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

418 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. within a few degrees of the North Pole. But though the latitude of the original home can be thus ascertained more or less defini- tely, yet there is unfortunately nothing in these traditions which will enable us to determine the longitude of the place, or, in other words, whether the original home of the Aryan race was to the north of Europe or Asia. But considering the fact that the traditions of the original Polar home are better preserved in the sacred books of the Brahmins and the Parsis, it is not unlikely that the primeval home was located to the north of Siberia rather than to the north of Russia or Scandinavia. It is, how- ever, useless to speculate on the point without further proof. The Vedic and the Avestic evidence clearly establish the exist- ence of a primeval Polar home, the climate of which was mild and temperate in ancient times, before it was invaded by the Glacial epoch ; and with this result we must rest content, until we get sufficient new materials to ascertain the exact position of the Aryan home within the Arctic regions. We commenced the book with a summary of the results of the latest geological and archæological researches regarding the history of primitive humanity and the invasion of northern Europe and Asia by a series of glacial epochs in the Quarternary era. This discussion was prefixed to the book with the object of clearing up certain misapprehensions regarding the early history of our planet based on knowledge derived from older geological works, when man was believed to be post-glacial; and it will now be seen that our theory of the primeval Arctic home of the Aryan races is in perfect accord with the latest and most approved geological facts and opinions. A primeval Arctic home would have been regarded an impossibility, had not science cleared the ground by establishing that the antiquity of man goes back to the Terti- ary era, that the climate of the Polar regions was mild and temperate in inter-glacial times, and that it was rendered cold