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

2 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. In some cases, as in that of Greece, the historic period goes back to 1000 B. C., while in the case of Egypt the contemporaneous records, recently unearthed from ancient tombs and monuments, carry back its history upto about 5000 B. C. But in either case the historic period, the oldest limit of which may be taken to be 5000 or 6000 B. C., is preceded by a period of myths and tra- ditions; and as these were the only materials available for the study of prehistoric man up to the middle of the nineteenth century, various attempts were made to systematise these myths, to explain them rationally and see if they shed any light on the early history of man. But, as observed by Prof. Max Muller, "it was felt by all unprejudiced scholars that none of these systems of interpretation was in the least satis- factory." "The first impulse to 'a new consideration of the mythological problem" observes the same learned author "came from the study of comparative philology." Through the dis- covery of the ancient language and sacred books of India—a discovery, which the Professor compares with the discovery of the new world, and through the discovery of the intimate re- lationship between Sanskrit and Zend on the one hand and the languages of the principal races of Europe on the other, a com- plete revolution took place in the views commonly entertained of the ancient history of the world. 1 It was perceived that the languages of the principal European nations—ancient and mo- dern—bore a close resemblance to the languages spoken by the Brahmans of India and the followers of Zoroaster; and from this affinity of the Indo-Germanic languages it followed inevitably that all these languages must be the off-shoots or dialects of a single primitive tongue, and the assumption of such a primitive language further implied the existence of a primitive Aryan people. The study of Vedic literature and classical Sanskrit by Western scholars thus gradually effected

1. See Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. II, pp. 445-6.