roper inquiries are made. But even the evidence now
brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above
indicated. As Goudapada was Sankaracharya's Guru's guru, his date
entirely depends on Sankara's date; and there is every reason to
suppose that he lived before Buddha.

Question VI.--"Historical Difficulty"--Why?

It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter
quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans
said to have been Atlanteans." The answer is--None whatever. The word
"Atlantean" was a generic name. The objection to have it applied to the
old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their
language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European
dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race
scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion
of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to
as a remnant of the Europeans. "The Turks are surely Semites," he might
say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between
Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." *

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* This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will
be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged. The
figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the
present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis.
---------

The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative
statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max
Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder
sister"--by no means the mother--of all the modern languages. As to
that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now
extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race." When asked
what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?"
When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?"
the same impressive voice replies: "In prehistoric ages, the duration
of which no one can now determine." Yet it must have been Sanskrit,
however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks,
the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the
same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by
language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods"
in the speech of every Aryan nation.