eda
is as old as the Aryan Sub-race, which, according to our
calculations, must have begun some 160,000 years ago.

The _Upanishads_ affect us like poetry; even in Max Muller's
translation, which is poor prose, they do not lose altogether
their uplift and quality of song. They sing the philosophy of
the divine in Man; I suppose we may easily say they are the
highest thing in extant literature. They do not come to us whole
or untainted. We may remember what the Swami Dayanand Sarasvati
said to H. P. Blavatsky: that he could show the excellent "Moksh
Mooller" that "what crossed the Kalapani from India to Europe
were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our
sacred books." Again, Madame Blavatsky says that the best part
of the Upanishads was taken out at the time Buddha was preaching;
the Brahmans took it out, that he might not prove too clearly the
truth of his teachings by appeals to their sacred books. Also
the Buddha was a Kshattriya; so the ancient eminence of the
Kshattriyas had to be obscured a little;--it was the Brahmans, by
that time, who were monopolizing the teaching office. And no
doubt in the same way from time to time much has been added:
the Brahmans could do this, being custodians of the sacred
literature. Yet in spite of all we get in them a lark's song,--
but a spiritual lark's song, floating and running in the golden
glories of the Spiritual Sun; a song whose verve carries us
openly up into the realms of pure spirit; a wonderful radiance
and sweetness of dawn, of dawn in its fresh purity, its
holiness,--haunted with no levity or boisterousness of youth, but
with a wisdom gay and ancient,--eternal, laughter-laden,
triumphant,--at once hoary and young,--like the sparkle of snows
on Himalaya, like the amber glow in the eastern sky. Here almost
alone in literature we get long draughts of the Golden Age: not
a Golden Age fought for and brought down into our perceptions
(which all true poetry gives us), but one actually existing, open
and free;--and not merely the color and atmosphere of it, but the
wisdom. One need not wonder that Madame Blavatsky drew so freely
on India for the nexus of her teachings. That country has
performed a marvelous function, taking all its ages together, in
the life of humanity; in preserving for us the poetry and wisdom
of an age before the Mysteries had declined; in keeping open for
us, in a semi-accessible literature, a kind of window into the
Gol