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H.P. Blavatsky - From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
there are the words of a modern historian, who has studied Egypt all his life, not in Berlin or London,
like some other historians, but in Egypt, deciphering the inscriptions of the oldest sarcophagi and papyri,
that is to say, the words of Henry Brugsch-Bey:
". . . I repeat, my firm conviction is that the Egyptians came from Asia long before the historical period,
having traversed the Suez promontory, that bridge of all the nations, and found a new fatherland on the
banks of the Nile."
An inscription on a Hammamat rock says that Sankara, the last Pharaoh of the eleventh dynasty, sent a
nobleman to Punt: "I was sent on a ship to Punt, to bring back some aromatic gum, gathered by the
princes of the Red Land."
Commenting on this inscription, Brugsch-Bey explains that "under the name of Punt the ancient
inhabitants of Chemi meant a distant land surrounded by a great ocean, full of mountains and valleys,
and rich in ebony and other expensive woods, in perfumes, precious stones and metals, in wild beasts,
giraffes, leopards and big monkeys." The name of a monkey in Egypt was Kaff, or Kafi, in Hebrew Koff,
in Sanskrit Kapi.
In the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, this Punt was a sacred land, because Punt or Pa-nuter was "the
original land of the gods, who left it under the leadership of A-Mon [Manu-Vena of Kalluka-Bhatta?]
Hor and Hator, and duly arrived in Chemi."
Hanuman has a decided family likeness to the Egyptian Cynocephalus, and the emblem of Osiris and
Shiva is the same. Qui vivra verra!
Our return journey was very agreeable. We had adapted ourselves to Peri's movements. and felt ourselves
first-rate jockeys. But for a whole week afterwards we could hardly walk.
A City Of The Dead
What would be your choice if you had to choose between being blind and being deaf? Nine people out of
ten answer this question by positively preferring deafness to blindness. And one whose good fortune it
has been to contemplate, even for a moment, some fantastic fairy-like corner of India, this country of
lace-like marble palaces and enchanting gardens, would willingly add to deafness, lameness of both legs,
rather than lose such sights.
We are told that Saadi, the great poet, bitterly complained of his friends looking tired and indifferent
while he praised the beauty and charm of his lady-love. "If the happiness of contemplating her wonderful
beauty," remonstrated he, "was yours, as it is mine, you could not fail to understand my verses, which,
alas, describe in such meagre and inadequate terms the rapturous feelings experienced by every one who
sees her even from a distance!"
I fully sympathize with the enamoured poet, but cannot condemn his friends who never saw his
lady-love, and that is why I tremble lest my constant rhapsodies on India should bore my readers as much
as Saadi bored his friends. But what, I pray you, is the poor narrator to do, when new, undreamed-of
charms are daily discovered in the lady-love in question? Her darkest aspects, abject and immoral as they
are, and sometimes of such a nature as to excite your horror - even these aspects are full of some wild
poetry, of originality, which cannot be met with in any other country. It is not unusual for a European
novice to shudder with disgust at some features of local everyday life; but at the same time these very
sights attract and fascinate the attention like a horrible nightmare. We had plenty of these experiences
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