Theosophical Society,
H P Blavatsky
The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
By
Mohini M. Chatterji
"Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened,"
this is an accurate representation of the
position of the earnest
inquirer as to the existence of the
Mahatmas. I know of none who took
up this inquiry in right earnest and were not
rewarded for their labours
with knowledge, certainty. In spite of all this there are plenty of
people who carp and cavil but will not take the
trouble of proving the
thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a
section of our own
countrymen--the too Europeanized graduates of
Universities--the
existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with
incredulity and distrust,
to give it no harder name. The position of the Europeans is easily
intelligible, for these things are so far
removed from their
intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency
is so great, that they
are almost impervious to these new ideas. But it is much more difficult
to conceive why the people of
atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these
things, should affect
such scepticism.
It would have been more natural for them, on the other
hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now
laying before the public
with the same satisfaction as an astronomer
feels when a new star, whose
elements he has calculated, swims within his
ken. I myself was a
thorough-going disbeliever only two years
back. In the first place I
had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself,
nor did I find any one
who had done so in that small ring of our
countrymen for whom only I was
taught to have any respect--the "educated
classes." It was only in the
month of October, 1882, that I really devoted
any time and attention to
this matter, and the result is that I have as
little doubt with respect
to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine
own. I now know that they
exist.
But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all
of an objective character. Many things which are very satisfactory
proofs to me would not be so to the reader. On the other hand, I have
no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence
I now possess.
Therefore I must do the best I can with the
little I am permitted to
give. In
the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as
would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable
of measuring its
probative force.
The evidence now laid before the public was
collected by me during the
months of October and November, 1882, and was at
the time placed before
some of the leading members of the Theosophical
Society, Mr. Sinnett
among others.
The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru
in Sikkhim being then ready for publication,
there was no necessity, in
their opinion, for the present paper being
brought to light. But since
an attempt has been made in some quarters to
minimize the effect of Mr.
Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most
absurdly "the hallucinations
of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I
think something might be gained
by the publication of perfectly independent
testimony of, perhaps,
equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a
different character.
With these words of explanation as to the delay
in its publication, I
resign this paper to the criticism of our
sceptical friends. Let them
calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence
of the Tibetan pedlar at
Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the
independent testimony of
the young Brahmachari at Dehradun. Those who were present when the
statements of these persons were taken, all
occupy very respectable
positions in life--some in fact belonging to the
front ranks of Hindu
Society, and several in no way connected with
the Theosophical movement,
but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to
it. In those days I again say
I was rather sceptical myself. It is only since I collected the
following evidence and received more than one
proof of the actual
existence of my venerated master, Mahatma
Koothoomi, whose presence--
quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel
Olcott or any "alleged"
Chela--was made evident to me in a variety of
ways, that I have given up
the folly of doubting any longer. Now I believe no more--I KNOW; and
knowing, I would help others to obtain the same
knowledge.
During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same
house with several
Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the
higher life, and most of
them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan
Mahatmas as I was myself
at that time.
I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of
the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and
lived with them for years.
They laughed at our perplexity. One of them showed us an admirably
executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an
eminently holy person,
and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi
(now my revered master),
to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World"
is dedicated. A few days after my
arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook
accidentally came to
our house to sell his things. Sundook was for years well-known in
Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant
trader in Tibetan
knick-knacks, who visited the country every year
in the exercise of his
profession.
He came to the house several times during our stay there,
and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity
of bearing and pleasant
manners, to be one of Nature's own
gentlemen. No man could discover in
him any trait of character even remotely allied
to the uncivilized
savages, as the Tibetans are held in the
estimation of Europeans. He
might very well have passed for a trained
courtier, only that he was too
good to be one.
He came to the house while I was there.
On the first
occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth,
named Sundar Lall, an
employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted
as interpreter. But we
soon found out that the peculiar dialect of
Hindi which he spoke was
intelligible to some of us without any
interpreter, and so there was
none needed on subsequent occasions. On the first day we put him some
general questions about
belonged, and his answers corroborated the
statements of Bogle, Turnour
and other travelers. On the second day we asked him if he had
heard of
any persons in
great lamas.
He said there were such men; that
they were not regular
lamas, but far higher than they, and generally
lived in the mountains
beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of
produce many and very wonderful phenomena or
"miracles," and some of
their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in
giving them to eat the rice which they crush out
of the paddy with their
hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious
idea. Without saying one word,
the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma
Koothoomi was shown to him.
He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as
though suddenly
recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to
the portrait, and said
it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom
he had seen. Then he
began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress
and naked arms; then
suiting the action to the word, he took off his
outer cloak, and baring
his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest
approach to the figure in the
portrait, in the adjustment of his dress.
He said he had seen the Mahatma in question
accompanied by a numerous
body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous
year (beginning of
October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two
days' journey southward of
Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make
purchases for his
trade. On
being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded
surprise, "They are called
Koothum-pa." Being cross-examined
and asked
what he meant by "they," and whether
he was naming one man or many, he
replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but
there was only one man or
chief over them of that name; the disciples being always called after
the names of their guru. Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum,
that of his disciples was
"Koot-hum-pa." Light was shed
upon this
explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we
found that the word "pa"
means "man;" "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or
Thibet," &c. Similarly
Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or
Koothoomi. At Giansi,
the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the
place went to the Mahatma,
who had stopped to rest in the midst of an
extensive field, and asked
him to bless him by coming to his house. The Mahatma replied, he was
better where he was, as he had to bless the
whole world, and not any
particular man.
The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took
their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered
them to be distributed
among the poor.
Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade
in such a way as to injure no one, and warned
that such was the only
right way to prosperity. On being told that people in
believe that there were such men as the Brothers
in
offered to take any voluntary witness to that
country, and convince us,
through him, as to the genuineness of their
existence, and remarked that
if there were no such men in
were to be found. It being suggested to him that some people
refused to
believe that such men existed at all, he got
very angry. Tucking up the
sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong
muscular arm, he
declared that he would fight any man who would
suggest that he had said
anything but the truth.
On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads
belonging to Madame Blavatsky,
the pedlar said that such things could only be
got by those to whom the
Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got
for no amount of money
elsewhere.
When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat
and asked him whether he recognized the latter's
profession by his
dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung
and then bowing down to
him took the whole thing as a matter of
course. The witnesses in this
case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy
magistrate, Berhampore,
M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district
registrar, Madura (
Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the
family of the first-named
gentleman, and the writer.
Now for the other piece of corroborative
evidence. This time it came
most accidentally into my possession. A young Bengali Brahmachari, who
had only a short time previous to our meeting
returned from
who was residing then at Dehradun, in the
North-Western Provinces of
Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave
most unexpectedly, in the
presence of a number of respectable witnesses,
the following account:--
On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last
(1882). being the 12th day
of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called
the Koothoompas, and
their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place
about a day's journey from
the
called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over
under-garments of red. The
complexion of the guru was very fair, and his
hair, which was not parted
but combed back, streamed down his
shoulders. When the Brahmachani
first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book,
which the Brahmachari
was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig
Veda.
The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was
coming from. On
finding the latter had not had anything to eat,
the guru commanded that
he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and
tea. As the
Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food
with, the guru asked
for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung--the
fuel used in that country
as well as in this--by simply blowing upon it,
and gave it to our
Brahmachari.
The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same
phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan,
as they are called in
on the northern side of
suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru,
who gave him a few
grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the
guru had in his hand,
and the sick man was cured then and there.
Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and
their guru, the
Brahmachari found that they were going to attend
a festival held on the
banks of the
proceed to the
The above statement was on several occasions
repeated by the Brahmachari
in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender
Nath Tagore of
Jorasanko,
Surcey of India, Dehradun; Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same
place;
Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of
Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer. Comments would here seem
almost superfluous, and the facts might very
well have been left to
speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent
jury. But the averseness
of people to enlarge their field of experience
and the wilful
misrepresentation of designing persons know no
bounds. The nature of
the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional
character. Both
witnesses were met quite accidentally. Even if it be granted, which we
certainly do not for a moment grant, that the
Tibetan pedlar, Sundook,
had been interviewed by some interested person,
and induced to tell an
untruth, what can be conceived to have been the
motive of the
Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body
noted for their
truthfulness, and having no idea as to the
interest the writer took in
such things, in inventing a romance, and how
could he make it fit
exactly with the statements of the Tibetan
pedlar at the other end of
the country?
Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive
themselves in many matters, but these statements
dealt only with such
disunited facts as fell within the range of the
narrator's eyes and
ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or
opinion. Thus, when
the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of
the Dehradun Brahmachari,
there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as
to the truthfulness of
either.
It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari
was not the result of a series of leading
questions, but formed part of
the account he voluntarily gave of his travels
during the year, and that
he is almost entirely ignorant of the English
language, and had, to the
best of my knowledge, information and belief,
never even so much as
heard of the name of Theosophy. Now, if any one refuses to accept the
mutually corroborative but independent
testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar
of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on
the ground that they
support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily
falling within the
domain of one's experience, all I can say is
that it is the very miracle
of folly.
It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon
the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the
Mahatma Koothoomi is a
living person like any of us, and that moreover
he was seen by two
persons on two different occasions. This will, it is to be hoped,
settle for ever the doubts of those who believe
in the genuineness of
occult phenomena, but put them down to the
agency of "spirits." Mark
one circumstance. It may be argued that during the pedlar's
stay at
Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and,
who knows, she might
have bribed him (!!) into saying what he
said. But no such thing can be
urged in the case of the Dehradun
Brahmachari. He knew neither the
pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of
Colonel Olcott, having
just returned from his prolonged journey, and
had no idea that I was a
Fellow of the Society. His testimony was entirely voluntary. Some
others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that
there is no proof of
their connection with the Theosophical Society,
will be pleased to see
that there is no a priori impossibility in those
great souls taking an
interest in such a benevolent Society as
ours. Consequently it is a
gratuitous insult to a number of
self-sacrificing men and women to
reject their testimony without a fair hearing.
I purposely leave aside all proofs which are
already before the public.
Each set of proofs is conclusive in itself, and
the cumulative effect of
all is simply irresistible.
--Mohini
M. Chatterji
Theosophical Society,