Secret Lore of India

It was only towards the close of the eighteenth century that the intrepid Sir Williams Jones, through his acquirement of a knowledge of Sanskrit, rendered the language and literature of the ancient Hindus accessible to European scholars, and only at the close of the nineteenth, that the documents that give the religious thought thereof began to be published in a European tongue. All through the hundred years that thus passed the elements and character of that religious though were a problem and constitute a problem still. Even the course of the stages that led up to the Secret Lore is not clear. The author give here the course of thought as it seems probable to him after his searching the works of our latest scholar Happily for his purpose, however, the character of thought when the Secret Lore arose and what that Secret Lore was, taken in it simple meaning, are clear.

The most wonderful portion of the book constitutes the manner of his adoption of the mode in which he here presents his “Selections from the Secret Lore.” The Selections naturally are the piece de resistance of the Book, and to enable their understanding the author has added a few notes and a vocabulary of certain important Sanskrit terms. This Main Part of the book is preceded by an Introduction, and followed up by a Conclusion.

The Introduction consists of Two Parts. The Former Part traces the sacred Tradition from its beginning, on probably, the now-Hungarian plain, through the Caspian period and the early and later Vedic Period, to the rise of the Secret Lore, which is the climax of the Veda. The Latter Part describes the course of development, as the author finds it, of the Secret Lore itself.