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The doctrine of the 'music of the spheres' first saw the light here in India, and not in Greece or Italy, whither it was brought by Pythagoras after he had studied under the Indian Gymnosophists.
The mighty philosophers of India the inspired Gymnosophists died as we shall die! Calanus before Alexander, Zamarus in the presence of Augustus, lit the fires that consumed them! Let us follow their glorious example! No worms will prey upon our bodies, no hired mourners will howl discordant at our funerals!
Dandamis, another of the Gymnosophists, was of a milder mood, and when he had been told of Sokrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes, said that they appeared to him to have been wise men, but to have lived in too great bondage to the laws. Other writers say that Dandamis said nothing more than "For what purpose has Alexander come all the way hither?" However, Taxiles persuaded Kalanus to visit Alexander.
It is only five years since he appeared on the arena of great reforms, but till then, he lived, entirely secluded, in a jungle, like the ancient gymnosophists mentioned by the Greek and Latin authors. At this time he was studying the chief philosophical systems of the "Aryavartta" and the occult meaning of the Vedas with the help of mystics and anchorites.
Monks and hermits were in the East long before Moses, and neither old Greece nor Rome was ever without them. As for St. Francis and his snowballs, he did but mimic Diogenes, who, naked, embraced statues on which snow had fallen. The folly without the poetry. Ape of an ape for Diogenes was but a mimic therein of the Brahmins and Indian gymnosophists.
Some Greek writers corroborate the Egyptians in this, but as to Lykurgus having visited Libya and Iberia, or his journey to India and meeting with the Gymnosophists, or naked philosophers, there, no one that we know of tells this except the Spartan Aristokrates, the son of Hipparchus.
"Yet I have seen them kneel when I was in the country of the Gymnosophists," said a person present on the evening of Hereward's introduction.
It was said that he knew everything, save the caresses of women; that he was familiar with all languages; with the speech of bird and beast; with that of silence, for silence is a language too; that he had prayed in the Temple of Jupiter Lycoeus, where men lost their shadows, their lives as well; that he had undergone eighty initiations of Mithra; that he had perplexed the magi; confuted the gymnosophists; that he foretold the future, healed the sick, raised the dead; that beyond the Himalayas he had encountered every species of ferocious beast, except the tyrant, and that it was to see one that he had come to Rome.
According to some writers, he travelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, which does not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spain and Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India. Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state in disorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no laws were written.
This is what may also be remarked in the person of Apollonius Thyaneus, as a token of singular esteem and liberality, received one from the great Iarchas, prince of the Gymnosophists, who were the ancient priests of India and dwelt in forests, as our ancient bards and druids, where they applied themselves to the study of wisdom, and to the speculation of the heaven and stars.
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