Part 3 (1/2)
[Transcriber's Note: The listed symbols are included in the ”images” directory accompanying the html version of this file.]
+ Denotes anything sharp, gnawing, or corrosive; as vinegar or fire: being supposed to be stuck around with barbed spikes.
? Denotes a perfect immutable simple body, such as gold, which has nothing acrimonious or heterogeneous adhering to it.
? Denotes half gold, whose inside, if turned outward, would make it entire gold, as having nothing foreign or corrosive in it; which the alchemists observe of silver.
? Denotes the inside to be pure gold, but the outer part of the colour of silver and a corrosive underneath, which, if taken away, would leave it mere gold, and this the adepts affirm of mercury.
? Denotes the chief part to be gold; whereto, however, adheres another large, crude, corrosive part, which, if removed, would leave the rest possessed with all the properties of gold, and this the adepts affirm of copper.
? Likewise denotes gold at the bottom, but attended with a great proportion of a sharp corrosive, sometimes amounting to a half of the whole, whence half the character expresses acrimony; which, accordingly, both alchemists and physicians observe of iron, and hence that common opinion of the adepts that the aurum vivum, or gold of the philosophers, is contained in iron, and that the universal medicine is rather to be sought in this metal than in gold itself.
? Denotes half the matter of tin to be silver, the other a crude corrosive acid, which is accordingly confirmed by the a.s.sayers; tin proving almost as fixed as silver in the cupel, and discovering a large quant.i.ty of crude sulphur well known to the alchemists.
? Denotes almost the whole to be corrosive, but retaining some resemblance with silver, which the artists very well know holds true of lead.
? Denotes a chaos--world, or one thing which includes all: this is the character of antimony, wherein is found gold, with plenty of an a.r.s.enical corrosive.
The symbols, or at least some of them, may be traced even in the Chinese characters for gold, silver, &c.
The connection of Egypt with India shortly after the Christian era is distinctly indicated in the works of Apuleius. He lived in the early part of the second century after Christ, and was educated first at Carthage, then renowned as a school of literature. He then travelled extensively in Greece, Asia, and Egypt, and became initiated into many religious fraternities and an adept in their mysteries. He was admitted a priest of the order of aesculapius, and describes the ceremony of the offering of the first-fruits by the priests of Isis, when the navigation opened in spring. The vessel, which was to be set adrift upon the ocean freighted with the offering, was splendidly decorated and covered with hieroglyphics, and after having been ”_purified with a lighted torch, an egg, and sulphur_,” was allowed to sail away into the unknown as a sacrifice to procure the safety of the convoy of s.h.i.+ps which would soon after start upon their voyage. These rites were of great antiquity.
He speaks, in his first tale, of a witch who, by means of her magic charms, made not only her fellow-countrymen love her, but ”_the Indians even_,” and in his initiation into the mysteries of Isis, his robes ”bore pictures of Indian serpents.”
From what I have now laid before you, in what must necessarily be a very imperfect manner, you will see that there is good reason to believe that in the study of science and philosophy the Indian races were much in advance of the Western nations. The age of science amongst them is very great; we fail utterly in trying to find its beginning, unless we accept the tradition which ascribes to Menu, their great lawgiver (who is supposed to have been Noah), the saving of three out of the four divine books or Vedas from the deluge. This would carry us back to the Antediluvian times for the beginning of our investigations; but without taking any such extreme view of the subject we will find traces of science clearly marked out for us in the history of the Indian races.
The picture of the Brahmins, drawn by Apuleius in the second century, shows how little they have changed in historical times. He says:--
”The Indians are a populous nation of vast extent of territory, situated far from us to the east, near the reflux of the ocean and the rising of the sun, under the first beams of the stars, and at the extreme verge of the earth, beyond the learned Egyptians and the superst.i.tious Jews and the mercantile Nabathaeans; and the flowing robed Aracidae, and the Ityraeans, poor in crops, and the Arabians, rich in perfumes.
”Now, I do not so much admire the heaps of ivory of the Indians, their harvests of pepper, their bales of cinnamon, their tempered steel, their mines of silver, and their golden streams, nor that among them, the Ganges, the greatest of all rivers,
'Rolls like a monarch on his course, and pours His eastern waters through a hundred streams, Mingling with ocean by a hundred mouths,'
”nor that these Indians, though situated at the dawn of day, are yet of the colour of night, nor that among them, immense dragons fight with enormous elephants, with parity of danger to their mutual destruction, for they hold them enwrapped in their slippery folds, so that the elephants cannot disengage their legs or in any way extricate themselves from the scaly bonds of the tenacious dragons. They are forced to seek revenge from the fall of their own bulk and to crush their captors by the ma.s.s of their own bodies.
”There are amongst them various kinds of inhabitants. I will rather speak of the marvellous things of men than of those of nature.
”There is among them a race who know nothing but to tend cattle, hence they are called neatherds; there are races clever in trafficking with merchandise, and others stout in fight, whether with arrows, or hand to hand with swords.
”There is also among them a pre-eminent race called Gymnosophists.
”These I exceedingly admire, for they are men skilled not in propagating the vine, nor in grafting trees, nor in tilling the ground. They know not how to cultivate the fields, nor to wash gold, or to break horses, or to shear or feed sheep or goats.
”What is it, then, they know? One thing instead of all these. They _cultivate wisdom_, both the aged professors and the young students.
Nothing do I so much admire in them as that they hate torpor of mind and sloth.”
This does not look as if the Indians had been unknown or unappreciated in the second century A.D.