Table of Contents
This page follows the story of the fifth Root Race as Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater tell it in chapter XIV, “Beginnings of the Fifth Root Race”, of Man: Whence, How and Whither (1913). All dates and events below are what the book says.
Initiation and Early Selection
- About 1,000,000 years ago: the book reads the statement in The Secret Doctrine, that the fifth Root Race began a million years ago, as the start of the Manu’s choosing. The Lord Vaivasvata, the Race Manu, picked a few people from a shipload that included the 1,200-year group.
- 400,000 years later: He picked out some more. Many would drop out on the way, so the selection narrowed over time.
It was rather like looking over a flock of sheep, and choosing out the most suitable.
Key Developments and Events
- About 100,000 B.C.: a tribe of the fifth sub-race, which the Stanzas of Dzyan call the “moon-coloured race”, lived in the mountains north of Ruta. The book calls its isolation the first decisive step in building the Race.
- Its religion differed from that of the Toltecs on the plains, and the Manu used this to keep it apart.
- His Brother the Bodhisattva, later the Lord Gautama Buddha, founded a new religion. Its followers were kept apart and forbidden to marry outside it.
- They were told they would one day travel to “the promised land”. The book suggests that some of the Hebrew story may come from this.
Migration and Settlement
- 79,797 B.C.: to escape rule by the Dark Ruler, the Manu called His people to the coast.
- A fleet of thirty ships took about 2,900 people per voyage across to the eastern end of the Sahara Sea. It made the trip three times. With a few people from elsewhere, the group came to about nine thousand.
A small fleet of ships, thirty in number, was provided ; the largest did not seem to be over 500 tons, and three were cutter-like vessels, carrying only provisions.
- They went on foot by the south of Egypt to Arabia, with animals the book compares to a tapir.
- According to the book, Atlanteans ruled Egypt then. They had built the pyramids that Cheops later put his name on. The Egyptian ruler, of a Toltec civilisation, tried to bribe the emigrants to stay. Those who stayed in lower Egypt later became slaves.
- The rest reached Arabia along the route of today’s Suez Canal. The Manu settled them in the valleys of the Arabian highlands.
Life in Arabia
- The younger settlers grumbled about the pioneer life. One fanatical group planned to fight the deserters in Egypt. That drew an Egyptian attack, and the fanatics were wiped out.
- The book describes a battle in a crater in which Sirius, the father of Herakles, dies, and the Manu turns the day with reinforcements.
- The settlers grew a date-like fruit as large as a man’s head, and a fruit the size of a coconut that gave sugar and flour.
- In about two thousand years they became a nation of several millions, cut off by a belt of desert, with one crossing near where Mecca now stands.
- Groups left for southern Palestine and southern Egypt. After about three thousand years, a large colony went to Africa. It was later wiped out.
Toward the Gobi Sea
- A few years before 75,025 B.C.: the Manu led about seven hundred of His own descendants north. They passed through the Sumiro-Akkad Empire into Turkestan, and through a Confederation of Turanian feudatory States.
- They settled in the hills north of the Gobi Sea, in a crater-like valley the book compares to the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey.
The Catastrophe of 75,025 B.C.
In Atlantis, the book says, the reincarnated Metal-Man held the City of the Golden Gates.
The City was suddenly destroyed by the rushing in of the sea through huge fissures caused by explosions of gas ; but, unlike the catastrophe in which the island of Poseidonis sank within twenty-four hours, these convulsions continued over a period of two years.
- The Himalayas rose a little higher. The land to the south of India sank with its people. Egypt was drowned, and only the pyramids were left. Morocco and Algeria became an island.
- The sun was hidden by dust for a year. The Manu’s community of about a thousand fell to about three hundred.
- After five years the land settled, and they could farm again.
Formation of the New Race
- The Manu was ordered to bring His people to the White Island.
There, by the Head of the Hierarchy Himself, the great plan of the future was unrolled before Him, stretching over thousands upon tens of thousands of years.
- His people were to live on the mainland by the Gobi Sea. The new Race was to be founded on the White Island, with a great City later built on the opposite shore.
- In four valleys He was to settle chosen families and develop four separate sub-races, to be sent later to other parts of the world. He would then incarnate in the type Himself to fix it.
- About 70,000 B.C.: He settled His people in villages on the mainland. They were already civilised and used labour-saving machinery.
Final Settlements
- The book names many reincarnated figures here. Mars, a grandson of the Manu, heads a town. Vajra is his brother. Jupiter rules the settlement of about seven thousand. The book also names Herakles, Psyche, Cetus and Ulysses, Pollux and others.
- The Manu had some children sent to Shamballa, among them Uranus and Neptune, Surya, Saturn, Vulcan and Venus. Saturn married Surya, and the Manu was reborn as their eldest son.
- Then Turanian tribes overran the mainland, and no one there survived. The community started again, on a higher level, and in some thousands of years it was a flourishing civilisation with large fortified houses and walled towns.
- A second invasion again left only a few children, raised in Shamballa. According to the book, the Turanians never attacked the White Island, which they held sacred. Each time, the Manu and His lieutenants were reborn into the Race.
Source: Man Whence How And Whither (1913 reprint 1946)
by Annie Besant; Leadbeater, C. W
