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

442 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. I might in passing here refer to an instance which illustrates the danger of relying exclusively on Comparative Philology in this respect. Dr. Schrader has shown that copper, at any rate, was known to the primitive Aryans; and he admits the possi- bility that this metal may, in isolated cases, have been employ- ed in the manufacture of weapons like fighting knives or lance- heads. But we are told that there are linguistic difficulties which prevent us from assuming that gold and silver were known in the primitive period. On an examination of the sub- ject it will, however, be seen that in cases like these the phi- lologist relies too much on his own methods or follows them too rigidly. For instance khalkos (copper or bronze) is men- tioned by Homer as a medium of exchange (II. vii, 472); and Comparative Philology discloses two etymological equa- tions, one derived from the root *mei (Sans. me) denoting 'barter,' and the other derived from the Sanskrit krî, Greek priamai, meaning purchase. The Ṛig-Veda (VIII. I, 5) also mentions a measure of value called shulka, and, as the word is used in later Sanskrit literature to denote a small payment made at a toll-house, it is not unlikely that shulka originally meant a small coin of copper or bronze similar in character to the khalkos mentioned by Homer. Now it is true that ordinarily Greek kh, is represented by h in Sanskrit, and that if this rule be rigidly applied to the present case it would not be possible to phonetically identify khalkos with shulka. Philo- logists have, therefore, tried to compare khalkos with Sans- krit hriku or hliku. But, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, the connection seems to be altogether improbable. Hrîku is not a Vedic word, nor does it mean copper or bronze. Despite the phonetic difficulty,—and the difficulty is not so serious as it seems to be at the first sight, for Sanskrit sh is represented by k in Greek, and this k sometimes gives place to the aspir- ated kh,—I am, therefore, inclined to identify khalkos with shulka; and if this is correct, we must conclude that undivided