Blavatsky Helena: Iz pećina i džungli Hindustana

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: From the caves and jungles of Hindustan

How many generations of Hindus, how many different races, have knelt in the dust before the Trimurti, before your divine Trinity, O Elephant? How many centuries did it take weak human hands to carve out of your stony breast this city of temples and shape your gigantic idols? Who can say that? Many years have passed since I last saw you, your ancient, mysterious temple, and still the same thoughts, the same questions keep coming back to me, to shake my peace as the first time, and I still have no answer to them. We will see each other again in a few days. Once again I will search your cruel form, scattered over three huge granite faces, and again I will feel powerless to penetrate the secret of your existence. That secret fell into safe hands three centuries before ours. It is not for nothing that the old Portuguese historian Don Diego de Kuta brags that "the large square stones, fixed above the arch of the temple with a striking inscription, pulled out and sent as a gift to King Dom Juan III, mysteriously disappeared over time..." and goes on to add that "near this great temple stood another one, and a little further away a third, the most beautiful of all, of incredible scale and wealth of materials used for construction. All these temples and caves were built by the kings of Canada, (?) the most important of whom was Bonazur, and these "bastions of Satan" were attacked by our (Portuguese) soldiers with such ferocity, that in a few years not a stone was left of them upon a stone..." And worst of all, they left no inscriptions that could point to any trace. Thanks to the fanaticism of the Portuguese soldiers, the chronology of the cave temples of India must forever remain a puzzle for archaeologists, starting with the Brahmins who say that Elefanta is old 374,000 years, including Ferguson, who tries to prove that it was carved only in the twelfth century AD. Whenever one turns to history, all one can find is a lot of conjecture surrounding them. Again, Garipuri is mentioned in the epic Mahabharata, which was written, according to Colebrooke and Wilson, long before the reign of Cyrus the Great. Another ancient legend says that the temple of Trimurti was built on Elephanta, who took part in the war between the Sun and Moon dynasties and, being of the latter, were overthrown at the end of the war. The Rajputs, who are distant descendants of the first dynasty, still sing of that victory; but even in their epic poems there is nothing reliable. Centuries have passed and will continue to pass, and the ancient secret will remain forever lost in the stone bosom of the cave.