Theos-Talk Archives (May 2000 Message tt00289)

Louis, Bart et al,

Below are some passages from ISIS UNVEILED and THE SECRET DOCTRINE which may
add some more information on this topic.  As far as I understand it, the
word "Aryan" was in use by historians, philologists and archeologists in the
nineteenth century prior to the writings of HPB.  It was used by academics
at the time to refer to that race which immigrated from Asia into Europe.
Some  scholars used the term to refer to a group of 'peoples', of many
races, with a single parent language.  The speculation by some was that the
parent language was Sanskrit.  This fits with the modern definition I find
in my Oxford Dictionary, namely that Aryan, as a noun means "1) a member of
the peoples (not to be regarded as a race..) speaking any of the languages
of the Indo-European (especially Indo-Iranean) family. 2) the parent
language of this family".

HPB, used the term in a much wider sense to embrace the whole 1 million year
old 5th Root Race Humanity (with its varieties of family races)  My own
understanding of this it that from this point of view a RACE is something
which far transcends cultural, biological and geographical differences.  The
seven great Races have a special correspondence with each of the seven
senses, elements, principles, planes of consciousness, Dhyanis & so on.

There are many many references in ISIS, especially, but I don't have much
time to pull out any more  at the moment.  Anyway, below are HPB's words,
which is the important thing I wanted to share.

...Peter


PASSAGES FROM ISIS AND THE SECRET DOCRTINE:

III. The inflectional speech -- the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously
called "the elder sister" of the Greek, instead of its mother -- was the
first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth Race).
At any rate, the "Semitic" languages are the bastard descendants of the
first phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The
occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the Semite,
accepting even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, especially
the Arabs, are later Aryans -- degenerate in spirituality and perfected in
materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a
tribe descended from the Tchandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them
ex-Brahmins, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Scinde, and Aria (Iran), and
were truly born from their father A-bram (No Brahmin) some 8,000 years B.C.
The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go
into India at the time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained
on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan and Kabul,* and along the Oxus,
while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia.
(SD 2 200)


Professor Albrecht Muller says: "We may ascribe the introduction of bronze
manufacture into Europe to a great race immigrant from Asia some 6,000 years
ago, called Aryas or Aryans. . . . Civilization of the East preceded that of
the West by many centuries. . . .
(ISIS I 539)

The ancient Jews got all their knowledge -- religious as well as profane --
from the nations with which we see them mixed up from the earliest periods.
Even the oldest of all sciences, their kabalistic "secret doctrine," may be
traced in each detail to its primeval source, Upper India, or Turkestan, far
before the time of a distinct separation between the Aryan and Semitic
nations.
(ISIS I 135)

As it is a recognized fact that the Jews borrowed most of their laws from
the Egyptians, let us examine who were the Egyptians. In our opinion --
which is but a poor authority, of course -- they were the ancient Indians,
and in our first volume we have quoted passages from the historian
Collouca-Batta that support such a theory. What we mean by ancient India is
the following:
No region on the map -- except it be the ancient Scythia -- is more
uncertainly defined than that which bore the designation of India. AEthiopia
is perhaps the only parallel. It was the home of the Cushite or Hamitic
races, and lay to the east of Babylonia. It was once the name of Hindustan,
when the dark races, worshippers of Bala-Mahadeva and Bhavani-Mahidevi, were
supreme in that country. The India of the early sages appears to have been
the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. Apollonius of Tyana
crossed the Caucasus, or Hindu Kush, where he met with a king who directed
him to the abode of the sages -- perhaps the descendants of those whom
Ammianus terms the "Brahmans of Upper India," and whom Hystaspes, the father
of Darius (or more probably Darius Hystaspes himself) visited; and, having
been instructed by them, infused their rites and ideas into the Magian
observances. This narrative about Apollonius seems to indicate Kashmere as
the country which he visited, and the Nagas -- after their conversion to
Buddhism -- as his teachers. At this time Aryan India did not extend beyond
the Punjab.
(ISIS II 434)

To our notion, the most baffling impediment in the way of ethnological
progress has always been the triple progeny of Noah. In the attempt to
reconcile postdiluvian races with a genealogical descent from Shem, Ham, and
Japhet, the Christianesque Orientalists have set themselves a task
impossible of accomplishment. The biblical Noachian ark has been a
Procrustean bed to which they had to make everything fit. Attention has
therefore been diverted from veritable sources of information as to the
origin of man, and a purely local allegory mistaken for a historical record
emanating from an inspired source. Strange and unfortunate choice! Out of
all the sacred writings of all the branch nations, sprung from the primitive
stock of mankind, Christianity must choose for its guidance the national
records and scriptures of a people perhaps the least spiritual of the human
family -- the Semitic. A branch that has never been able to develop out of
its numerous tongues a language capable of embodying ideas of a moral and
intellectual world; whose form of expression and drift of thought could
never soar higher than the purely sensual and terrestrial figures of speech;
whose literature has left nothing original, nothing that was not borrowed
from the Aryan thought; and whose science and philosophy are utterly wanting
in those noble features which characterize the highly spiritual and
metaphysical systems of the Indo-European (Japetic) races.
(ISIS II 434-435)

Bunsen shows Khamism (the language of Egypt) as a very ancient deposit from
Western Asia, containing the germs of the Semitic, and thus bearing "witness
to the primitive cognate unity of the Semitic and Aryan races." We must
remember, in this connection, that the peoples of Southwestern and Western
Asia, including the Medes, were all Aryans. It is yet far from being proved
who were the original and primitive masters of India. That this period is
now beyond the reach of documentary history, does not preclude the
probability of our theory that it was the mighty race of builders, whether
we call them Eastern AEthiopians, or dark-skinned Aryans (the word meaning
simply "noble warrior," a "brave"). They ruled supreme at one time over the
whole of ancient India, enumerated later by Manu as the possession of those
whom our scientists term the Sanscrit-speaking people.
(ISIS II 435)

"Khamism, or old Coptic," says Bunsen, "is from Western Asia, and contains
some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness to the primitive cognate
unity of the Aryan and Semitic races"; and he places the great events in
Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Aryan
thought we find a grand philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find
only the most surprising ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic
worship and sexual theogony.
(SD I 115)


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