European races, in the opinion of
the paramount West: for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other
lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes
hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a
perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent
regards as ante-historical. The bare fact that, while Western men of
science are referred to as "scholars" and scholiasts--native
Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and
"Indian sciolists"--affords no proof of their real inferiority, but
rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit is rarely
companion to politeness."

The "Adept" therefore has little, if anything, to do with difficulties
presented by Western history. To his knowledge--based on documentary
records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards
which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part--the
history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly
discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western
world as a landmark of the commencement of its history. Records made
throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and
zodiacal calculations, cannot err. (This new "difficulty"--
palaeographical, t his time--that may be possibly suggested by the
mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian
era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.)

Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which--the Orientalist or
the "Oriental"--is most likely to err. The "English F.T.S." has choice
of two sources of information, two groups of teachers. One group is
composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists,
Philologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists and Orientalists in
general. The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race
which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller's assertion that the same "blood
is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the
dark Bengalese," is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as
"inferior." A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to,
specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences,
having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and
mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western
scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the
correct