Freemasonry was first started in INDIA !!!
QUOTE from link:
A very interesting article about India as the origin of Masonry appeared in The New Age, an official Masonic magazine, for March, 1928. The writer,
Denman S. Wagstaff, in outlining what he learned form an Indian Mason in Lahore, says:
"In symbolic fashion and in accord with the science of numbers, the body of a man is figuratively supposed to be a temple with seven stars or
openings in the head; and the various other orifices are the Sun and the Moon of the Verat, or the Macrocosm of ancient Philosophers, or man as a part
of the Grand Lodge above. The Unity of Brotherhood with the Fatherhood of God has been fully recognized among Hindoo Masons."
Mr. Wagstaff quotes his Indian correspondent as claiming that while Masonry was revived after the Middle Ages in the British Isles,
yet it must be
conceded that all Masonry came from the East. "Ex Oriente Lux." "While it is admitted that Masonry deteriorated in the East," says the
article, "in comparison with the high standard it attained in the West, yet the purity of the original, traced in Sanscrit documents and books, shows
how the various ancient charges were taught by the high priests of old in the Upanishads and Puranas . . . ."
END QUOTE