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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 457 preserved in the form of traditions by the disciplined memory of the Ṛishis until it was incorporated first into crude as contrasted with the polished hyms (su-uktas) of the Ṛig-Veda in the Orion period, to be collected later on in Maṇḍalas and finally into Saṁhitâs; and that the subject matter of these hymns is inter-glacial, though its ultimate origin is still lost in geological antiquity. Without mixing up the theological and historical views we may, therefore, now state the two in parallel columns as follows :— Theological view. Historical view.

1. The Vedas are eternal 1. The Vedic or the Aryan (nitya), beginning-less (anâ- religion can be proved to be di), and not made by man inter-glacial; but its ultimate (a-paurusheya). origin is still lost in geological antiquity.
2. The Vedas were destroy- 2. Aryan religion and cul- ed in the deluge, at the end ture were destroyed during the of the last Kalpa. last Glacial period that in- vaded the Arctic Aryan home.
3. At the beginning of the 3. The Vedic hymns were present Kalpa, the Ṛiṣhis, sung in post-Glacial times by through tapas, reproduced in poets, who had inherited the substance, if not in form, the knowledge or contents there- ante-diluvian Vedas, which of in an unbroken tradition they carried in their memory from their ante-diluvian fore- by the favour of god. fathers. On a comparison of the two columns it will be found that the tradition about the destruction and the reproduction of the Vedas, recorded by Vyâsa in the Mahâbhârata verse referred to above, must be taken to have been founded substantially on a historical fact. It is true that according to the Purâṇic chronology the beginning of the current Kalpa is placed several thousands of years before the present time; but if, according to the estimates of some modern geologists,