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

376 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. first twenty (or according to Spiegel forty-one) paragraphs, and the second the remaining portion of the Fargard. In the first part Ahura Mazda is said to have asked king Yima the ruler of the Airyāna Vaêjo, who is called Sruto Airyênê vaêjahê, 'famous in Airyāna Vaêjo', to receive the law from Mazda ; but Yima refused to become the bearer of the law and he was, therefore, directed by Ahura Mazda to keep his people happy and make them increase. Yima is accordingly represented as making his men thrive and increase by keeping away death and disease from them, and by thrice enlarging the boundaries of the country which had become too narrow for its inhabitants. Whether this fact represents a gradual expansion of the oldest Aryan settlements in the Arctic home we need not stop to inquire. The second part of the Fargard opens with a meeting of the celestial gods called by Ahura Mazda, and "the fair Yima, the good shepherd of high re- nown in the Airyāna Vaêjo," is said to have attended this meeting with all his excellent mortals. It was at this meet- ing that Yima was distinctly warned by Ahura Mazda that fatal winters were going to fall on the happy land and de- stroy everything therein. To provide against this calamity the Holy One advised Yima to make a Vara or enclosure, and remove there the seeds of every kind of animals and plants for preservation. Yima made the Vara accordingly, and the Far- gard informs us that in this Vara the sun, the moon and the stars “rose but once a year,” and that “a year seemed only as a day” to the inhabitants thereof. The Fargard then closes with the description of the happy life led by the inhabitants of this Vara of which Zarathushtra and his son Urvatadnara are said to be the masters or overseers. Yima's Vara here described is something like Noah's ark. But there is this difference between the two that while the Biblical deluge is of water and rain, the Avestic deluge is of snow and ice; and the latter not only does not conflict