II
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS
After Mr. A.P. Sinnett died in 1921, his Executrix, Miss Maud Hoffman, arranged with Mr. A. Trevor Barker to edit and publish the Mahatma letters. This came out in December, 1923, followed by a revised edition in 1926.
In his Preface, Mr. Barker stated:
The reader must bear in mind that with only one or two exceptions none of the letters were dated by the writers thereof. On many of them, however, the dates and places of receipt have been noted in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting, and these appear in small type immediately under the Letter Numbers.
It should be understood that unless otherwise stated:
1. Each letter has been transcribed direct from the original.
2. Every letter was written to A.P. Sinnett.
3. All footnotes are copies of notes which appear in and belong to the letters themselves, unless signed (Ed.) in which case they have been added by the compiler.
Mr. Barker writes further that "the reader is asked to believe that the greatest care has been taken in the work of transcription; the whole MS. has been checked word for word with the originals, and everything possible done to prevent errors. It is however probably too much to expect that the printed book will contain no mistakes, they are almost inevitable."
In 1962, a third edition was issued under the joint editorship of Christmas Humphreys and Elsie Benjamin. The third edition involved a meticulous review of the transcription of the previous editions. The edition benefited from the invaluable assistance of Mr. C. Jinarajadasa, the late President of the Theosophical Society, Mr. James Graham, and Mr. Boris de Zirkoff, compiler of the Collected Writings of H.P. Blavatsky.
As the present edition is primarily based on the Third Edition, it is necessary to quote Mr. Humphreys and Ms. Benjamin regarding the basis of their transcription as contained in the Preface to that edition:
The idea of transcribing the material exactly as it appeared was at once abandoned. One reason alone sufficed, that Trevor Barker had already made many corrections in spelling, punctuation and the like, and it was therefore decided to produce a book of the maximum value to students while remaining faithful to the thoughts behind the original.
But voices have been loudly raised in the past about changes in later editions of the works of early Theosophical writers, and it is therefore important to be able to declare, as is now declared, (a) that in this Work no single word has been added, save in square brackets to make the sense clear; and (b) that no single word has been omitted save in a few cases where its presence was an obvious grammatical error.
Mr. Humphreys and Ms. Benjamin also stated that the treatment of the text followed the following principles:
The spelling of names, places, non-English phrases and the like has been revised, and attempts made at greater consistency in the use of capital letters and italics. Quotations from books and of foreign phrases have been corrected where errors have been found.
No attempt has been made to achieve consistency in the use of diacritical marks. When used they have been left, but none has been added. The Masters' spelling of Sanskrit words is sometimes a North Indian variation of the classical spelling, and the former has not been changed.
There have been many changes in the punctuation. In most cases the corrections were obvious improvements, and in no case made any possible alteration to the meaning. Sometimes, however, it was very difficult to understand a sentence until the addition of a comma, or its removal, suddenly made sense. In those cases such a change has only been made after all concerned agreed that it was necessary to clarify the meaning.
As contained in the same Preface, the editors of the third edition also carefully considered the re-arrangement of the letters in chronological order. They studied six known chronological arrangements — by Miss Mary K. Neff, Mrs. Margaret G. Conger, Mrs. Beatrice Hastings, Mr. James Arthur, Mr. G. N. Slyfield and Mr. K. F. Vania — and decided to abandon the idea due to the divergence in the order of the different lists. They also decided against including other known letters to Sinnett and Hume since "it would be difficult to decide where such addition should stop."
The Third Edition left out the appendix of Mr. Barker on the "Mars and Mercury" controversy, as well as the bulk of the Introduction of Mr. Barker in the first and second edition, on the grounds that they were primarily comments and had no place in the compilation.
III
The present editor wishes to thank Mrs. Virginia Hanson for her invaluable role and support in the preparation of this edition; and to George Linton, Joy Mills, Radha Burnier, Adam Warcup and Daniel Caldwell for their suggestions and encouragement. The text was carefully typeset and proofread by Pia Dagusen. She also prepared the new extensive index of this edition. The text was reviewed and proofread by Eugenia Tayao and Roselmo Doval-Santos. To them and others who have helped, we express our deep gratitude.
VICENTE HAO CHIN, JR.
Table of Chronology
[The letter numbers are arranged according to their chronological sequence. The numbers in parenthesis preceded by "ML" are the letter numbers used in the first to the third editions.]
The Mahatma Letters
Letter No. 1 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-1) October 17, 1880
Letter No. 2 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-2) Rec. Oct. 19, 1880
Letter No. 3A . . . . . . . . .(ML-3A) Rec. Oct. 20, 1880
Letter No. 3B . . . . . . . . .(ML-3B) Rec. Oct. 20, 1880
Letter No. 3C . . . . . . . . .(ML-3C) Rec. Oct. 20, 1880
Letter No. 4 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-143) Rec. Oct. 27, 1880
Letter No. 5 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-4) Rec. Nov. 3, 1880
Letter No. 6 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-126) Rec. Nov. 3, 1880
Letter No. 7 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-106) Rec. bet. Nov 3, & Nov. 20, 1880
Letter No. 8 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-99) Rec. Nov 20, 1880
Letter No. 9 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-98) Rec. Dec. 1, 1880 or later
Letter No. 10 . . . . . . . . . (ML-5) Rec. after Dec. 1, 1880
Letter No. 11 . . . . . . . . . (ML-28) Rec. Dec. 1880
Letter No. 12 . . . . . . . . . (ML-6) Rec. Dec. 10, 1880
Letter No. 13 . . . . . . . . . (ML-7) Rec. Jan. 30, 1881
Letter No. 14A . . . . . . . . (ML-142A) Rec. before Feb. 20, 1881
Letter No. 14B . . . . . . . . (ML-142B) Rec. before Feb. 20, 1881
Letter No. 15 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-8) Rec. Feb. 20, 1881
Letter No. 16 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-107) Rec. Mar. 1, 1881
Letter No. 17 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-31) Rec. Mar. 26, 1881
Letter No. 18 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-9) Rec. July 5, 1881
Letter No. 19 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-121) Rec. July 11, 1881
Letter No. 20 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-49) Rec. Aug. 5, 1881
Letter No. 21 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-27) Rec. Autumn 1881
Letter No. 22 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-26) Rec. Simla, Autumn 1881
Letter No. 23 . . . . . . . . . . (ML-104) Rec. Oct. 1881
Letter No. 24 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-71) Rec. October, 1881
Letter No. 25 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-73) Rec. October, 1881
Letter No. 26 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-102) October, 1881
Letter No. 27 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-101) October, 1881
Letter No. 28 . . . . . . . . . .(ML-74) October, 1881