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

72 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. and the context in the Parsi scriptures removes all possible doubts regarding the Polar character of the statement. The latter part of the second Fargard, wherein this passage occurs, contains a discourse between Ahura Mazda and Yima.* Ahura Mazda warns Yima, the first king of men, of the approach of a dire winter, which is to destroy every living creature by covering the land with a thick sheet of ice, and advises Yima to build a Vara, or an enclosure, to preserve the seeds of every kind of animals and plants. The meeting is said to have taken place in the Airyana Vaejo, or the Paradise of the Iranians. The Vara, or the enclosure, advised by Ahura Mazda, is accordingly prepar- ed, and Yima asked Ahura Mazda, "O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! What lights are there to give light in the Vara which Yima made?" Ahura Mazda answered, "There are uncreated lights and created lights. There the stars, the moon and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a day." I have taken Darmesteter's rendering, but Spiegel's is substantially the same. This passage is important from various standpoints. First of all it tells us, that the Airyana Vaejo, or the original home of the Iranians, was a place which was rendered uninhabitable by glaciation; and secondly that in this original home the sun rose and set only once in the year, and that the year was like a day to the inhabitants of the place. The bearing of the passage in regard to glaciation will be discussed later on. For the present, it is enough to point out how completely it corroborates and ellucidates the statement in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa stated and discussed above. The yearly rising and set- ting of the sun is possible only at the North Pole, and the mention of this characteristic leaves no room for doubting that the Vara

• See Sacred Books of the East Series, Vol. IV, pp. 15-31.