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

150 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. people ever lived within the Arctic regions, and immigrated southwards owing to glaciation, an adaptation of the calendar to the altered geographical and astronomical conditions of the new home was a necessity, and must have been effected at the time. But in making this change, we may, as remarked by Sir Norman Lockyer, certainly expect the conservative priests to retain as much of the old calendar as possible, or at least preserve the traditions of the older year in one form or another especially in their sacrificial rites. Indo-European etymological equations have established the fact that sacrifices, or rather the system of making offerings to the gods for various purposes, existed from the primeval period ;* and if so, the system must have undergone great modifications as the Aryan races moved from the Arctic to the temperate zone. I have shown elsewhere that calendar and sacrifice, especially the annual sattras, are closely connected, and that in the case of the annual sattras, or the sacrificial sessions which lasted for one year, the priests had in view, as observed by Dr. Haug,† the yearly course of the sun. It was the duty of these priests to keep up the sacrificial fire, as the Parsi priests now do, and to see that the yearly rounds of sacrifices were performed at proper times (ṛitus). The sacrificial calendar in the Arctic home must, however, have been different from what it came to be afterwards ; and happily many traces of this calendar are still discoverable in the sacrificial literature of Vedic times, proving that the ancient worshippers or sacri- ficers of our race must have lived in circum-polar regions. But before discussing this evidence, it is necessary to briefly describe the points wherein we might expect the ancient

• See Schrader's Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, Part IV, Chap. XIII, translated by Jevons, p. 421. Cf. Sans. yaj ; Zend yaz ; Greek azomai, agios. See Orion, Chap. II. † See Dr. Haug's Aitareya Brâh. Vol. I, Introduction, p. 46.