Jacolliot, Louis
Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890) was a French barrister, a colonial judge (in southern India and Tahiti) and a writer. He was devoutly anticlerical and saw Christianity as a poor imitation of the more ancient oriental religions. He was the author of The Bible in India in which he traced the Hindu origins of Hebrew and Christian revelation.
He was obsessed with Indian occultism and collected Sanskrit myths and interpreted some of them as telling of a sunken continent, Rutas, in the Indian Ocean. However, he decided to move this lost land to the Pacific and as a consequence, Jacolliot was quoted as an ‘authority’ by Blavatsky when she sought support for her own invention – Lemuria. Later this was embellished even further by William Scott Elliott. Jacolliot presented his sunken land as an echo of Plato’s Atlantis.
Joscelyn Godwin notes that Jacolliot is also credited with the invention of the story of Agartha[789.81].
At least two of Jacolliot’s books, Occult Science in India [1382]+ and The Bible in India [936]+, are now available online in English.
[936]+ https://archive.org/details/bibleinindiahind00jacorich *
[1382]+ http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/osi/osi00.htm *