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

412 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. but it has not yet been proved that the neolithic Aryan races of Europe were autochthonus in the countries where their remains are now found. Therefore the question of the original home of the Aryan people is still an open question, and we are free to draw any conclusion regarding the ancient home from a legitimate consideration of the traditional evi- dence before us. Prof. Rhys has well described the situation by observing that the teachings of evolution may force us to look for the original home still farther north in the Arctic regions. In fact we have to go to a latitude which will give us seven months' sunshine, or a hundred nights' continuous darkness, or thirty days' continuous dawn. The question whe- ther the home of other nations, beside the Aryan, can be traced to the North Pole, has been ably discussed by Dr. Warren in his Paradise Found, or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole. It is an important question from an anthropolo- gical point of view; but its very comprehensiveness precludes us from collecting evidence from the traditional literatures of the different human races living on the surface of this earth. It is true that we sometimes derive help from the discussion of the broader questions at first ; but for all practical purposes it is always desirable to split up the inquiry into different sec- tions, and when each section has been thoroughly investigated to combine the results of the different investigators and see what conclusions are common to all. Our inquiry of the ori- ginal Aryan home is, therefore, not only not inconsistent with the general theory about the cradle of the human race at the North Pole, but a necessary complement to it; and it matters little whether it is undertaken as an independent inquiry as we have done, or as a part of the general investigation. Any how ours is a limited task, namely, to prove that the original home of the Aryan people was situated in the Arctic regions before the last Glacial epoch and that the oldest ancestors of the Aryan race had to abandon it owing to its destruction by