Brahmanism Is the Elder Sister of Buddhism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Living the Life Series · 8 pages

First published in The Theosophist, Vol. III (4), January 1882, pages 92–93, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings III pages 396–99 under the heading “Esoteric Axioms and Spiritual Speculations.” The running head gives the argument in short: Brahmanism is Buddhism dressed in new garb.

The head-note sets out the two claims the article defends. The first is historical: that the Vedas, Sanskrit and Brahmanism were imported into what is now regarded as India, rather than originating there. The second is about access, and is the sharper of the two — that while Gautama Buddha made enlightenment open to all, the Brahmans had jealously excluded from that privilege every man outside their own caste. The occasion is a review by M.A. (Oxon) of Arthur Lillie's Buddha and Early Buddhism, published in the Psychological Review under the title “Buddhism and Western Thought,” in which the reviewer takes the opportunity, as Blavatsky puts it, for another quiet little fling at his well-wishers the Theosophists, contradicting their assertions on Lillie's authority. She quotes the passage she means to answer: the reviewer's pleased surprise at finding Buddhist belief permeated by what he calls a peculiar note of modern Spiritualism, the presence and guardianship of departed spirits — a claim she marks in the text with an exclamation and a question mark, and which the remainder of the article is written to correct.

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