Image of Urur. 1890.
• The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme. 1891. Available at Hathitrust.
• Occult Science in Medicine. 1893. Available at Hathitrust.
• The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus the Great. 1894. Available at Hathitrust.
• Among the Gnomes. 1895.
• The Life of Jehoshua. 1909. Available at Hathitrust.

German works:

• Wahrheit und Dichtung. Translated into English by Robert Hütwohl in Truth and Fiction: The "Theosophical Society" and the Miracle-Cabinet of Adyar. Santa Fe: Spirit of the Sun Publications, 1997. A critical appraisal of the events of 1884.

Additional resources

• "Hartmann, Franz" in Theosophy World.
• "Dr. Franz Hartmann, 33° 90° 95° IX°" in United States Grand Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis.
• "Franz Hartmann" at Mystical Missal
• "Franz Hartmann" by Boris de Zirkoff
• "Dr. Franz Hartmann" by T. Apiryion
• Letters of H.P.B. to Dr. Franz Hartmann
• "Memorable Recollections from the Life of the Author of the Lotusblüten - Installment 1" and "Installment 2"
• "Franz Hartmann's Lotusblüten Journal"
• "Autobiography of Dr. Franz Hartmann" The Occult Review
• "Hartmann, Franz" (in German)

Notes

1. de Zirkoff, Boris. Franz Hartmann. http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-n ... rtmann.pdf Web. N.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016
2. Dr. Hartmann, Franz. Autobiografische Schriften: Denkwürdige Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers der “Lotusblüten”. Schatzkammerverlang, o.J. (ca. 1978), page 8 ff
3. Boris de Zirkoff. Franz Hartmann. Web. N.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
4. Boris de Zirkoff, "Dr. Franz Hartmann, German physician, author, traveller, and Theosophist" at Philalethians website, page 4.
5. Eek, Sven. Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement. The Theosophical Publishing House, 1965, page 598ff
6. Theosophical Society General Membership Register, 1875-1942 at http://tsmembers.org/. See book 1, entry 1811 (website file: 1A/55).
7. Fergeson, Robert, Franz Hartmann. Franz Hartmann. Web. N.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
8. de Zirkoff, Boris. Franz Hartmann. Web. N.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.
9. Linton, George. Reader’s Guide to the Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Theosophical Publishing House, January 1972.
10. Michael Gomes, "The Coulomb Case" Theosophical History Occasional Papers Volume X (Fullerton, California: Theosophical History, 2005), 5.
11. Eek, Sven. Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement. The Theosophical Publishing House, 1965, page 601.
12. Letters of H.P.B. to Dr. Hartmann. Letter VI. http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/blavatskyhartmann6.htm. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
13. de Zirkoff, Boris. Franz Hartmann. Web. N.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.
14. A Casebook of Encounters with the Theosophical Mahatmas Case 42, compiled and edited by Daniel H. Caldwell
15. Eek, Sven. Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement. The Theosophical Publishing House, 1965, page 607
16. de Zirkoff, Boris. Franz Hartmann. http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-n ... rtmann.pdf Web. N.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.
17. Theosophische Gesellschaft in Deutschland e.V. N.d. http://theosophische-gesellschaft.org/C ... schaft.htm. Web. 10 October 2016.
18. Theosophische Gesellschaft in Deutschland e.V. N.d. http://theosophische-gesellschaft.org/C ... chrift.htm. Web. 10 October 2016.
19. Theosophische Gesellschaft in Deutschland e.V. N.d. http://theosophische-gesellschaft.org/C ... iothek.htm. Web. 10 October 2016.
20. Dr. Hartmann, Franz. Autobiografische Schriften: Denkwürdige Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers der “Lotusblüten”. Schatzkammerverlang, o.J. (ca. 1978), page 64
21. Cutten, G.B. Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing. Web. n.D. Web. 16 Oct. 2016https://ppquimbymbeddydebatedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/a-story-untolde28094chapter-three1.pdf Web. 16 Oct. 2016
22. Dr. Hartmann, Franz. Autobiografische Schriften: Denkwürdige Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers der “Lotusblüten”. Schatzkammerverlang, o.J. (ca. 1978), page 64
23. Dr. Hartmann, Franz. Autobiografische Schriften: Denkwürdige Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers der “Lotusblüten”. Schatzkammerverlang, o.J. (ca. 1978), page 65
24. "Dr. Franz Hartmann, 33° 90° 95° IX°" in United States Grand Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis. Accessed 5 December 2019.
25. Gertrude Bäzner letter to Boris de Zirkoff. 18 February 1969. Boris de Zirkoff Papers. Records Series 22. Theosophical Society in America Archives.

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Ragunath Row [Dewan Bahadur Ragunath Row] [Ragoonath Row] [Raghunath Row] [Rajanath Rao] [Ragoonath Rao]
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/7/20

Dewan Bahadur Ragunath Row (also spelled Ragoonath or Raghunath) was the first President of the Madras Theosophical Society, of which T. Subba Row was the Corresponding Secretary.

On June 3, 1882, Mme. Blavatsky answered a letter of his that was later published under the title of Hindu Widow Marriage. In 1887 Mme. Blavatsky remarked about him:

Ragunath Rao, a Brâhmana of the highest caste, who has presided for three years over The Theosophical Society of Madras, and who is at present Prime Minister (Dewan) of the Holkar, is the most fervent reformer in India.

He is fighting, as so many other Theosophists, the law of widowhood, on the strength of texts from Manu and the Vedas. He has already freed several hundred young widows, destined to celibacy because of the loss of their husbands in their childhood, and he has made possible their remarriage in spite of the hue and cry of protest on the part of orthodox Brâhmanas. He laughs at castes; and the one hundred odd Theosophical Branches in India help him in this all-out war against superstition and ecclesiastical cruelty.[1]

In December 1888, when Col. Olcott left for Japan, he appointed Ragunath Row as part of a committee to exercise all Executive functions on his behalf during his absence.

Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VIII (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1990), 82.

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Mahatma
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/7/20

Mahatma (devanāgarī: महात्मन् mahātma) is a Sanskrit term meaning "Great Soul". This epithet is commonly applied to saints, spiritual teachers, and even prominent people.

In Theosophical literature the term is used to refer to the Masters of the Wisdom.

General description

In The Theosophical Glossary H. P. Blavatsky defines the term as follows:

Mahâtma. Lit., “great soul”. An adept of the highest order. Exalted beings who, having attained to the mastery over their lower principles are thus living unimpeded by the “man of flesh”, and are in possession of knowledge and power commensurate with the stage they have reached in their spiritual evolution. Called in Pali Rahats and Arhats.[1]

The Mahatmas are occultists who have developed the psychic and spiritual powers that are still latent in most human beings:

A Mahatma is a personage who, by special training and education, has evolved those higher faculties and has attained that spiritual knowledge which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through numberless series of incarnations during the process of cosmic evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile, against the purposes of Nature. . .

The occultist, when he has identified himself thoroughly with his Atma [True Self], acts upon the Buddhi [Mind that knows], for, according to the laws of Cosmic Evolution, the Purusha [Spirit]— the universal seventh principle –– is perpetually acting upon and manifesting itself through Prakriti [Nature] — the universal sixth principle. Thus the MAHATMA, who has become one with his seventh principle [Atman]— which is identical with Purusha, since there is no isolation in the spiritual monad [The One]— is practically a creator, for he has identified himself with the evoluting and the manifesting energy of nature.[2]

However, since the Mahatmas are incarnated, they are subject to limitations when acting through the body. As Master K.H. wrote in one of his letters to A. P. Sinnett:

For you know — or think you know, of one K.H. — and can know but of one, whereas there are two distinct personages answering to that name in him you know. The riddle is only apparent and easy to solve, were you only to know what a real Mahatma is. You have seen by the Kiddle incident — perchance allowed to develop to its bitter end for a purpose — that even an "adept" when acting in his body is not beyond mistakes due to human carelessness.[3]

See also

• Adepts
• Masters of Wisdom
• A list of Wiki articles on individual Mahatmas and Adepts

Online resources

Articles

• Mahātma at Theosopedia
• Mahatmas and Chelas by H. P. Blavatsky
• Theosophical Mahatmas by H. P. Blavatsky

Notes

1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (Krotona, CA: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 201.
2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1989), 261-262.
3. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 130 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 433.

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Henry Kiddle
by Theosophy Wiki
Accessed: 9/7/20

Henry Kiddle was an American educator with an interest in spiritualism, best known for accusing Mahatma Koot Hoomi of plagiarism. He was born on January 15, 1824 in Bath, England. During the years 1846-1856, he was principal of a grammar school. He became deputy superintendent, and later superintendent, of schools in New York City. However, in 1879, he was forced to resign due to adverse public reaction to his belief in spiritualism. That year, New York Authors' Publishing Company published a book called Spirit Communications - Presenting a Review of the Future Life, with Kiddle as editor. He died in 1891.[1]

The Kiddle Incident

On August 15, 1880, Mr. Kiddle gave a lecture at Mount Pleasant, New York convention, entitled "The Present Outlook of Spiritualism". This speech was published in the same month in Boston in the The Banner of Light magazine.

In December 1880 certain passages from this talk appeared in one of the Mahatma Letters received by Mr. Sinnett. In 1881, the latter published his book The Occult World, in which much of this letter was reproduced verbatim.

Mr. Kiddle read the book and, he claimed, wrote to Sinnett through his publisher, although it is possible that this letter was not received. On September 1, 1883, he wrote to Stainton Moses (M.A. Oxon), then editor of Light (Vol. III, No. 139, Sept. 1, 1883, p. 392), accusing Mahatma K. H. of plagiarism. Sinnett responded to this letter at once, from which resulted a great deal of correspondence.[2]

For some time the Mahatma did not bother to answer the charges of plagiarism, apparently attaching little importance to it. But seeing how distressed Sinnett was over the whole matter, he undertook to explain. Eventually, the Master allowed to refute the charges publicly without giving much explanation, only based on the fact that he had used Mr. Kiddle's sentences modifying them to express his own ideas, and therefore he was not plagiarizing concepts but only using well-constructed sentences in English to suit his own purposes:

Having distorted the ideas "appropriated", and, as now published — diverted them from their original intention to suit my own "very different purpose", on such grounds my literary larceny does not appear very formidable after all?[3]

Mme. Blavatsky published in The Theosophist an editorial entitled "Have we to Lower the Flag of Truce?" arguing on these lines.[4]

But in one of his letters the Master explained to Mr. Sinnett how this came to happen, although he asked the Englishman to keep the explanation to himself and a few other Theosophists. He wrote:

I had directed my attention some two months previous to the great annual camping movement of the latter [the American Spiritualists], in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pronounced them. Hence, my entire ignorance of the lecturer whom I have innocently defrauded as it would appear, and who now raises the hue and cry.[5]

The case got more confused because the letter precipitated by a young and inexperienced chela omitted some passages where the Master made more explicit his reference to ideas of the American Spiritualists. He explained:

Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, — the poor little boy having done but that which he was told.[6]

The letter in question was framed by me while on a journey and on horse-back. It was dictated mentally, in the direction of, and "precipitated" by, a young chela not yet expert at this branch of Psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted and the other half more or less distorted by the "artist." When asked by him at the time, whether I would look it over and correct I answered, imprudently, I confess — "anyhow will do, my boy — it is of no great importance if you skip a few words." I was physically very tired by a ride of 48 hours consecutively, and (physically again) — half asleep. Besides this I had very important business to attend to psychically and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. When I woke I found it had already been sent on, and, as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought.[7]

I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current Spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom. So to say, (the "despoiled victim's" — Mr. Kiddle's — utterances) came out as a "high light" and were more sharply photographed (first in the chela's brain and thence on the paper before him, a double process and one far more difficult than "thought reading" simply) while the rest, — my remarks thereupon and arguments — as I now find, are hardly visible and quite blurred on the original scraps before me.[8]

In letter 117 the Master offers the text as originally intended ...

My good and faithful friend — the explanation herein contained would have never been made but that I have of late perceived how troubled you were during your conversations upon the subject of "plagiarism" with some friends — C.C.M. particularly. Now especially that I have received your last in which you mention so delicately "this wretched little Kiddle incident," to withhold truth from you — would be cruelty; nevertheless, to give it out to the world of prejudiced and malignantly disposed Spiritualists, would be sheer folly. Therefore, we must compromise: I must lay both yourself and Mr. Ward, who shares my confidence, under a pledge never to explain without special permission from me the facts hereinafter stated by me to anyone — not even to M. A. Oxon and C. C. Massey included for reasons I will mention presently and that you will readily understand. If pressed by any of them you may simply answer that the "psychological mystery" was cleared up to yourself and some others; and — IF satisfied — you may add, that "the parallel passages" cannot be called plagiarism or words to this effect. I give to you carte blanche to say anything you like — even the reason why I rather have the real facts withheld from the general public and most of the London Fellows — all except the details you alone with a few others will know. As you will perceive, I do not even bind you to defend my reputation — unless you feel yourself satisfied beyond any doubt, and have well understood the explanation yourself. And now I may tell you why I prefer being regarded by your friends an "ugly plagiarist."

Having been called repeatedly a "sophist," a "myth," a "Mrs. Harris" and a "lower intelligence" by the enemies, I rather not be regarded as a deliberate artificer and a liar by bogus friends — I mean those who would accept me reluctantly even were I to rise to their own ideal in their estimation instead of the reverse — as at present. Personally, I am indifferent, of course, to the issue. But for your sake and that of the Society I may make one more effort to clear the horizon of one of its "blackest" clouds. Let us then recapitulate the situation and see what your Western sages say of it. "K.H." — it is settled — is a plagiarist — if it be, after all a question of K.H. and not of the "two Occidental Humourists." In the former case, an alleged "adept" unable to evolve out of his "small oriental brain" any idea or words worthy of Plato turned to that deep tank of profound philosophy, the Banner of Light, and drew therefrom the sentences best fitted to express his rather entangled ideas, which had fallen from the inspired lips of Mr. Henry Kiddle! In the other alternative, the case becomes still more difficult to comprehend — save on the theory of the irresponsible mediumship of the pair of Western jokers. However startling and impracticable the theory, that two persons who have been clever enough to carry on undetected the fraud of personating for five years several adepts — not one of whom resembles the other; — two persons, of whom one, at any rate, is a fair master of English and can hardly be suspected of paucity of original ideas, should turn for a bit of plagiarism to a journal as the Banner, widely known and read by most English knowing Spiritualists; and above all, pilfer their borrowed sentences from the discourse of a conspicuous new convert, whose public utterances were at the very time being read and welcomed by every medium and Spiritualist; however improbable all this and much more, yet any alternative seems more welcome than simple truth. The decree is pronounced; "K.H.", whoever he is, has stolen passages from Mr. Kiddle. Not only this, but as shown by "a Perplexed Reader" — he has omitted inconvenient words and has so distorted the ideas he has borrowed as to divert them from their original intention to suit his own very different purpose."

Well, to this, if I had any desire to argue out the question I might answer that of what constitutes plagiarism, being a borrowing of ideas rather than of words and sentences, there was none in point of fact, and I stand acquitted by my own accusers. As Milton says — "such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower is accounted plagiary." Having distorted the ideas "appropriated", and, as now published — diverted them from their original intention to suit my own "very different purpose", on such grounds my literary larceny does not appear very formidable after all? And even, were there no other explanation offered, the most that could be said is, that owing to the poverty of words at the command of Mr. Sinnett's correspondent, and his ignorance of the art of English composition, he has adapted a few of innocent Mr. Kiddle's effusions, some of his excellently constructed sentences — to express his own contrary ideas. The above is the only line of argument I have given to, and permitted to be used in, an editorial by the "gifted editor" of the Theosophist, who has been off her head since the accusation. Verily woman — is a dreadful calamity in this fifth race! However, to you and some few, whom you have permission to select among your most trusted theosophists, taking first care to pledge them by word of honour to keep the little revelation to themselves, I will now explain the real facts of this "very puzzling" psychological mystery. The solution is so simple, and the circumstances so amusing, that I confess I laughed when my attention was drawn to it, some time since. Nay, it is calculated to make me smile even now, were it not the knowledge of the pain it gives to some true friends.

The letter in question was framed by me while on a journey and on horse-back. It was dictated mentally, in the direction of, and "precipitated" by, a young chela not yet expert at this branch of Psychic chemistry, and who had to transcribe it from the hardly visible imprint. Half of it, therefore, was omitted and the other half more or less distorted by the "artist." When asked by him at the time, whether I would look it over and correct I answered, imprudently, I confess — "anyhow will do, my boy — it is of no great importance if you skip a few words." I was physically very tired by a ride of 48 hours consecutively, and (physically again) — half asleep. Besides this I had very important business to attend to psychically and therefore little remained of me to devote to that letter. It was doomed, I suppose. When I woke I found it had already been sent on, and, as I was not then anticipating its publication, I never gave it from that time a thought. — Now, I had never evoked spiritual Mr. Kiddle's physiognomy, never had heard of his existence, was not aware of his name.

Having — owing to our correspondence and your Simla surroundings and friends — felt interested in the intellectual progress of the Phenomenalists which progress by the bye, I found rather moving backward in the case of American Spiritualists — I had directed my attention some two months previous to the great annual camping movement of the latter, in various directions, among others to Lake or Mount Pleasant. Some of the curious ideas and sentences representing the general hopes and aspirations of the American Spiritualists remained impressed on my memory, and I remembered only these ideas and detached sentences quite apart from the personalities of those who harboured or pronounced them. Hence, my entire ignorance of the lecturer whom I have innocently defrauded as it would appear, and who now raises the hue and cry. Yet, had I dictated my letter in the form it now appears in print, it would certainly look suspicious, and, however far from what is generally called plagiarism, yet in the absence of any inverted commas, it would lay a foundation for censure. But I did nothing of the kind, as the original impression now before me clearly shows. And before I proceed any further, I must give you some explanation of this mode of precipitation. The recent experiments of the Psychic Research Society will help you greatly to comprehend the rationale of this "mental telegraphy". You have observed in the Journal of that body how thought transference is cumulatively affected. The image of the geometrical or other figure which the active brain has had impressed upon it, is gradually imprinted upon the recipient brain of the passive subject — as the series of reproductions illustrated in the cuts show. Two factors are needed to produce a perfect and instantaneous mental telegraphy — close concentration in the operator, and complete receptive passivity in the "reader" — subject. Given a disturbance of either condition, and the result is proportionately imperfect. The "reader" does not see the image as in the "telegrapher's" brain, but as arising in his own. When the latter's thought wanders, the psychic current becomes broken, the communication disjointed and incoherent. In a case such as mine, the chela had, as it were, to pick up what he could from the current I was sending him and, as above remarked, patch the broken bits together as best he might. Do not you see the same thing in ordinary mesmerism — the maya impressed upon the subject's imagination by the operator becoming, now stronger, now feebler, as the latter keeps the intended illusive image more or less steadily before his own fancy? And how often the clairvoyants reproach the magnetiser for taking their thoughts off the subject under consideration? And the mesmeric healer will always bear you witness that if he permits himself to think of anything but the vital current he is pouring into his patient, he is at once compelled to either establish the current afresh or stop the treatment. So I, in this instance, having at the moment more vividly in my mind the psychic diagnosis of current Spiritualistic thought, of which the Lake Pleasant speech was one marked symptom, unwittingly transferred that reminiscence more vividly than my own remarks upon it and deductions therefrom. So to say, (the "despoiled victim's" — Mr. Kiddle's — utterances) came out as a "high light" and were more sharply photographed (first in the chela's brain and thence on the paper before him, a double process and one far more difficult than "thought reading" simply) while the rest, — my remarks thereupon and arguments — as I now find, are hardly visible and quite blurred on the original scraps before me. Put into a mesmeric subject's hand a sheet of blank paper, tell him it contains a certain chapter of some book that you have read, concentrate your thoughts upon the words, and see how — provided that he has himself not read the chapter, but only takes it from your memory — his reading will reflect your own more or less vivid successive recollections of your author's language. The same as to the precipitation by the chela of the transferred thought upon (or rather, into) paper: if the mental picture received be feeble his visible reproduction of it must correspond. And the more so in proportion to the closeness of attention he gives. He might — were he but merely a person of the true mediumistic temperament — be employed by his "Master" as a sort of psychic printing machine producing lithographed or psychographed impressions of what the operator had in mind; his nerve-system, the machine, his nerve-aura the printing fluid, the colours drawn from that exhaustless storehouse of pigments (as of everything else) the Akasa. But the medium and the chela are diametrically dissimilar and the latter acts consciously, except under exceptional circumstances during development not necessary to dwell upon here.

Well, as soon as I heard of the charge — the commotion among my defenders having reached me across the eternal snows — I ordered an investigation into the original scraps of the impression. At the first glance I saw that it was I, the only and most guilty party, — the poor little boy having done but that which he was told. Having now restored the characters and the lines — omitted and blurred beyond hope of recognition by anyone but their original evolver — to their primitive colour and places, I now find my letter reading quite differently as you will observe. Turning to the Occult World — the copy sent by you — to the page cited, (namely p. 149 in the first edition) I was struck, upon carefully reading it, by the great discrepancy between the sentences. A gap, so to say, of ideas between part 1 (from line 1 to line 25) and part 2 — the plagiarized portion so-called. There seems no connection at all between the two; for what has, indeed, the determination of our chiefs (to prove to a skeptical world that physical phenomena are as reducible to law as anything else) to do with Plato's ideas which "rule the world" or "practical Brotherhood of Humanity?" I fear that it is your personal friendship alone for the writer that has blinded you to the discrepancy and disconnection of ideas in this abortive "precipitation", even until now. Otherwise you could not have failed to perceive that something was wrong on that page; that there was a glaring defect in the connection. Moreover, I have to plead guilty to another sin: I have never so much as looked at my letters in print — until the day of the forced investigation. I had read only your own original matter, feeling it a loss of time to go over my hurried bits and scraps of thought. But now, I have to ask you to read the passages as they were originally dictated by me, and make the comparison with the Occult World before you.

I transcribe them with my own hand this once, whereas the letter in your possession was written by the chela. I ask you also to compare this hand-writing with that of some of the earlier letters you received from me. Bear in mind, also the "O.L.'s" emphatic denial at Simla that my first letter had ever been written by myself. I felt annoyed at her gossip and remarks then; it may serve a good purpose now. Alas! by no means are we all "gods"; especially when you remember that since the palmy days of the "impressions" and "precipitations" — "K.H." has been born into a new and higher light, and even that one, in no wise the most dazzling to be acquired on this earth. Verily the Light of Omniscience and infallible Prevision on this earth — that shines only for the highest CHOHAN alone is yet far away from me!

I enclose the copy verbatim from the restored fragments underlining in red the omitted sentences for easier comparison.

. . . Phenomenal elements previously unthought of, . . . will disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right to readmit every element of speculation which Socrates had discarded. The problems of universal being are not unattainable or worthless if attained. But the latter can be solved only by mastering those elements that are now looming on the horizons of the profane. Even the Spirit[ualis]ts. with their mistaken, grotesquely perverted views and notions are hazily realizing the new situation. They prophesy and their prophecies are not always without a point of truth in them, of intuitional pre-vision, so to say. Hear some of them reasserting the old, old axiom that "Ideas rule the world"; and as men's minds receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete the world (will) advance; mighty revolutions (will) spring from them; institutions (aye, and even creeds and powers, they may add) — WILL crumble before their onward march crushed by their own inherent force not the irresistible force of the "new ideas" offered by the Spiritualists! Yes; they are both right and wrong. It will be just as impossible to resist their influence when the time comes as to stay the progress of the tide, — to be sure. But what the Spiritualists fail to perceive, I see, and their "Spirits" to explain (the latter knowing no more than what they can find in the brains of the former) is, that all this will come gradually on; and that before it comes they as well as ourselves, have all a duty to perform, a task set before us: that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena or the agency called Spiritualism but these universal ideas that we have precisely to study: the noumenon not the phenomenon, for, to comprehend the LATTER we have first to understand the FORMER. They do touch man's true position in the Universe, to be sure, — but only in relation to his FUTURE not PREVIOUS births. It is not physical phenomena however wonderful that can ever explain to man his origin let alone his ultimate destiny, or as one of them expresses it — the relation of the mortal to the immortal, of the temporary to the eternal, of the finite to the Infinite, etc., etc. They talk very glibly of what they regard as new ideas "larger, more general, grander, more comprehensive, and at the same time, they recognise instead of the eternal reign of immutable law, the universal reign of law as the expression of a divine will (!). Forgetful of their earlier beliefs, and that "it repented the Lord that he had made Man" these would-be philosophers and reformers would impress upon their hearers that the expression of the said divine Will "is unchanging and unchangeable — in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL NOW, while to mortals (uninitiated?) time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material plane" — of which they know as little as of their spiritual spheres — a speck of dirt they have made the latter like our own earth, a future life that the true philosopher would rather avoid than court. But I dream with my eyes open. . . . At all events this is not any privileged teachings of their own. Most of these ideas are taken piece-meal from Plato and the Alexandrian Philosophers. It is what we all study and what many have solved. . . . . etc., etc.

This is the true copy of the original document as now restored — the "Rosetta stone" of the Kiddle incident. And, now, if you have understood my explanations about the process, as given in a few words further back, — you need not ask me how it came to pass that though somewhat disconnected, the sentences transcribed by the chela are mostly those that are now considered as plagiarized while the "missing links" are precisely those phrases that would have shown the passages were simply reminiscences if not quotations — the key-note around which came grouping my own reflections on that morning. In those days you were yet hesitating to see in Occultism, or the "O.L.'s" phenomena anything beyond a variety of Spiritualism and mediumship. For the first time in my life I had paid a serious attention to the utterances of the poetical "media", of the so-called "inspirational" oratory of the English and American lecturers, its quality and limitations. I was struck with all this brilliant but empty verbiage, and recognised for the first time fully its pernicious intellectual tendency. M. knew all about them — but since I had never had anything to do with any of them they interested me very little. It was their gross and unsavoury materialism hiding clumsily under its shadowy spiritual veil that attracted my thoughts at the time. While dictating the sentences quoted — a small portion of the many I had been pondering over for some days — it was those ideas that were thrown out en relief the most, leaving out my own parenthetical remarks to disappear in the precipitation. Had I looked over the impressed negative (?) there would have been one more weapon broken in the enemy's hand. Having neglected this duty my Karma evolved, what the mediums of the future and the Banner may call the "Kiddle triumph." The coming ages will divide Society after the manner of your modern Baconians and Shakesperians into two quarrelling camps of partisans, called respectively the "Kiddlites" and the "Koot-humites" who will fight over the important literary problem — "which one of the two plagiarized from the other"? I may be told that meanwhile the American and English spiritualists are gloating over the "Sinnett — K.H." Sedan? May their great orator and champion and they enjoy their triumph in peace and happiness, for no "adept" will ever cast his Himalayan shadow to obscure their innocent felicity. To you and a few other true friends I feel it my duty to give an explanation. To all others I leave the right to regard Mr. Kiddle — whoever he may be — as the inspirer of your humble servant. I have done, and you may now, in your turn, do what you please with these facts, except the making use of them in print or even speaking of them to the opponents, save in general terms. You must understand my reasons for this. One does not cease entirely, my dear friend to be a man nor lose one's dignity for being an adept. In the latter capacity, one, no doubt, remains in every case quite indifferent to the opinion of the outside world. The former always draws the line between ignorant surmise and — deliberate, personal insult. I cannot really be expected to take advantage of the first to be ever hiding the problematic "adept" behind the skirts of the two supposed "humourists"; and as man, I had too much experience lately in such above said insults with Messrs. S. Moses and C. C. Massey to give them any more opportunities to doubt the word of "K.H.", or see in him a vulgar defendant, a kind of guilty, tricky Babu before a panel of stern European jurymen and Judge.

I have no time to answer fully now your last, long business letter, but will shortly. Nor do I answer Mr. Ward — since it is useless. I highly approve of his coming to India, but disapprove as highly his fancy of bringing Mr. C. C. Massey here. The result of the latter would be to injure the cause among Englishmen. Distrust and prejudice are contagious. His presence in Calcutta would be as disastrous as Mr. Ward's presence and services to the cause I live for would be beneficent and fruitful of good effects. But I would insist upon his passing some time at the Headquarters before his taking up his proposed labour of love among the officials.

It is certainly most flattering to hear from him that Mrs. K. "had essayed her best to meet me in one or more of her trances;" and most sad to learn that "thou' she had invoked you (me) with all her spiritual intensity — she could get no response." It is too bad, really, that this "ladie fair" should have been put to the trouble of a fruitless ramble thro' space to find insignificant me. Evidently we move in different astral "circles," and hers is not the first instance of persons becoming skeptical as to the existence of things outside their own milieu. There are, you know, "Alps upon Alps" and from no two peaks does one get the same view! Nevertheless, it is, as I say flattering to find her evoking me by name, while preparing for myself and colleagues a disastrous Waterloo. To tell the truth, I was not aware of the former, tho' painfully conscious of the latter. Yet, had not even the dismal plot ever entered her spiritual mind, to be honest, I do not think I could have ever responded to her call. As an American Spiritualist would put it — there seems to be very little affinity between our two natures. She is too haughty and imperious, too self-complacent for me; besides which she is too young and "fascinating" for a poor mortal like myself. To speak seriously, Mme. Gebhard is quite another sort of person. Her's is a genuine, sterling nature; she is a born Occultist in her intuitions and I have made a few experiments with her — though it is rather M.'s duty than my own, and that, as you would say, it was not "originally contemplated" that I should be made to visit all the sibyls and sirens of the Theosophical establishment. My own preferences make me keep to the safer side of the two sexes in my occult dealings with them, though for certain reasons, even such visits — in my own natural skin — have to be extremely restricted and limited. I enclose a telegram from Mr. Brown to the "O.L." This day week I will be at Madras en route to Singapore and Ceylon, and Burmah. I will answer you through one of the chelas at the Headquarters.

The poor "O.L." in disgrace? Oh dear, no! We have nothing against the old woman with the exception that she is one. To save us from being insulted as she calls it, she is ready to give our real addresses and thus lead to a catastrophe. The real reason is that the hapless creature was too much compromised, too bitterly insulted owing to our existence. It all falls upon her and, therefore, it is but right that she should be screened in some things.

Yes; I would see you, President, if possible. Unless permitted by the Chohan (who forwards you His Blessing) to act on other lines of business — i.e. psychologically I renounce to trust for the rebirth of Phoenix to the good-will of my countrymen. The feeling between the two races is now intensely bitter and anything undertaken by the natives now, is sure to be opposed to the bitter end by the Europeans in India. Let us drop it for a while. I'll answer your questions in my next. If you find time to write for the Theosophist and can induce someone else, as Mr. Myers, for instance — you will oblige me personally. You are wrong in distrusting Subba Row's writings. He does not write willingly, to be sure, but he will never make a false statement. See his last in the November number. His statement concerning the errors of General Cunningham ought to be regarded as a whole revelation leading to a revolution in Indian archaeology. Ten to one — it will never receive the attention it deserves. Why? Simply because his statements contain sober facts, and that what you Europeans prefer generally is fiction so long the latter dovetails with, and answers preconceived theories.

K. H.

The more I think of it, the more reasonable appears to me your plan of a Society within the London Society. Try, for something may come out of it.

-- Mahatma Letter No. 117, by Theosophy Wiki

for comparison with the final precipitation (letter 12).

No — you do not "write too much." I am only sorry to have so little time at my disposal; hence — to find myself unable to answer you as speedily as I otherwise would. Of course I have to read every word you write: otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And whether it be through my physical or spiritual eyes the time required for it is practically the same. As much may be said of my replies. For, whether I "precipitate" or dictate them or write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain before it can be repeated by "precipitation." As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for otherwise — as often found in bad photographs — the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on, so we have to first arrange our sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you. When science will have learned more about the mystery of the lithophyl (or lithobiblion) and how the impress of leaves comes originally to take place on stones, then will I be able to make you better understand the process. But you must know and remember one thing: we but follow and servilely copy nature in her works.

No; we need argue no longer upon the unfortunate question of a "Day with Mad. B." It is the more useless, since you say, you have no right to crush and grind your uncivil and often blackguardly opponents in the "Pioneer" — even in your own defence — your proprietors objecting to the mention of occultism altogether. As they are Christians it is no matter of great wonder. Let us be charitable and hope they will get their own reward: die and become angels of light and Truth — winged paupers of the Christians heaven.

Unless you join several, and organize somehow or other, I am afraid I will prove but of little help for you practically. My dear friend, I have my "proprietors" also.

For reasons best known to themselves they have set their foot upon the idea of teaching isolated individuals. I will correspond with you and give you proofs from time to time of my existence and presence. To teach or instruct you — is altogether another question. Hence to sit with your lady is more than useless. Your magnetisms are too similar and — you will get nothing.

I will translate my Essay and send it to you as soon as I can. Your idea of corresponding with your friends and fellows is the next best thing to do. But do not fail to write to Lord Lindsay.

I am a little "too hard" upon Hume, you say. Am I? His is a highly intellectual and, I confess, a spiritual nature too. Yet, he is every bit of him "Sir Oracle." It may be that it is the very exuberance of that great intellect which seeks issue through every chink, and never loses an opportunity to relieve the fulness of the brain, which overflows with thought. Finding in his quiet daily life too meagre a field with but "Moggy" and Davison to sow upon — his intellect bursts the dam and pounces upon every imagined event, every possible though improbable fact his imagination can suggest, to interpret it in his own conjectural way. Nor do I wonder that such a skilled workman in intellectual mosaic as he, finding suddenly, the most fertile of quarries, the most precious of colour-stores in this idea of our Fraternity and the T.S. — should pick out ingredients from it to daub our faces with. Placing us before a mirror which reflects us as he finds us in his own fertile imagination he says: "Now, you mouldy relics of a mouldy Past, look at yourselves how you really are!" A very, very excellent man our friend Mr. Hume, but utterly unfit for moulding into an adept.

As little, and far less than yourself does he seem to realize our real object in the formation of an A.I. Branch. The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute, indeed, a body of the highest spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at large. Yet, it is not as a mere addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation in the world of science that they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the interests of mankind. The terms "unscientific," "impossible," "hallucination," "impostor," have hitherto been used in a very loose, careless way, as implying in the occult phenomena something either mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated imposture. And this is why our chiefs have determined to shed upon a few recipient minds more light upon the subject, and to prove to them that such manifestations are as reducible to law as the simplest phenomena of the physical universe. The wiseacres say: "The age of miracles is past," but we answer, "it never existed!" While not unparalleled, or without their counterpart in universal history, these phenomena must and WILL come with an overpowering influence upon the world of sceptics and bigots. They have to prove both destructive and constructive — destructive in the pernicious errors of the past, in the old creeds and superstitions which suffocate in their poisonous embrace like the Mexican weed nigh all mankind; but constructive of new institutions of a genuine, practical Brotherhood of Humanity where all will become co-workers of nature, will work for the good of mankind with and through the higher planetary Spirits — the only "Spirits" we believe in. Phenomenal elements, previously unthought of — undreamt of — will soon begin manifesting themselves day by day with constantly augmented force, and disclose at last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right: ideas rule the world; and, as men's minds will receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the world will advance: mighty revolutions will spring from them; creeds and even powers will crumble before their onward march crushed by the irresistible force. It will be just as impossible to resist their influx, when the time comes, as to stay the progress of the tide. But all this will come gradually on, and before it comes we have a duty set before us; that of sweeping away as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New ideas have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most momentous subjects. It is not physical phenomena but these universal ideas that we study, as to comprehend the former, we have to first understand the latter.

They touch man's true position in the universe, in relation to his previous and future births; his origin and ultimate destiny; the relation of the mortal to the immortal; of the temporary to the eternal; of the finite to the infinite; ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive, recognising the universal reign of Immutable Law, unchanging and unchangeable in regard to which there is only an ETERNAL Now, while to uninitiated mortals time is past or future as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt. This is what we study and what many have solved.

And now it is your province to decide which will you have: the highest philosophy or simple exhibitions of occult powers. Of course this is by far not the last word between us and — you will have time to think it over. The Chiefs want a "Brotherhood of Humanity," a real Universal Fraternity started; an institution which would make itself known throughout the world and arrest the attention of the highest minds. I will send you my Essay. Will you be my co-worker and patiently wait for minor phenomena? I think I foresee the answer. At all events the holy lamp of spiritual light burning in you (however dimly) there is hope for you, and — for me, also. Yes; put yourself in search after natives if there are no English people to be had. But think you, the spirit and power of persecution gone from this enlightened age? Time will prove. Meanwhile, being human I have to rest. I took no sleep for over 60 hours.

Ever yours truly,

KOOT' HOOMI.

-- Mahatma Letter No. 12, by Theosophy Wiki

Online resources

Articles

• Kiddle Incident at Theosopedia
• Have we to Lower the Flag of Truce? by H. P. Blavatsky
• "Himalayan and Other Mahatmas" by Rama Sourindro Gargya Deva
• Letter to the Editor: Esoteric Buddhism by Henry Kiddle
• Explanation of the "Kiddle Incident" in the Fourth Edition of The "Occult World" by C.C. Massey

Additional resources

• "The Kiddle Incident". Original articles and letters published by Blavatsky Study Center
Other resources
• Neff, Mary K. The "Brothers" of Madame Blavatsky. Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1932. See Chapter X, pages 97-116.

Notes

1. Henry Kiddle at Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography.
2. George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 236.
3. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 397.
4. The Theosophist, V:3(51), December, 1883, pp. 69-70.
5. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 398.
6. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 400.
7. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 398.
8. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 117 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 399.

[admin]

Yajna
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 9/7/20

-- Burnt, Man, by Charles Carreon
-- Baby Boom, Kaboom, by Charles Carreon

A yajna being performed.

Yajna or Yagya (Sanskrit: यज्ञ) (IAST: yajñá) literally means "sacrifice, devotion, worship, offering", and refers in Hinduism to any ritual done in front of a sacred fire, often with mantras.[1] Yajna has been a Vedic tradition, described in a layer of Vedic literature called Brahmanas, as well as Yajurveda.[2] The tradition has evolved from offering oblations and libations into sacred fire to symbolic offerings in the presence of sacred fire (Agni).[1]

Yajna rituals-related texts have been called the Karma-kanda (ritual works) portion of the Vedic literature, in contrast to Jnana-kanda (knowledge) portion contained in the Vedic Upanishads. The proper completion of Yajna-like rituals was the focus of Mimansa school of Hindu philosophy.[3] Yajna have continued to play a central role in a Hindu's rites of passage, such as weddings.[4] Modern major Hindu temple ceremonies, Hindu community celebrations, or monastic initiations may also include Vedic Yajna rites, or alternatively be based on Agamic rituals.

Etymology

The word yajna (Sanskrit: यज्ञ; yajña) has its root in the Sanskrit yaj meaning "to worship, adore, honor, revere" and appears in the early Vedic literature, composed in 2nd millennium BCE.[5][6] In Rigveda, Yajurveda (itself a derivative of this root) and others, it means "worship, devotion to anything, prayer and praise, an act of worship or devotion, a form of offering or oblation, and sacrifice".[5] In post-Vedic literature, the term meant any form of rite, ceremony or devotion with an actual or symbolic offering or effort.[5]

A yajna included major ceremonial devotions, with or without a sacred fire, sometimes with feasts and community events. It has, states Nigal, a threefold meaning of worship of the deities (devapujana), unity (sangatikarana) and charity (dána).[7]

The Sanskrit word is related to the Avestan term yasna of Zoroastrianism. Unlike the Vedic yajna, however, the Yasna is the name of a specific religious service, not a class of rituals, and they have "to do with water rather than fire".[8][9] The Sanskrit word is further related to Ancient Greek ἅζομαι (házomai), "to revere", deriving from the Proto-Indo-European root *Hyeh₂ǵ- ("to worship").

History

Yajna has been a part of an individual or social ritual since the Vedic times. When the ritual fire – the divine Agni, the god of fire and the messenger of gods – was deployed in a Yajna, mantras were chanted.[6] The hymns and songs sung and oblations offered into the fire were a form of hospitality towards the Vedic gods. The offerings were believed to be carried by Agni to the gods, the gods in return were expected to grant boons and benedictions, and thus the ritual served as a means of spiritual exchange between gods and human beings.[6][10] The Vedangas, or auxiliary sciences attached to the Vedic literature, define Yajna as follows,

Definition of a Vedic sacrifice

Yajña, sacrifice, is an act by which we surrender something for the sake of the gods. Such an act must rest on a sacred authority (āgama), and serve for man's salvation (śreyortha). The nature of the gift is of less importance. It may be cake (puroḍāśa), pulse (karu), mixed milk (sāṃnāyya), an animal (paśu), the juice of soma-plant (soma), etc; nay, the smallest offerings of butter, flour, and milk may serve for the purpose of a sacrifice.

— Apastamba Yajna Paribhasa-sutras 1.1, Translator: M Dhavamony[11][12]

In the Upanishadic times, or after 500 BCE, states Sikora, the meaning of the term Yajna evolved from "ritual sacrifice" performed around fires by priests, to any "personal attitude and action or knowledge" that required devotion and dedication.[6] The oldest Vedic Upanishads, such as the Chandogya Upanishad (~700 BCE) in Chapter 8, for example state,[13]

अथ यद्यज्ञ इत्याचक्षते ब्रह्मचर्यमेव
तद्ब्रह्मचर्येण ह्येव यो ज्ञाता तं
विन्दतेऽथ यदिष्टमित्याचक्षते ब्रह्मचर्यमेव
तद्ब्रह्मचर्येण ह्येवेष्ट्वात्मानमनुविन्दते ॥ १ ॥

What is commonly called Yajna is really the chaste life of the student of sacred knowledge,
for only through the chaste life of a student does he who is a knower find that,
What is commonly called Istam (sacrificial offering) is really the chaste life of the student of sacred knowledge,
for only having searched with chaste life of a student does one find Atman (Soul, Self) || 1 ||

— Chandogya Upanishad 8.5.1 [13][14]

The later Vedic Upanishads expand the idea further by suggesting that Yoga is a form of Yajna (devotion, sacrifice).[14] The Shvetashvatara Upanishad in verse 1.5.14, for example, uses the analogy of Yajna materials to explain the means to see one's soul and God, with inner rituals and without external rituals.[14][15] It states, "by making one's own body as the lower friction sticks, the syllable Om as the upper friction sticks, then practicing the friction of meditation, one may see the Deva who is hidden, as it were".[15]

Priests

Vedic (Shrauta) yajnas are typically performed by four priests of the Vedic priesthood: the hota, the adhvaryu, the udgata and the Brahma.[16] The functions associated with the priests were:[17]

• The Hota recites invocations and litanies drawn from the Rigveda. He use three Rig verses, the introductory verse, the accompanying verse and benediction as the third.[18]
• The Adhvaryu is the priest's assistant and is in charge of the physical details of the ritual like measuring the ground, building the altar explained in the Yajurveda. The adhvaryu offers oblations.[18]
• The Udgata is the chanter of hymns set to melodies and music (sāman) drawn from the Samaveda. The udgatar, like the hota, chants the introductory, accompanying and benediction hymns.[18]
• The Brahma is the superintendent of the entire performance, and is responsible for correcting mistakes by means of supplementary verses taken from the Atharva Veda

Offerings and style

There were usually one, or three, fires lit in the center of the offering ground. Oblations are offered into the fire. Among the ingredients offered as oblations in the yajna are ghee, milk, grains, cakes and soma.[19] The duration of a yajna depends on its type, some last only a few minutes whereas, others are performed over a period of hours, days or even months. Some yajnas were performed privately, while others were community events.[19][20] In other cases, yajnas were symbolic, such as in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad hymn 3.1.6, where "the mind is the Brahmin of sacrifice" and the goal of sacrifice was complete release and liberation (moksha).[18]

The benedictions proffered ranged from long life, gaining friends, health and heaven, more prosperity, to better crops.[21][22] For example,

May my rice plants and my barley, and my beans and my sesame,
and my kidney-beans and my vetches, and my pearl millet and my proso millet,
and my sorghum and my wild rice, and my wheat and my lentils,
prosper by sacrifice (Yajna).

— White Yajurveda 18.12, [23]

Yajnas, where milk products, fruits, flowers, cloth and money are offered, are called homa or havan.[24] A typical Hindu marriage involves a Yajna, where Agni is taken to be the witness of the marriage.[25]

Methods


A Yajna Vedi (square altar) with Samagri (offerings)


a Yajna in progress

The Vedic yajna ritual is performed in modern era in a square altar called Vedi (Bedi in Nepal), set in a mandapa or mandala or kundam, wherein wood is placed along with oily seeds and other combustion aids.[26] However, in ancient times, the square principle was incorporated into grids to build large complex shapes for community events.[27] Thus a rectangle, trapezia, rhomboids or "large falcon bird" altars would be built from joining squares.[27][28] The geometric ratios of these Vedi altar, with mathematical precision and geometric theorems, are described in Shulba Sutras, one of the precursors to the development of mathematics in ancient India.[27] The offerings are called Samagri (or Yajāka, Istam). The proper methods for the rites are part of Yajurveda, but also found in Riddle Hymns (hymns of questions, followed by answers) in various Brahmanas.[26] When multiple priests are involved, they take turns as in a dramatic play, where not only are praises to gods recited or sung, but the dialogues are part of a dramatic representation and discussion of spiritual themes.[26]

The Vedic sacrifice (yajna) is presented as a kind of drama, with its actors, its dialogues, its portion to be set to music, its interludes, and its climaxes.

— Louis Renou, Vedic India[26]

A miniature illustration of a falcon bird Athirathram yajna altar built using the square principle.

The Brahmodya Riddle hymns, for example, in Shatapatha Brahmana's chapter 13.2.6, is a yajna dialogue between a Hotri priest and a Brahmin priest, which would be played out during the yajna ritual before the attending audience.

Who is that is born again?
It is the moon that is born again.
And what is the great vessel?
The great vessel, doubtless, is this world.
Who was the smooth one?
The smooth one, doubtless, was the beauty (Sri, Lakshmi).
What is the remedy for cold?
The remedy for cold, doubtless, is fire.

— Shatapatha Brahmana, 13.2.6.10-18[29]
During weddings

A Vedic Yajna plays a central role in Hindu weddings.

Agni and yajna play a central role in Hindu weddings. Various mutual promises between the bride and groom are made in front of the fire, and the marriage is completed by actual or symbolic walk around the fire. The wedding ritual of Panigrahana, for example, is the 'holding the hand' ritual[30] as a symbol of their impending marital union, and the groom announcing his acceptance of responsibility to four deities: Bhaga signifying wealth, Aryama signifying heavens/milky way, Savita signifying radiance/new beginning, and Purandhi signifying wisdom. The groom faces west, while the bride sits in front of him with her face to the east, he holds her hand while the Rig vedic mantra is recited in the presence of fire.[4][31]

The Saptapadi (Sanskrit for seven steps/feet), is the most important ritual in Hindu weddings, and represents the legal part of Hindu marriage.[32] The couple getting married walk around the Holy Fire (Agni), and the yajna fire is considered a witness to the vows they make to each other.[33] In some regions, a piece of clothing or sashes worn by the bride and groom are tied together for this ceremony. Each circuit around the fire is led by either the bride or the groom, varying by community and region. Usually, the bride leads the groom in the first circuit. The first six circuits are led by the bride, and the final one by the groom.[34] With each circuit, the couple makes a specific vow to establish some aspect of a happy relationship and household for each other. The fire altar or the Yajna Kunda is square.

Types



Different types of yajna.

Kalpa Sutras lists the following yajna types:[35]

• The Pakayajnas — They are the aṣtaka, sthālipāka, parvana, srāvaṇi, āgrahayani, caitri and āsvīyuji. These yajnas involve consecrating cooked items.
• Soma Yajnas — Agnistoma, atyagnistoma, uktya, shodasi, vājapeya, atirātra and aptoryama are the Soma Yajnas.
• Havir Yajnas — They are the agniyādhāna, agni hotra, Darśa-Pūrṇamāsa, āgrayana, cāturmāsya, niruudha paśu bandha,[36] sautrāmaṇi. These involve offering havis or oblations.
• The five panca mahā Yajñās, which are mentioned below.
• Vedavratas, which are four in number, done during Vedic education.
• The remaining sixteen Yajnas, which are one-time samskāras or "rituals with mantras", are Sanskara (rite of passage): garbhādhānā, pumsavana, sīmanta, jātakarma, nāmakaraṇa, annaprāśana, chudākarma/caula, niskramana, karnavedha, vidyaarambha, upanayana, keshanta, snātaka and vivāha, nisheka, antyeshti. These are specified by the Gṛhya Sūtrās.

The changing nature of Vedic offerings


(clockwise from left top corner) Rishi, Pitri, Bhuta,[37] Manushya and (centre) Deva yajnas.

The nature of Vedic sacrifice and rituals evolved over time, with major changes during the 1st millennium BCE, changes that influenced concepts later adopted by other traditions such as Buddhism.[38] Early Vedic period sacrifices involved animal sacrifice, but the rituals were progressively reinterpreted over time, substituting the offerings and making it non-violent or symbolic, with the superiority of knowledge and celebration of sound of mantra replacing the physical offerings. Ultimately, the external rituals were reformulated and replaced with "internal oblations performed within the human body".[38] These ideas of substitution, evolution from external actions (karma-kanda) to internal knowledge (jñana-kanda), were highlighted in many rituals-related sutras, as well as specialized texts such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (~800 BCE), Chandogya Upanishad, Kaushitaki Upanishad and Pranagnihotra Upanishad.[39][40]

The Vedic text Satapatha Brahmana defines a sacrifice as an act of abandonment of something one holds of value, such as oblations offered to god and dakshina (fees, gifts) offered during the yajna.[38] For gifts and fees, the text recommends giving cows, clothing, horses or gold.[38] The oblations recommended are cow milk, ghee (clarified butter), seeds, grains, flowers, water and food cakes (rice cake, for example). Similar recommendations are repeated in other texts, such as in the Taittiriya Shakha 2.10 of the Krishna Yajurveda).[37]

Tadeusz Skorupski states that these sacrifices were a part of ritual way of life, and considered to have inherent efficacy, where doing these sacrifices yielded repayment and results without the priests or gods getting involved.[38] These Vedic ideas, adds Skorupski, influenced "the formulation of Buddhist theory of generosity".[38] Buddhist ideas went further, criticizing "the Brahmins for their decadence and failure to live in conformity with the Brahmanic legacy of the ancient Brahmins", who claimed the Vedic ancients "lived in self restraint, were ascetics, had no cattle, no gold, and no wealth".[41] The Buddha sought return to more ancient values, states Tadeusz Skorupski, where the Vedic sages "had study as their grain and wealth, guarded the holy life as their treasure, praised morality, austerity and nonviolence; they performed sacrifices consisting of rice, barley and oil, but they did not kill the cows".[41]

The five great Vedic sacrifices (Mahasattra)

Name of sacrifice / What is sacrificed?[38] / To whom?[38] / Frequency

Bhuta-yajna / Food cakes / Sacrifice to living beings
(animals, birds, etc.) / Daily[38][42]
Manushya-yajna / Alms and water
(service, charity) / Sacrifice to fellow human beings / Daily[38][42]
Pitr-yajna / Libations and water / Sacrifice to fathers / Daily[38][42]
Deva-yajna / Firewood / Sacrifice to gods / Daily[38][42]
Brahma-yajna / Words, read the Vedas / Sacrifice to Brahman
(ultimate reality) / When possible[38][42]

See also

• Ashvamedha
• Historical Vedic religion
• Homa (ritual)
• Śrauta
• Yajurveda
• Vedi (altar)
• Yajamana

Notes

1. SG Nigal (1986), Axiological Approach to the Vedas, Northern Book, ISBN 978-8185119182, pages 80-81
2. Laurie Patton (2005), The Hindu World (Editors: Sushil Mittal, Gene Thursby), Routledge, ISBN 978-0415772273, pages 38-39
3. Randall Collins (1998), The Sociology of Philosophies, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0674001879, page 248
4. Hindu Saṁskāras: Socio-religious Study of the Hindu Sacraments, Rajbali Pandey (1969), see Chapter VIII, ISBN 978-8120803961, pages 153-233
5. Monier Monier-Williams, Sanskrit English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-8120831056 (Reprinted in 2011), pages 839-840
6. Jack Sikora (2002), Religions of India, iUniverse, ISBN 978-0595247127, page 86
7. Nigal, p. 81.
8. Drower, 1944:78
9. Boyce, 1975:147-191
10. "Give and take spirit". The Hindu. 2019-05-31. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
11. M Dhavamony (1974). Hindu Worship: Sacrifices and Sacraments. Studia Missionalia. 23. Gregorian Press, Universita Gregoriana, Roma. pp. 107–108.
12. Jan Gonda (1980). Handbuch Der Orientalistik: Indien. Zweite Abteilung. BRILL Academic. pp. 345–346. ISBN 978-90-04-06210-8.
13. Robert Hume, Chandogya Upanishad 8.5.1, Oxford University Press, page 266
14. Jack Sikora (2002), Religions of India, iUniverse, ISBN 978-0595247127, page 87
15. Robert Hume, Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.5.14, Oxford University Press, page 396
16. Mahendra Kulasrestha (2007), The Golden Book of Upanishads, Lotus, ISBN 978-8183820127, page 21
17. Nigal, p. 79.
18. Robert Hume, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.1, Oxford University Press, pages 107- 109
19. Ralph Griffith, The texts of the white Yajurveda EJ Lazarus, page i-xvi, 87-171, 205-234
20. Frits Staal (2009), Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights, Penguin, ISBN 978-0143099864, page 124
21. Michael Witzel (2003), "Vedas and Upaniṣads", in The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Editor: Gavin Flood), Blackwell, ISBN 0-631215352, pages 76-77
22. Frits Staal (2009), Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights, Penguin, ISBN 978-0143099864, pages 127-128
23. Ralph Griffith, The texts of the white Yajurveda EJ Lazarus, page 163
24. "What is Havan? - Definition from Yogapedia". Yogapedia.com. Retrieved 2020-08-22.
25. Hazen, Walter. Inside Hinduism. Lorenz Educational Press. ISBN 9780787705862. P. 34.
26. ML Varadpande, History of Indian Theatre, Volume 1, Abhinav, ISBN , pages 45-47
27. Kim Plofker (2009), Mathematics in India, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691120676, pages 16-27
28. Ralph Griffith, The texts of the white Yajurveda EJ Lazarus, pages 87-171
29. ML Varadpande, History of Indian Theatre, Volume 1, Abhinav, ISBN , page 48
30. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism: A-M, James G. Lochtefeld (2001), ISBN 978-0823931798, Page 427
31. P.H. Prabhu (2011), Hindu Social Organization, ISBN 978-8171542062, see pages 164-165
32. BBC News article on Hinduism & Weddings, Nawal Prinja (August 24, 2009)
33. Shivendra Kumar Sinha (2008), Basics of Hinduism, Unicorn Books, ISBN 978-81-7806-155-9, The two rake the holy vow in the presence of Agni ... In the first four rounds, the bride leads and the groom follows, and in the final three, the groom leads and the bride follows. While walking around the fire, the bride places her right palm on the groom's right palm and the bride's brother pours some unhusked rice or barley into their hands and they offer it to the fire ...
34. Office of the Registrar General, Government of India (1962), Census of India, 1961, v. 20, pt. 6, no. 2, Manager of Publications, Government of India, The bride leads in all the first six pheras but follows the bridegroom on the seventh
35. Prasoon, Ch.2, Vedang, Kalp.
36. "Is Sacrificial Killing Justified? from the Chapter "The Vedas", in Hindu Dharma". kamakoti.org. Retrieved 2019-03-09.
37. Gopal, Madan (1990). K.S. Gautam (ed.). India through the ages. Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. p. 79.
38. Tadeusz Skorupski (2015). Michael Witzel (ed.). Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change Across the Longue Durée. Oxford University Press. pp. 78–81. ISBN 978-0-19-935158-9.
39. Deussen, Paul (1997). Sixty Upanishads of the Veda. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 645–651. ISBN 978-81-208-1467-7.
40. Tadeusz Skorupski (2015). Michael Witzel (ed.). Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change Across the Longue Durée. Oxford University Press. pp. 79–84. ISBN 978-0-19-935158-9.
41. Tadeusz Skorupski (2015). Michael Witzel (ed.). Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change Across the Longue Durée. Oxford University Press. pp. 86–87. ISBN 978-0-19-935158-9.
42. Klaus K. Klostermaier (2007). A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition. State University of New York Press. pp. 125–127. ISBN 978-0-7914-7082-4.

References

• Agrawala, Vasudeva Sharana. India as known to Pāṇini: a study of the cultural material in the Ashṭādhyāyī. Prithvi Prakashan, 1963.
• Dallapiccola Anna. Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend.......ISBN 0-500-51088-1.
• Gyanshruti; Srividyananda. Yajna A Comprehensive Survey. Yoga Publications Trust, Munger, Bihar, India; 1st edition (December 1, 2006). ISBN 8186336478.
• Krishnananda (Swami). A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India. Divine Life Society, Rishikesh.
• Nigal, S.G. Axiological Approach to the Vedas. Northern Book Centre, 1986. ISBN 81-85119-18-X.
• Prasoon, (Prof.) Shrikant. Indian Scriptures. Pustak Mahal (August 11, 2010). ISBN 978-81-223-1007-8.
• Vedananda (Swami). Aum Hindutvam: (daily Religious Rites of the Hindus). Motilal Banarsidass, 1993. ISBN 81-20810-81-3.