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

4 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Indian Aryans from the common stock, contained the ideas only of that branch of the Aryan race which lived in the Temperate zone. The scientific researches of the latter half of the nineteenth century have, however, given a rude shock to these theories. From hundreds of stone and bronze imple- ments found buried in the various places in Europe the archæo- logists have now established the chronological sequence of the Iron, the Bronze and the Stone age in times preceding the historic period. But the most important event of the latter half of the last century, so far as it concerns our subject, was the discovery of the evidence proving the existence of the Glacial period at the close of Quaternary era, and the high antiquity of man, who was shown to have lived not only throughout the Quater- nary but also in the Tertiary era, when the climatic conditions of the globe were quite different from those in the present or the Post-Glacial period. The remains of animals and men found in the Neolithic or Palæolithic strata also threw new light on the ancient races inhabiting the countries where these remains were found; and it soon became evident that the time- telescope set up by the mythologists must be adjusted to a wider range, and the results previously arrived at by the study of myths and legends must be checked in the light of the facts disclosed by these scientific discoveries. The philologists had now to be more cautious in formulating their views, and some of them soon realised the force of the arguments advanced on the strength of these scientific discoveries. The works of German scholars, like Posche and Penka, freely challenged the Asiatic theory re- garding the original home of the Aryan race, and it is now generally recognised that we must give up that theory and seek for the original home of the Aryans somewhere else in the further north. Canon Taylor in his Origin of the Aryans has summed up the work done during the last few years in this