Nine unknown men...oldest secret societies in the world

Beyond ordinary understanding, the Nine Unknown Men are a two millennia-old secret crew founded by the Indian Emperor Asoka c. 270 BCE. According to the legend, on his conversion to Buddhism following a massacre during one of his wars, the Emperor created the crew of the Nine to preserve and develop knowledge that would be dangerous to mankind if it fell into the wrong hands. Some interpretations of the story includes an additional motivation for the Emperor to conceal scientific knowledge: remnants of the Rama Empire, a Indian version of Atlantis, which according to Hindu scripture was destroyed by advanced weaponry 15,000 years ago.

Many writers first wrote about the Nine, most considerably (and apparently first) Louis Jacolliot, Talbot Mundy, and later Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their Morning of the Magicians, engendered the story of the Nine claiming that the society indirectly revealed itself to wise outsiders such as Pope Sylvester II who was said to have received, among other things, training in supernatural powers and a robotic talking head from the group. In more recent times, according to this circle, the Nine helped mankind by disclosing the secret of the Cholera vaccine.

Among conspiracy theorists the Nine Unknown is frequently cited as one of the oldest and dominant masterful secret crews in the world. Unusually for conspiracy theorists, the image of the group is largely though not entirely benign. Theosophists also believe the Nine to be a real organization that is working for the good of the world.

Several modern Indian scientists such as Jagdish Chandra Bose were said to trust in or even to be members of the Nine however data on this issue is predictably scant. Believers in the Nine also point to the mysterious Iron pillar of Delhi, which is said to have been constructed at a time before the technology to create it existed in common circulation. However, this is disputed by other scholars and researchers.

Each of the Nine is supposedly responsible for protecting and advancing a single book. Each of these books deal with a different branch of possibly dangerous knowledge. Traditionally, the books are said to cover the following subjects:

• Propaganda and Psychological warfare.

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

• 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.
  

• 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 few gold mines.
  
  
• Communication, including communication with extraterrestrials.

• Gravitation. Book 6 The Vaiminaka sastra is said[Please name specific person or group] to contain the instructions necessary to build a Vimana, sometimes referred to as the "ancient UFOs of India."

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

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

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