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

350 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. supposing that it was the out-come of an unsuccessful attempt made in pre-Buddhistic time to identify Râma with Sûrya in the Ṛig-Veda, the latter of whom is described both as the bro- ther and the lover of the Dawn (VII, 75, 5; VI, 55, 4 and 5; X, 3 3 ). I have already stated that the subject is too vast to be treat- ed here at any length. My object was to point out a few resem- blances between the story of the Râmâyaṇa and the Vedic myths as they occurred to me: But the question, howsoever interest- ing, is not relevant to the subject in hand, and I must give up the temptation of going into it more fully in this place. The ques- tion of ten incarnations is also similarly connected with the ten golden kings, or the ten gods mentioned in the Atharva Veda, or the ten incarnations of Verethreghna in the Avesta. The ten incarnations in the Avesta ( Yt. XIV) are, a wind, a bull, a horse, a camel, a boar, a youth, a raven, a ram, a buck and a man; and four of them, viz., a horse. a boar, a youth and a man, seem to correspond with Kalki, Varâha, Vâmana and Râma amongst the ten Avatâras mentioned in the Purâṇic literature. This shows that the conception of the ten Avatâras was, at any rate, Indo-Iranian in origin, and it is no doubt inte- resting to follow it up and trace its development on the Indian soil. The Matsya, the Kûrma, the Varâha, the Nârasimha, the Vâmana and, as we have now seen, the Râma Avatâra can be more or less traced to the Ṛig-Veda. But it would require much patient research to thoroughly investigate these matters, and I cannot do more than to throw out such hints as have occurred to me, and ask the reader to take them for what they are worth. If the Arctic theory is established, it will throw a good deal of new light not only on the Vedic but also on the Purâṇic mythology, and it will then be necessary to revise, in some cases entirely recast, the current expalnations of both. But the work as stated previously cannot be undertaken in a book which is