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

THE AVESTIC EVIDENCE. 361 the original text. Professor Darmesteter further observes that as the enumeration of the sixteen lands begins with Airyana Vaêjo by the river Vanguhi Dâitya and ends with Rangha, which corresponds with the Vedic Rasâ, a mythical river that divides the gods from the fiends, and that as the Vanguhi and the Rangha were originally the celestial rivers that came down from heaven (like the two heavenly Gânges) to surround the earth, the one in the east and the other in the west, (Bundahish, XX), the Airyana Vaêjo and the Rangha must be taken to denote the eastern and the western bounda- ries of the countries known to the ancient Iranians at the time when the Fargard was composed. Spiegel also takes the same view, and places Airyana Vaêjo "in the farthest east of the Iranian plateau, in the region where the Oxus and Jaxartes take their rise;" and Darmesteter seems to quote with approval the identification of the Rangha or the sixteenth land, in the commentary on the Vedidad, with Arvastân-i-Rûm or Roman Mesopotamia. The whole Fargard is thus taken to be a geographical description of the ancient Iran, and Professor Darmesteter at the end of his introduction to the Fargard ob- serves "It follows hence no historical conclusion can be drawn from this description : it was necessary that it should begin with the Vanguhi and end with the Rangha. To look to it for an account of geographical migrations is converting cosmology into history." Bunsen and Haug, on the other hand, maintain that the Airyana Vaêjo represents the original home of the Iranians in the far north, and the countries mentioned in the Fargard must, therefore, be taken to represent the lands through which the Aryans passed after leaving their ancient home. The first question which we have, therefore, to decide is whether the Airyana Vaêjo was merely the easternmost boundary of the ancient Iran, or whether it was the primeval abode of the Iranians in the far north. In the former case we may take the Fargard to be merely a chapter on ancient