वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

viii PREFACE. that "Our little systems have their day, or their hour : as know- ledge advances they pass into the history of the efforts of pio- neers." Nor is the theory of the Arctic home so new and start- ling as it appears to be at the first sight. Several scientific men have already declared their belief that the original home of man must be sought for in the Arctic regions; and Dr. Warren, the President of the Boston University, has anticipated me, to a cer- tain extent, in his learned and suggestive work, the Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, the tenth edition of which was published in America in 1893. Even on strict philological grounds the theory of a primitive Aryan home in Central Asia has been now almost abandoned in favour of North Germany or Scandinavia; while Prof. Rhys, in his Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom, is led to suggest "some spot within the Arctic circle" on purely mythological considera- tions. I go only a step further, and show that the theory, so far as the primitive Aryan home is concerned, is fully borne out by Vedic and Avestic traditions, and, what is still more import- ant, the latest geological researches not only corroborate the Avestic description of the destruction of the Aryan Paradise, but enable us to place its existence in times before the last Glacial epoch. The evidence on which I rely is fully set forth in the following pages ; and, though the question is thus brought for the first time within the arena of Vedic and Avestic scholar- ship, I trust that my critics will not prejudge me in any way, but give their judgment, not on a passage here or an argument there,—for, taken singly, it may not sometimes be found to be conclusive,—but on the whole mass of evidence collected in the book, irrespective of how far-reaching the ultimate effects of such a theory may be. In conclusion, I desire to express my obligations to my friend and old teacher Prof. S. G. Jinsivâle, M. A., who carefully went through the whole manuscript, except the last