In his
book "The Masters and the Path",
Charles Leadbeater published the following engraving and wrote the following
text about it with the title:
A RAVINE
IN TIBET
There is a certain
valley, or rather ravine, in Tibet, where three of these Great Ones, the Master
Morya, the Master Kuthumi and the Master Djwal Kul are living at the present
time.
The Master Djwal Kul,
at Madame Blavatsky’s request, once made for her a precipitated picture of the
mouth of that ravine, and the illustration given herewith is a reproduction of
a photograph of that. The original, which is precipitated on silk, is preserved
in the shrine- room of the Headquarters of The Theosophical Society at Adyar.
On the left of the picture the Master Morya is seen on horse-back near the door
of his house. The dwelling of the Master Kuthumi does not appear in the
picture, being higher up the valley, round the bend on the right. Madame
Blavatsky begged the Master Djwal Kul to put himself into the picture; he at
first refused, but eventually added himself as a small figure standing in the
water and grasping a pole, but with his back to the spectator! This original is
faintly tinted, the colours being blue, green and black. It bears the signature
of the artist — the nickname Gai Ben- Jamin, which he bore in his youth in the
early days of the Society, long before he reached Adeptship*. The scene is
evidently taken early in the day, as the morning mists are still clinging to
the hillsides.
_ _ _
*
This signature was upon the lower margin outside the actual picture, and
consequently it does not appear in our reproduction." (Leadbeater's
footnote)
OBSERVATIONS
In
the first edition of 1925, only that image appears at the beginning of the book
and text does not appear. It is in the subsequent editions that Leadbeater
moved that image to the beginning of chapter two and added the text that I put
above.
He
called that painting “A Ravine in Tibet”, but technically that place is not in
Tibet but in a region that was previously known as Little Tibet.
And
within the account that Leadbeater gave, I detect several points that do not
coincide with the facts:
There
is a letter that Colonel Olcott wrote to Mr. Allan Hume, where he tells him
that he owns this painting:
« Colombo,
Ceylon,
September
30, 1881.
I
have also personally known ___ [Master Kuthumi] since 1875. He is of quite a different,
a gentler, type, yet the bosom friend of the ___ [Master Morya]. They live near
each other with a small Buddhist Temple about midway between their houses.
.
. .
In
New York, I received a colored sketch on China silk of the landscape near [Koot
Hoomi]'s and my Chohan's [Morya's] residences with a glimpse of the latter’s
house and of part of the little temple. »
(excerpts) (1)
And
in a letter that Colonel Olcott wrote to Damodar, he said:
« Simla,
October 4, 1880.
You
will see the very image [of the Tibetan temple] in a colored painting on silk that
lies on my bureau in my bed-room, and that was magically produced by Blavatsky
for me in New. »
(excerpts) (2)
The
researcher Mary K. Neff reproduced the painting mentioned by Colonel Olcott in
his book "The Personal
Memoirs of Madame Blavatsky" (1937) and as you can see it is
the same image that Leadbeater put in his book:
We
therefore see that Colonel Olcott pointed out that it was Blavatsky who
precipitated this painting. Which coincides with other events that show that
Blavatsky could —with the help of Master Kuthumi— precipitate objects (see link)
and therefore she did not need to ask Djwal Khul to do that work for her.
Also,
when Blavatsky and Olcott were in New York, Djwal Khul was only a small
disciple who could not precipitate objects, and he does not appear in
historical documentation until Blavatsky and Olcott went to live in India,
where Djwal Khul performed the job of being the assistant and intermediary
between them and the masters.
So
I suspect that Charles Leadbeater, unaware of these data, he invent this story
that Djwal Khul had been the one who had precipitated the painting, and since
Leadbeater was a very liar, he added all this fable around his narration, that
is, Djwal Khul did not want to appear in the painting but Madame Blavatsky
begged him, etc.
However
Leadbeater may have been right in one aspect and that is that Djwal Khul liked
to paint, and in a letter that Master Morya wrote to Mr. Sinnett, he called Djwal
Khul: "Benjamin" (CM102, p.439) which is similar to the name of the
artist who made this painting "Gai Ben-Jamin."
So
maybe Djwal Khul did paint that landscape and then Blavatsky precipitated it to
New York to give away to Colonel Olcott.
Another
person who also published this image in one of her books was the historian Jean
Overton Fuller and about it she said:
« This
painting is in Adyar, the information that it was painted on a silk, in misty,
blue, green and silver tones was given to me in the letter that was sent to me with
a black and white print, and the permission to reproduce it.
Looking
at it, I see that the temple in the bottom right-hand corner, with a Chinese style
roof, is flying two Tibetan prayer flags, and I can also see that the
architecture of Morya's house is not Tibetan but could be Nepalese. »
(excerpts) (3)
And
although the house of the master Kuthumi does not appear in the painting,
Blavatsky specified that "it is a large wooden building in the Chinese
fashion pagoda-like, between a lake and a beautiful mountain." (4)
And
the photo that I put above at the beginning of this article is an image that I
found on the internet of an artist who painted that landscape in a color
version, but I don't know who the author is.
References
- AO Hume, “Hints on Esoteric Theosophy,” No. 1, 1882, 2nd Edition, pp. 76-86.
- Originally published in the newspaper The Times of India (Bombay) of October 19, 1880 with the title "A day with Madame Blavatsky".
- Theosophical History, Vol. III, No. 3, July 1990, pp. 109-110.
- Blavatsky´s letter to Mrs. Hollis Billings, The Theosophical Forum, Point Loma, California, May 1936, pp. 343-346.
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