In April 1882, Olcott lectured at Calcutta Town Hall on his first visit to Bengal, more than three years after his arrival in Bombay. He was introduced to this fateful lecture audience by Mittra, now a TS Vice-President and President of the Calcutta branch. Olcott attributed to Indian Mahatmas all the early paranormal wonders he witnessed in New York, and dated his desire to move to India to his earliest acquaintance with Blavatsky in Vermont. “She soon proved to me that, in comparison with even the chela of an Indian Mahatma, the authorities I had been accustomed to look up to knew absolutely nothing… I began to count the years, the months, the days, as they passed, for they were bringing me ever nearer the time when I should drag my body after the eager thought that had so long preceded it.” (39)
This account makes the move to India an inevitable destination of the TS even before it was founded, which conflicts with numerous accounts from other founding figures and even his own story of the fateful 1877 introduction to the Arya Samaj. As the alliance with Dayananda collapsed, so did his significance in Olcott’s explanation of his reasons coming to India: “During the three years when I was waiting to come to India, I had other visits from the Mahatmas, and they were not all Hindus or Cashmeris. I know some fifteen in all, and among them Copts, Tibetans, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, a Hungarian, and a Cypriote.” (40)
Olcott’s visits from the Mahatmas have acquired the connotation of mysterious paranormal events through decades of Theosophical elaboration. But regardless of paranormal claims, as seen in Olcott’s description above, there was a remarkable series of encounters with international acquaintances who shared common interests. He mentions no Bengali Mahatmas, yet makes a long-term commitment to the Theosophists of Bengal, saying “I expect henceforth to spend at least two or three months of each year in Bengal…We have not the least intention of returning to our own countries to reside. India is our chosen home, the land of our adoption; and the Hindus are our dearest friends, if not our brothers.”(41)
In Old Diary Leaves, Olcott described his arrival in Calcutta for the first time and its aftermath:
Calcutta was my final stage on this roundabout tour of 1882. I was first entertained there by my excellent friends Colonel and Mrs. Gordon, and, later, by the Maharajah, Sir Jotendro Mohn Tagore, the premier Indian noble of the Metropolis…became his guest at his palatial Guest-House (Boituckhana) for the remainder of my stay in Calcutta. This gentleman is one of the courtliest, most cultured and estimable friends I have ever known. On the 4th, the Maharajah held a reception for me, to make me acquainted with the chief Indian gentlemen of the city. On the 5th, my lecture was given at the town hall to a tremendous audience…The beloved Bengali author and philanthropist, the late Babu Peary Chand Mittra, was my Chairman. H.P.B. joined me the next day at the Boituckhana, and that evening, at the same place, we organized the Bengal Theosophical Society, one of our best known Branches, with Babu Peary Chand Mittra as President. (42)
Blavatsky’s first mention of the Brahmo Samaj after her visit to Bengal was in the June 1882 Theosophist with an article “Hindu Theism” in which she introduced an article on Brahmo history:
“In 1838 the leadership fell into the hands of Babu Debendra Nath Tagore, a Bengali gentleman of high family, and of a sweetness of character and loftiness of aim equal to that of the late Raja. Primitive Brahmoism was first split into two, and, later, into three churches. The first and, it is claimed, the original, one is known as the Adi Brahmo Samaj, of which the now venerable and always equally revered Babu Debendra Nath Tagore is theoretically, but Babu Raj Narain Bose practically—owing to the retirement of the former to a life of religious seclusion at Mussooree— the chief…the second Samaj comprises a small group which has followed the lead of Babu Kashab Chander Sen, down the slippery road to the quagmire of Infallibility, Direct Revelation, and Apostolic Succession…The Third branch of the original Brahmo Samaj of Ram Mohun Roy is called the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, and headed by Pandit Sivanath Shastri, who is a gentleman of unblemished character, modest disposition, a well-read Sanskritist, and a good though not exceptional, orator…In conclusion, we must note the coincidence that, upon the very heel of the Swami’s defection, comes a most cordial greeting from Babu Raj Narain Bose, leader of another Hindu society, and a man whose approbation and friendship is worth having…” (43)
In May 1883, in “The Chosen `Vehicles of Election’” she protested that “Brahmoism proper, as taught by Raja Ram Mohun Roy, or the respected and venerable Babu Debendranath Tagore, we have never ridiculed nor deprecated, nor ever will.” (44) The following month, Blavatsky published an article in the Theosophist which commented on an article from the previous month’s number by Bose on “Essential Religion” in a friendly but critical tone. This echoed the tone of the original criticism, in which Bose pointed out that Theosophy was as much a propagandistic religion as Brahmoism despite claims to the contrary. In his response Bose wrote “I am not therefore unfriendly to Theosophy, but I have a word of humble advice to offer to the disinterested leaders of the Theosophical movement, for whom I entertain every feeling of respect. The more they keep Theosophy and Theology distinct from each other, and the less they mix up their personal opinions of the subject of religion with their legitimate province, Theosophy, the better.“ (45) Blavatsky replied that “The saintly characters of Ram Mohun Roy, Debendra Nath Tagore, and a few others of his colleagues, have not won the Hindus from their exoteric worship—we think, because neither of them has had the Yogi power to prove practically the fact of there being a spiritual side to nature. (46) A further exchange appeared in the December 1883 number of The Theosophist, in which Blavatsky commented that “We never spoke of the `Adi Brahmo Samaj,’ of which we know next to nothing, but of the spurious Brahmo Samaj calling itself New Dispensation where all is to be taken on faith and the Universal Infallibility is claimed to have taken its Headquarters in the person of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen who has now come to comparing himself publicly—nay with identifying himself—with Jesus Christ.” (47) Describing all branches of Brahmos combined as having fewer than 150,000 members, Blavatsky adds “we were told in Calcutta by a near relative of the Babu—that the direct followers, or the apostles of Babu Keshub could be counted on the ten fingers— they do not exceed fifty men.” (48) But while the New Dispensation was subject to relentless scorn in Blavatsky’s writings, Mittra was always praised: “There are a few converts to modern Spiritualism, such as Babu Peary Chand Mittra, whose great personal purity of life would make such intercourse harmless for him, even were he not indifferent to physical phenomena, holding but to the purely spiritual subjective side of such communion.” (49)
While Blavatsky’s first trip to Bengal to promote the TS among the Brahmos in April 1882 was of short-term import, her second trip, when she visited Darjeeling and the Ghum monastery six months later, had a more lasting significance. She traveled in the company of several Indian chelas, including Keshava Pillai who was instructed in a letter from Koot Hoomi to adopt the name Chandra Cusho and the attire of a Gelugpa monk. The name Chandra may be a nod to Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917), a Bengali scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who was in Shigatse at the time of Blavatsky’s trip to Darjeeling, in the company of a Sikkimese lama named Ugyen Gyatso. In the December 1883 Theosophist, she referred to “Ten-Dub Ughien, the lama next to our Mahatma—and the chief and Guide of his chelas on their travels.”(50) Ugyen Gyatso and Sarat Chandra Das returned from their trip to Shigatse in December 1882, and Colonel Olcott visited Das in Darjeeling in 1885 and 1887 and wrote of him as a “wonderful explorer of Tibet” who had returned with “priceless MSS. and printed books.” (51)
39 Henry S. Olcott, Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science (London: Redway, 1885), 122-124.
40 Ibid., 124.
41 Ibid., 119.
42 Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Third Series (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 340-341.
43 H.P. Blavatsky, “Hindu Theism,”The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 9, June 1882, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IV (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969), 109-111.
44 H.P. Blavatsky, “The Chosen `Vessels of Election;” The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 8, May, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IV, 414-415.
45 Babu Raj Narain Bose, “The Essentials of Religion,” The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 11, August, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Volume V (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1950), 99.
46 H.P. Blavatsky, “Editor’s Note,” Ibid., p. 100.
47 Babu Raj Narain Bose, “The God-Idea,” The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3, December 1883, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 12.
48 “H.P. Blavatsky, Editor’s Note, “Ananda Bai’s Reception,” The Theosophist, Vol. V, No 3, Supplement to December, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 68.
49 H.P. Blavatsky, “Tibetan Teachings,” Lucifer, Vol. XV, Nos. 85-86, September and October, 1894, in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 96.
50 H.P. Blavatsky, “Editor’s Note,” Preo Nath Banerjee, “Existence of the Himalayan Mahatmas,” The Theosophist, Vol. V., No. 3, December, 1883, reprinted in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. VI, 38.
51 Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Third Series, 4-6.