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

THE AVESTIC EVIDENCE. 383 Vendidad is especially important for our purpose. The Dawn- hymns in the Ṛig-Veda supply us with the evidence of a long continuous dawn of thirty days in the ancient home, and there are passages in the Vedas which speak of a long continuous night of six months or of shorter duration, and a year of seven or ten months. It can also be shown that several Vedic myths and deities bear an unmistakable stamp of their Arctic origin. But, as stated before, in the whole Vedic literature there is no passage which will enable us to determine the time when the Polar regions were inhabited, or to ascertain the reason why they were abandoned. For that purpose we drew upon geology which has recently established the fact that the cli- mate of the circumpolar regions, which is now so cold as to render the land unsuited for human habitation, was mild and genial before the last Glacial period. It followed, therefore, that if the Vedic evidence pointed to an Arctic home, the fore- fathers of the Aryan race must have lived therein not after but before the last Glacial epoch. But the traditions preserved in the Avesta dispense with the necessity of relying on geology for this purpose. We have now direct traditional evidence to shew (1) that the Airyana Vaêjo had originally a good cli- mate, but Angra Mainyu converted it into a winter of ten and a summer of two months. (2) that the Airyana Vaêjo was so situated that the inhabitants of Yima's Vara therein regarded the year only as a day, and saw the sun rise only once a year, and (3) that the happy land was rendered uninhabitable by the advent of a Glacial epoch which destroyed all life there- in. It is true, that but for recent geological discoveries these statements, howsoever plain and distinct, would have remained unintelligible, or regarded as improbable by scholars, who would have always tried, as Darmesteter has already done, to put some artificial or unnatural construction upon these pas- sages to render the same comprehensible to them. We cannot, therefore, deny that we are indebted to these scientific