Saturday, the 7th
day of the first half of Shravan" (the fifth month of the Hindu year),
"1801, of Shalivalian's era" (that is, 26th July, 1879).

The further career of this ignorant and cunning epistle is not known
to me. Probably the police put a stop to its distribution; this only
concerns the wise administrators. But it splendidly illustrates, from
one side, the credulity of the populace, drowned in superstition, and
from the other the unscrupulousness of the Brahmans.

Concerning the word Patala, which literally means the opposite side,
a recent discovery of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, whom I have already
mentioned in the preceding letters, is interesting, especially if this
discovery can be accepted by philologists, as the facts seem to promise.
Dayanand tries to show that the ancient Aryans knew, and even visited,
America, which in ancient MSS. is called Patala, and out of which
popular fancy constructed, in the course of time, something like the
Greek Hades. He supports his theory by many quotations from the oldest
MSS., especially from the legends about Krishna and his favourite
disciple Arjuna. In the history of the latter it is mentioned that
Arjuna, one of the five Pandavas, descendants of the moon dynasty,
visited Patala on his travels, and there married the widowed daughter of
King Nagual, called Illupl. Comparing the names of father and daughter
we reach the following considerations, which speak strongly in favour of
Dayanand's supposition.

(1) Nagual is the name by which the sorcerers of Mexico, Indians and
aborigines of America, are still designated. Like the Assyrian and
Chaldean Nargals, chiefs of the Magi, the Mexican Nagual unites in his
person the functions of priest and of sorcerer, being served in the
latter capacity by a demon in the shape of some animal, generally a
snake or a crocodile. These Naguals are thought to be the descendants
of Nagua, the king of the snakes. Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg devotes a
considerable amount of space to them in his book about Mexico, and says
that the Naguals are servants of the evil one, who, in his turn, renders
them but a temporary service. In Sanskrit, likewise, snake is Naga,
and the "King of the Nagas" plays an important part in the history of
Buddha; and in the Puranas there exists a tradition that it was Arjuna
who introduced snake worship into Patala. The coincidence, and the
identity of the names are so striking that our scientists really ought
to pa