e set out with, and carried across Persia, through Afghanistan,
and into the Punjab,--which, we may note, was but the outskirts
of the real India, into which he never penetrated; and it may
yet be found that he went by no means so far as is supposed; but
let that be. So now, at any rate, enough of him; he has brought
us where we are to spend this evening.

For a student of history, there is something mysterious and even
--to use a very vile drudge of a word--'unique' about India. Go
else where you will, and so long as you can posit certainly a
high civilization, and know anything of its events, you can make
some shift to arrange the history. None need boggle really at
any Chinese date after about 2350 B.C.; Babylon is fairly
settled back to about 4000; and if you cannot depend on assigned
Egyptian dates, at least there is a reasonably know sequence of
dynasties back through four or five millennia. But come to
India, and alas, where are you? All out of it, chronologically
speaking; enough; very likely, the flotsam and jetsam of
several hundred thousand years. I have no doubt the Puranas are
crowded with history; but how much of what is related is to
be taken as plain fact; how much as 'blinds'; how much as
symbolism--only the Adepts know. The three elements are mingled
beyond the wit of man to unravel them; so that you can hardly
tell whether any given thing happened in this or that millennium,
Root-Race period, or Round of Worlds, or Day of Brahma. You are
in the wild jungles of fairyland; where there are gorgeous
blooms, and idylls, dreamlit, beautiful and fantastical, all
in the deep midwood lonliness; and time is not, and the
computations of chronology are an insult to the spirit of your
surroundings. History, in India, was kept an esoteric science,
and esoteric all the ancient records remain now; and I dare say
any twice-born Brahmin not Oxfordized knows far more about it
than the best Max Mullers of the west, and laughs at them
quietly. Until someone will voluntarily lift that veil of
esotericism, the speculations of western scholars will go for
little. Why it should be kept esoteric, one can only guess; I
think if it were known, the cycles and patterns of human history
would cease to be so abstruse and hidden from us: we should know
too much for our present moral or spiritual status. As usual,
our own _savants_ are avid to dwarf all dates, and bring
everything within the scope of a few thousand year