Louis Jacolliot writes extensively on Indian culture,…

Louis Jacolliot writes extensively on Indian culture, including, in 1861, the legend of the Nine Unknown Men in Calcutta.

Jacolliot, born in Charolles, has lived several years in India and other parts of Asia, and will be described by twentieth century author L. Sprague de Camp as a "prolific but unreliable" writer.

According to occult lore, the Nine Unknown Men are a two millennia-old secret society founded by the Indian Emperor Asoka c. 270 BCE.

According to the legend, upon his conversion to Buddhism after a massacre during one of his wars, the Emperor founded the society of the Nine to preserve and develop knowledge that would be dangerous to humanity if it fell into the wrong hands.

Each of the Nine is supposedly responsible for guarding and improving a single book.

These books each deal with a different branch of potentially hazardous knowledge.

Traditionally, the books are said to cover the following subjects: 1. Propaganda and Psychological warfare.

2. Physiology, including instructions on how to perform the "touch of death." One account has Judo being a product of material leaked from this book.

3. Microbiology, and, according to more recent speculation, Biotechnology. In some versions of the myth, the waters of the Ganges are purified with special microbes designed by the Nine and released into the river at a secret base in the Himalayas.

4. Alchemy, including the transmutation of metals. In India, there is a persistent rumor that during times of drought or other natural disasters temples and religious organizations receive large quantities of gold from an unknown source. The mystery is further deepened with the fact that the sheer quantity of gold throughout the country in temples and with kings cannot be properly accounted for, seeing that India has only ever had one gold mine.

5. Communication, including communication with extraterrestrials.

6. Gravitation. Book 6 The Vaiminaka sastra is said to contain the instructions necessary to build a Vimana, sometimes referred to as the "ancient UFOs of India."

7. Cosmology, the capacity to travel at enormous speeds through space-time fabric, and time-travel; including intra- and inter-universal trips.

8. Light, the capacity to increase & decrease the speed of light, to use it as a weapon by concentrating it in a certain direction etc.

9. Sociology, including rules concerning the evolution of societies and how to predict their downfall.)