Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/49

 practices of the Chinese—sect of Tao-sse—a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality—as alleged by some. Generally, little or no differncedifference [sic] is made even by the Kye-lang missionaries who mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul—and ought to know better—between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from the first and have always adhered to old Bnddhism so greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (invented by F. Lenormant,) or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees and Assyrians—is out of question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And, when we remember that the Vedas came—agreeably to all traditions—from the Manssorowar Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it—as having proceeded from one and the same source: and, to thus call it the "Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Religion. "Seek for the among the hierophants of Tartary, China and Tibet," was the advice of Swedenborg, the seer.

Not necessarily—we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India, many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during