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

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 413 ice and snow of the Glacial period. The Vedic and the Ave- stic passages, quoted in the previous chapters, directly point to such a home in primeval times, and we now see that the testi- mony of scholars, like Prof. Rhys, who have independently examined the Celtic, Teutonic and other mythologies of the. European branches of the Aryan race, fully bears out the con- clusion we have deduced from the Indo-Iranian traditions. We have also seen that our view is supported by the latest scientific researches, and is not inconsistent with the results of comparative philology. We may, therefore, take it as established that the original home of the Aryan people was in the far north, in regions round about the North Pole, and that we have correctly interpreted the Vedic and the Avestic traditions which had long remained mis-interpreted or mis-understood.

CHAPTER XIII. THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE HISTORY OF PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. Proofs of the theory of the Arctic home summed up—They clear- ly indicate a Polar home,but the exact spot in the Arctic regions, that is, north of Europe or Asia, still undeterminable—An Arctic home possible only in inter-Glacial times according to geology —Ancient Vedic chronology and calendar examined—The in- terval between the commencement of the Post-Glacial era and the Orion period cannot, according to it, be so great as 80,000 years—Supported by the moderate estimate of the American geologists-Purânic chronology of yugas, manvantaras and kalpas —Rangâchârya's and Aiyer's views thereon—Later Purânic system evolved out of an original cycle of four yugas of 10,000 years, since the last deluge—The theory of ‘divine years’ unknown to Manu and Vyâsa—Adopted by later writers who could not believe that they lived in the Krita age —The original tradition of 10,000 years since the last deluge fully in accord with Vedic chronology—And also with the American estimate of 8,000 B. C. for the beginning of the Post-Glacial period—All prove the existence of a Polar Aryan home before 8,000 B. C.—Trustworthiness of the ancient tra- ditions and the method of preserving them—The theory of the Polar origin of the whole human race not inconsistent with the theory of the Arctic Aryan home—Current views regarding pri- mitive Aryan culture and religion examined—Primitive Aryan man and his civilisation cannot now be treated as Post-Gla- cial—Certain destruction of the primeval civilization and cul- ture by the Ice Age—Short-comings or defects in the civilisa- tion of the Neolithic Aryan races in Europe must, therefore, be ascribed to a post-diluvian relapse into barbarism—Life and calendar in the inter-Glacial Arctic home—Devayâna and Pitri- yâna and the deities worshipped during the period—The ancient sacrifices of the Aryan race—The degree of civilisation reached by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home—The results of Comparative Philology stated—The civilisation disclosed by them

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 415 must be taken to be the minimum or the lowest, that can be pre- dicated of the undivided Aryans—The culture of the undivided Aryans higher than the culture of the Stone or the Metal age- —Use of metal coins among them highly probable—Beginnings of the Aryan language, or the differentiation of human races ac- cording to colour or language still untraceable—The origin of Aryan man and religion lost in geological antiquity—Theologi- cal views regarding the origin and character of the Vedas sum- marised—Differently supported by writers on the different schools of philosophy—Patanjali’s and Vyâsa's view that the Vedas were lost in the last deluge and repromulgated in sub- stance, if not in form, at the beginning of the new age—The four periods into which the Post-Glacial era may be divided on astronomical grounds—Compared with the characteristics of the four yugas given in the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa—Theological and historical views regarding the origin &c. of the Vedas stated in parallel columns and compared —Vedic texts, showing that the subject matter of the hymns is ancient though the language may be new, cited—Vedic deities and their exploits all said to be ancient—Improbability of Dr. Muir’s suggested reconciliation —Vedas, or rather Vedic religion, shown to be inter-Glacial in substance though post-Glacial in form—Concluding remarks. WE have now completed our investigation of the question of the original home of the ancestors of the Vedic Aryans from different stand-points of view. Our arguments, it will be seen, are not based on the history of culture, or on facts dis- closed by linguistic palæontology. The evidence, cited in the foregoing chapters, mainly consists of direct passages from the Vedas and the Avesta, proving unmistakably that the poets of the Ṛig-Veda were acquainted with the climatic conditions witnessible only in the Arctic regions, and that the principal Vedic deities, such as the revolving Dawn, the Waters capti- vated by Vṛitra, the Ashvins the rescuers of the afflicted gods and Sûrya, Indra the deity of a hundred sacrifices, Vishṇu the vast-strider, Varuṇa the lord of night and the ocean, the Âditya brothers or the seven monthly sun-gods, Trita or the Third, and others, are clothed with attributes which clearly betray their

416 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Arctic origin. In other words, all the differentiæ, mentioned in the third chapter as characteristic of the Polar and Circum- Polar regions, are met with in the Ṛig-Veda in such a way as to leave no doubt regarding the conclusion to be drawn from them. A day or a night of six months, and a long continuous dawn of several days' duration with its revolving splendours, not to mention the unusually long Arctic day and night or a year of less than twelve months' sunshine, were all known to the Vedic bards, and have been described by them not mytho- logically or metaphorically but directly in plain and simple words, which, though misinterpreted so long, can, in the light thrown upon the question by recent scientific researches, be now rightly read and understood. In fact the task, which I set to myself, was to find out such passages, and show how in the absence of the true key to their meaning, they have been sub- jected to forced construction, or ignored and neglected, by Vedic scholars both Indian and foreign, ancient and modern. I do not mean, however, to underrate, on that account, the value or the importance of the labours of Indian Nairuktas like Yâska, or commentators like Sâyaṇa. Without their aid we should have, it is readily admitted, been able to do little in the field of the Vedic interpretation; and I am fully aware of the service they have rendered to this cause. There is no question that they have done their best in elucidating the meaning of our sacred books; and their claims on the grateful remembrance of their services by future generations of scholars will ever remain unchallenged. But if the Vedas are really the oldest records of our race, who can deny that in the light of the advancing knowledge regarding primitive humanity, we may still discover in these ancient records facts and statements which may have escaped the attention of older scholars owing to the imperfect nature, in their days, of those sciences which are calculated to throw further light on the habits and environments of the oldest ancestors of our

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 417 race? There is, therefore, nothing strange if some of the pass- ages in the Ṛig-Veda and the Avesta disclose to us ideas which the ancient commentators could not and did not perceive in them; and I would request the reader to bear this in mind in comparing the interpretations and explanations proposed by me in the foregoing chapters with the current interpretations of these passages by eastern or western Vedic scholars. But our conclusions do not rest merely on the interpretation of passages which, if rightly construed, disclose climatic charac- teristics peculiar to the Arctic regions; though this evidence is, by itself, sufficient to prove our hypothesis. We have seen that in the sacrificial literature of the Vedic people as well as in their mythology there are many indications which point to the same conclusion; and these are fully corroborated by the ancient traditions and legends in the Avesta and also by the mythologies of the European branches of the Aryan race. A sacrificial session of ten months held by the Dashagvas, or an annual sattra of the same duration, compared with the oldest Roman year ending in December or the tenth month, are the principal instances on the point; and they have been fully discussed in the foregoing chapters. I have also shown that the knowledge of the half-year- long day or night is not confined to the traditions of the eastern Aryas, but is common also to the European branches of the Aryan race. The tradition preserved in the Vendidad about the ancient Iranian Paradise in the far north, so that a year was equal to a day to the inhabitants thereof, and its destruction by snow and ice burying the land under a thick ice-cap, again affords the most striking and cogent proof of the theory we have endeavoured to prove in these pages. Thus if the traditions of the western Aryas point out, according to Prof. Rhys, to Finland or the White Sea as the original home of the Aryan people, the Vedic and the Avestic traditions carry us still farther to the north; for a continuous dawn of thirty days is possible only 27

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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 419 and inclement by the advent of the Glacial epoch. We can now also understand why attempts to prove the existence of an Arctic home by discovering references to severe winter and cold in the Vedas did not succeed in the past. The winter in the primeval home was originally, that is, in inter-glacial times, neither severe nor inclement, and if such expressions as "a hundred winters" (shatam himâḥ) are found in the Vedic literature, they cannot be taken for reminiscences of severe cold winters in the original home; for the expression came into use probably because the year in the original home closed with a winter characterised by the long Arctic night. It was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild climate of the original home and converted it into an ice- bound land unfit for the habitation of man. This is well ex- pressed in the Avesta which describes the Airyana Vaêjo as a happy land subsequently converted by the invasion of Angra Mainyu into a land of severe winter and snow. This corres- pondence between the Avestic description of the original home and the result of the latest geological researches, at once enables us to fix the age of the Arctic home, for it is now a well-settled scientific fact that a mild climate in the Polar regions was possible only in the inter-glacial and not in the post-glacial times. But according to some geologists 20,000 or even 80,000 years have passed since the close of the last Glacial epoch; and as the oldest date assigned to the Vedic hymns does not go beyond 4500 B. C., it may be contended that the traditions of the Ice Age, or of the inter-glacial home, cannot be sup- posed to have been accurately preserved by oral transmis- sion for thousands of years that elapsed between the com- mencement of the post-Glacial era and the oldest date of the Vedic hymns. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the point a little more closely in this place. In my Orion or Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas, I have shown

420 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. that while the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas begin the Nakṣhatras with the Kṛittikâs or the Pleiades, show- ing that the vernal equinox then coincided with the aforesaid asterism (2500 B. C.), the Vedic literature contains traces of Mṛiga or Orion being once the first of the Nakṣhatras and the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda, or at least many of them, which are undoubtedly older than the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ, contain refer- ence to this period, that is, about 4500 B. C. approximately. It is also pointed out that there are faint traces of the same equinox being once in the constellation of Punarvasû, presid- ed over by Aditi, which was possible in about 6,000 B. C. I have in my later researches tried to push back this limit by searching for the older zodiacal positions of the vernal equinox in the Vedic literature, but I have not found any evidence of the same. My attention was, however, directed more and more to passages containing traces of an Arctic calendar and an Arctic home, and I have been gradually led to infer therefrom that at about 5000 or 6000 B. C., the Vedic Aryas had settled on the plains of Central Asia, and that at the time the tradi- tions about the existence of the Arctic home and its destruc- tion by snow and ice, as well as about the Arctic origin of the Vedic deities, were definitely known to the bards of these races. In short, reserches in Vedic chronology and calendar do not warrant us in placing the advent of the last Glacial epoch, which destroyed the ancient Aryan home, at a time several thousands of years previous to the Orion period ; and from what has been stated in the first two chapters of the book, it will be seen that this estimate well agrees with the conclusions of American geologists, who, from an examination of the erosion of valleys and similar other well-ascertained facts, as- sign to the close of the last Glacial epoch a date not older than about 8000 B. C. We might even go further and say that an- cient Vedic chronology and calendar furnish an independent corroboration of the moderate view of the American geologists ;

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION, 421 and when two independent lines of research unexpectedly lead us to the same result, we may very well reject, at least in the present state of our knowledge, the extravagant speculations of Croll and his followers, and, for all practical purposes, adopt the view that the last Glacial epoch closed and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8000 B. C. From this to the Orion period is an interval of about 3000 years, and it is not at all improbable that the traditions of the ancient home should have been remembered and incorporated into hymns whose origin can be clearly traced to that period. In short, the Vedic traditions, far from being contradictory to the scientific evidence, only serve to check the extravagant estimates re- garding the age of the last Glacial epoch; and if the sober view of American geologists be adopted, both geology and the traditions recorded in the ancient books of the Aryan race will be found alike to point out to a period not much older than 8000 B. C. for the commencement of the post-Glacial era and the compulsory migration of the Aryan races from their Arctic home. And not only Vedic but also Purâṇic chronology, properly understood, leads us to the same conclusion. According to the Purâṇas the earth and the whole universe are occa- sionally subjected to destruction at long intervals of time, the earth by a small and the universe by a grand deluge. Thus we are told that when the god Brahmâ is awake during his day the creation exists; but when at the end of the day he goes to sleep, the world is destroyed by a deluge, and is re-created when he awakes from his sleep and resumes his activity the next morning. Brahmâ's evening and morning are thus syn- onymous with the destruction and the re-creation of the earth. A day and a night of Brahmâ are each equal to a period of time called a Kalpa, and a Kalpa is taken for a unit in measuring higher periods of time. Two Kalpas constitute a nycthemeron (day and night) of Brahmâ, and 360×2=720 Kalpas make

422 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. his year, while a hundred such years constitute his life-time, at the end of which a grand deluge overtakes the whole universe including Brahmâ. Now according to the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali form a yuga of gods, and a thousand such yugas make a Kalpa or a day of Brahmâ of 12,000,000 years, at the end of which a deluge destroys the world. The Purâṇas, however, have adopted a different method of computation. The four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are thete said to con- stitute a Mahâ-yuga ; 71 such Mahâ-yugas constitute a Man- vantara, and 14 Manvantaras make a Kalpa, which, according to this method of counting, contains 4,320,000,000 years. The dieffrence between the durations of a Kalpa according to these two methods is due to the fact that the years making up the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are considered to be divine in the latter, while they are obviously human in Manu and the Mahâbhârata. For further details the reader is referred to the late Mr. S. B. Dixit's History of Indian Astronomy in Marâṭhi, Prof. Raṅgâchârya's essay on Yugas, and Mr. Aiyer's Chronology of Ancient India, a book, in, which the question of yugas and especially that of the beginning of the Kali yuga, is subjected to a searching and exhaustive examina- tion. The Hindu writers on astronomy seem to have adopt- ed the same system, except Âryabhaṭṭa, who holds that 72, and not 71, Mahâ-yugas make a Manvantara, and that a Mahâ- yuga is divided into four equal parts which are termed Kṛitâ, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali. According to this chronological system, we are, at present, in the 5003rd year (elapsed) of the Kali yuga of the 28th Mahâ-yuga of the 7th ( Vaivasvata ) Manvantara of the current Kalpa ; or, 1, 972, 949, 003 year s have, in other words, elapsed since the deluge which occured at the beginning of the present or the Shvëta-vârıha Kalpa. This estimate is, as observed by Prof. Raṅgâchârya, quite be- yond the limit admitted by modern geology ; and it is not

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 423 unlikely that Hindu astronomers, who held the view that the sun, the moon, and all the planets were in a line at the beginning of the Kalpa, arrived at this figure by mathematically calculating the period during which the sun, the moon and all the planets made an integral number of complete revolutions round the earth. We need not, however, go into these details, which, howsoever interesting, are not relevant to the subject in hand. A cycle of the four yugas, viz., Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali, is, it will be seen, the basis of this chronological system, and we have therefore to examine more critically what this collection of four yugas, otherwise termed a Mahâ-yuga, really signifies and whether the period of time originally denoted by it was the same as it is said to be at present. Prof. Raṅgâchârya and especially Mr. Aiyer have ably trea- ted this subject in their essays, and I agree in the main with them in their conclusions. I use the words 'in the main' deliberately, for though my researches have independently led me to reject the hypothesis of 'divine years,' yet there are certain points which cannot, in my opinion, be definitely settled without further research. I have shown previously that the word yuga is used in the Ṛig-Veda to denote 'a period of time,' and that in the phrase mânushâ yugâ it cannot but be taken to denote 'a month.' Yuga is, however, evidently used to denote a longer period of time in such expressions as Devânâm prathame yuge in the Ṛig- Veda, X, 72, 3; while in the Atharva Veda VIII, 2, 21, which says "We allot to thee a hundred, ten thousand years, two, three, (or) four yugas," a yuga evidently means a period of not less than 10,000 years;* and Mr. Aiyer is right in pointing out that the omission of the word 'one' in the above verse is not accidental. According to this view a

• Atharva Veda, VIII, 2, 21, — शतं तेऽयुतं हायनान्द्वे युगे त्रीणि चत्वारि , कृण्मः ।

424 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. yuga may be taken to have, at the longest, denoted a period of 10,000 years in the days of the Atharva Veda Saṁhitâ. Now it is found that Manu and the Mahâbhârata both assign 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 years to the four yugas of Kali, Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita respectively. In other words, the durations of Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita are obtained by doubling, trebling and quadrupling the duration of Kali ; and taking into consideration that Kṛita (which Mr. Aiyer compares with Latin quatuor) means ‘four’ in Sanskrit literature, the names of the yugas may perhaps be derived from this fact. We are, however, concerned with the duration of the four yugas, and adding up the numbers given above, we obtain 10,000 years for a cycle of four yugas, or a Mahâ-yuga, according to the terminology explained above. Manu and Vyâsa, however, add to this 10,000 another period of 2,000 years, said to represent the Sandhyâ or the Sandhyâṁsha periods intervening between the different yugas. Thus the Kṛita age does not pass suddenly into Tretâ, but has a period of 400 years interposed at each of its ends, while the Tretâ is protected from the contact of the preceding and the succeeding yuga by two periods of 300 years each, the Dvâpara of 200 and the Kali of 100 years. The word Sandhyâ denotes the time of the dawn in ordi- nary literature ; and Mr. Aiyer points out that as the period of the dawn and the gloaming, or the morning and the evening twilight, is each found to extend over three out of thirty ghatîs of a day, so one-tenth of the period of each yuga is assigned to its Sandhyâ or the period of transition into another yuga ; and that it is not improbable that these supplementary periods were subsequent amendments. The period of 10,000 years for a cycle of the four yugas is thus increased to 12,000, if the Sandhyâ periods are included in it, making Kṛita comprise 4800, Tretâ 3600, Dvâpara 2400 and Kali 1200 years. Now at the time of the Mahâbhârata or the Code of Manu, the Kali yuga had already set in ; and if the

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 425 yuga contained no more than 1,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, 1200 ordinary years, it would have terminated about the beginning of the Christian era.* The writers of the Purâṇas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali yuga had passed away, and that they lived in the Kṛita yuga of a new Mahâ-yuga; for the Kṛita yuga meant according to them a golden age, while the times in which they lived showed signs of degeneration on all sides. An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years. A Vedic authority for such an interpretation was found in the text from the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa, which, we have quo- ted and discussed previously, viz., "That which is a year is a day of the gods." Manu and Vyâsa simply assign 1000 years to the Kali yuga. But as Manu, immediately after recording the duration of the yugas and their Sandhyâs, observes "that this period of 12,000 years is called the yuga of the gods," the device of converting the ordinary years of the different yugas into as many divine years was, thereby, at once rendered plausible; and as people were unwilling to believe that they could be in a yuga other than the Kali, this solution of the difficulty

• Compare Manu, I, 69-71. In the Mahâbhârata the subject is treated in two places, once in the Shânti-Parvan, Chap. 231, and once in the Vana-Parvan, Chap. 188, V. 21-28, (Cal. Ed.). The following verses are taken from the latter place:—आदितो मनुजव्याघ्र कृत्स्नस्य जगतः क्षये । चत्वार्याहुः सहस्राणि वर्षाणां तत्कृतं युगम् ॥ तस्य तावच्छती संध्या संध्यांशश्च तथाविधः । त्रीणि वर्षसहस्राणि त्रेतायुगमिहोच्यते ॥ तस्य तावच्छती संध्या संध्यांशश्च ततः परं । तथा वर्षसहस्रे द्वे द्वापरं परिमाणतः ॥ तस्यापि द्विशती संध्या संध्यांशश्च तथाविधः । सहस्रमेकं वर्षाणां तथा कलियुगं स्मृतं ॥ तस्य वर्षशतं संधिः संध्यांशश्च ततः परं । संधिसंध्यांशयोस्तुल्यं प्रमाणमुपधारय । क्षीणे कलियुगे चैव प्रवर्तति कृतं युगं ॥ एषा द्वादशसाहस्री युगाख्या परिकीर्तिता । एतत्सहस्रपर्यन्तमहर्ब्राह्ममुदाहृतम् ॥ The first line clearly states that the Kṛita yuga commences after the deluge. Cf. Muir O. S. T., Vol. 1, 45-48.

426 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years. The same device converted, at one stroke, the 12,000 ordinary years of a Mahâ-yuga, into as many divine, or 360 × 12,000 = 4,320,000 ordinary years, affecting in a similar way the higher cycles of time like Manvantaras and Kalpas. How the beginning of the Kali yuga was thrown back, by astronomical calculations, to 3102 B. C., when this hypothesis of 'divine years' was adopted is a separate question by itself; but not being pertinent to the subject in hand we need not go into it in this place. Suffice it to say that where chronology is invested with semi-religious character, artifices or devices, like the one noticed above, are not unlikely to be used to suit the exigencies of the time; and those who have to investigate the subject from a historical and anti- quarian point of view must be prepared to undertake the task of carefully sifting the data furnished by such chronology, as Prof. Rangâchârya and Mr. Aiyer have done in their essays referred to above. From a consideration of the facts stated above it will be seen that so far as the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata are concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of one thousand years had then already set in. In other words, Manu and Vyâsa obviously speak only of a period of 10,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, of 12,000 ordinary or hu- man (not divine) years, from the beginning of the Kṛita to the end of the Kali yuga; and it is remarkable that in the Atharva Veda we should find a period of 10,000 years ap- parently assigned to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely that the Atharva Veda takes the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali together, and uses the word yuga to denote the combined duration of all these in the passage referred to above.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 427 Now considering the fact that the Kṛita age is said to commence after a pralaya or the deluge, Manu and Vyâsa must be under- stood to have preserved herein an old tradition that about 10,000 years before their time (supposing them to have lived at the beginning of the Kali age of 1200 years), the new order of things commenced with the Kṛita age; or, in other words, the deluge which destroyed the old order of things occured about 10,000 years before their time. The tradition has been very much distorted owing to devices adopted in later times to make the traditional chronology suit the circumstances of the day. But still it is not difficult to ascertain the original character of the tradition; and when we do so, we are led to conclude that the beginning of the new order of things, or, to put it more scienti- fically, the commencement of the current post-Glacial era was, according to this tradition, not assigned to a period older than 10,000 years before the Christian era. We have shown that researches in Vedic chronology do not allow us to carry back the date of the post-Glacial era beyond this estimate, for traditions of the Arctic home appear to have been well understood by the bards of the Ṛig-Veda in the Orion period. It is, therefore, al- most certain that the invasion of the Arctic Aryan home by the last Glacial epoch did not take place at a time older than 10,000 B. C. The American geologists, we have seen, have arrived at the same conclusion on independent scientific grounds; and when the Vedic and the Purâṇic chronology indicate nearly the same time,—a difference of one or two thousand years, in such cases, does not matter much,—we may safely reject the extra- vagant estimates of 20,000 or 80,000 years and adopt, for all practical purposes, the view that the last Glacial epoch closed and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8,000, or, at best, about 10,000 B. C. We have now to consider how the tradition about the exist- ence of the original home at the North Pole and its destruction

428 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. by snow and ice of the Glacial epoch, and other cognate reminiscences were preserved until they were incorporated into the law-book of the Mazdayasnians and the hymns of the Ṛig- Veda. That a real tradition is preserved in these books is undoubted, for we have seen that an examination of the tradi- tions preserved by the European branches of the Aryan race have led Prof. Rhys to the same conclusion ; and those who know the history of the preservation of our sacred books will see nothing improbable herein. In these days of writing and printing, we have no need to depend upon memory, and con- sequently we fail to realise what memory, kept under the strict- est discipline, is capable of achieving. The whole of the Ṛig- Veda, nay, the Veda and its nine supplementary books, have been preserved by the Brahmins of India, letter for letter and accent for accent, for the last 3000 or 4000 years at least ; and priests who have done so in recent times may well be credited with having faithfully preserved the traditions of the an- cient home, until they were incorporated into the sacred books. These achievements of disciplined memory may appear mar- vellous to us at present ; but, as stated above, they were looked upon as ordinary feats when memory was trusted better than books, and trained and cultivated with such special care as to be a faithful instrument for transmitting along many generations whatever men were most anxious to have remembered. It has been a fashion to cry down the class of priests who make it their sole profession to cultivate their me- mory by keeping it under strict discipline and transmit by its means our sacred writings without the loss of a single accent from genera- tion to generation. They have been described, even by scholars like Yâska, as the carriers of burden, and compared by others to parrots who repeat words without understanding their meaning. But the service, which this class has rendered to the cause of ancient his- tory and religion by preserving the oldest traditions of the race, is

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 429 invaluable; and looking to the fact that a specially disciplined memory was needed for such preservation, we cannot but grate- fully remember the services of those whose hereditary devotion to the task, we might say, the sacred religious task, rendered it possible for so many traditions to be preserved for thousands of years. Paṇḍits might analyse and explain the Vedic hymns more or less elaborately or correctly; but for that reason, we cannot forget that the very basis of their labours would have been lost long ago, had the institution of priests who made disci- plined memory their exclusive business in life not been in exis- tence. If the institution has out-lived its necessity,—which is doubtful, for the art of writing or printing can hardly be trusted to the same extent as disciplined memory in such matters,—we must remember that religious institutions are the hardest to die in any country in the world. We may, therefore, safely assert that Vedic and Avestic traditions, which have been faithfully preserved by disciplin- ed memory, and whose trustworthiness is proved by Compa- rative Mythology, as well as by the latest researches in Geo- logy and Archæology, fully establish the existence of an Arctic home of the Aryan people in inter-glacial times; and that after the destruction of this home by the last Glacial epoch the Aryan people had to migrate southwards and settle at first in the northern parts of Europe or on the plains of Central Asia at the beginning of the post-Glacial-period, that is about 8000 B. C. The antiquity of the Aryan race is thus carried back to interglacial times, and its oldest home to regions round about the North Pole, where alone a long dawn of thirty days is possible. Whether other human races, beside the Aryan, lived with them in the circum-polar country is a ques- tion which does not fall within the purview of this book. Dr. Warren, in his Paradise Found, has cited Egyptian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chinese and even Japanese traditions

430 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. indicating the existence of an Arctic home of these races in an- cient times; and from a consideration of all these he arrives at the conclusion that the cradle of the whole human race must be placed in the circum-polar regions, a conclusion in which he is also supported by other scholars. But, as observed by Prof. Rhys, it is no fatal objection to the view we have endeavoured to prove in these pages that the mythologies of nations, beside the Aryan, also point to the North Pole as their original home; for it is not contended that the Aryans may be the only poeple of northern origin. On the contrary, there are grounds to believe that the five races of men (pañcha janâḥ) often mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda may have been the races which lived with the Aryans in their original home, for we cannot suppose that the Vedic Aryas after their dispersion from the original home met only with five races in their migrations, or were divided only in- to five branches. But the question is one which can be finally de- cided only after a good deal of further research; and as it is not necessary to mix it up with the question of the original home of the Aryans, we may leave it out for the present. If the North Pole is conclusively shown to be the cradle of the human race hereafter, it would not affect in the least the conclusion we have drawn in these pages from a number of definite Vedic and Avestic traditions, but if the existence of the Aryan home near the North Pole is proved, as we have endeavoured to do in the foregoing pages, by independent testimony, it is sure to strengthen the probability of the northern home of the whole human race; and as the traditions of the Aryan people are admittedly better preserved in the Veda and the Avesta than those of any other race, it is safer and even desirable to treat the question of the primeval Aryan home independently of the general problem taken up by Dr. Warren and other scholars. That the Veda and the Avesta are the oldest books of the Aryan race is now conceded by all, and we have seen

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 431 that it is not difficult to ascertain, from traditions contained therein, the site of the Aryan Paradise, now that we begin to search for it in the light thrown upon the subject by modern scientific researches. But if the fact of an early Aryan home in the far north is once established by indisputable traditional evidence, it is sure to re- volutionise the existing views regarding the primitive history or religion of the Aryan races. Comparative philologists and Sans- kritists, who looked for the primeval home " somewhere in Cen- tral Asia," have advanced the theory that the whole progress of the Aryan race, intellectual, social or moral from primeval sava- gery to such civilisation as is disclosed by the Vedic hymns, was effected on the plains of Central Asia. It was on these plains, we are told, that our oldest ancestors gazed upon the wonders of dawn or the rising sun with awe and astonishment, or rever- entially watched the storm-clouds hovering in the sky to be eventually broken up by the god of rain and thunder, thereby giving rise to the worship of natural elements and thus laying down the foundations of later Aryan mythology. It was on these plains that they learnt the art of weaving, the products of which superseded the use of hides for clothing, or constructed their chariots, or trained their horses, or discovered the use of metals like gold and silver. In short, all the civilisation and cul- ture which Comparative Philology proves on linguistic grounds to have been common to the different Aryan races before their separation is regarded to have first originated or developed on the plains of Central Asia in post-Glacial times. Dr. Schrader, in his Pre-historic Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, gives us an exhaustive summary of facts and arguments regarding primitive Aryan culture and civilisation which can be deduced from Linguistic Palæology, or Comparative Philology, and as a repertory of such facts the book stands unrivalled. But we must remember that the results of Comparative Philology,

432 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. howsoever interesting and instructive they may be from the lin- guistic or the historical point of view, are apt to mislead us if we know not the site of the original home, or the time when it was inhabited or abandoned by the ancestors of our race. Compa- rative Philology may teach us that cow was an animal known and domesticated before the Aryan separation, or that the art of weaving was known in those old days, because the words 'cow' and 'weave' can be traced in all the Aryan languages. But it is now found that equations like these do not help us much in definitely ascertaining where the united Aryans lived and when they separated; while recent researches in Archæology and Anthropology have exhibited the improbability of a Central Asian home of the Aryan races and successive migrations there- from to European countries. The hypothesis of a Central Asian home is, therefore, now almost abandoned; but strange to say, that those, who maintain that Europe was inhabited at the beginning of the Neolithic age by the ancestors of the races who now inhabit the same regions, are prepared to leave undetermined the question whether these races originated in Europe or went there from some other land. Thus Canon Taylor, in his Origin of the Aryans, confidently advises us that we need not concern ourselves with the arguments of those who assert that Europe was inhabited by the ancestors of the existing races even in the Palæolithic period; for, says he, "philologists will probably admit that within the limits of the Neolithic age, it would be possible to find sufficient time for the evolution and the differentiation of the Aryan languages."* In the last chapter of the same book we are further informed that the mythologies of the different branches of the Aryan race must have been developed after their separation, and that resemblances, like Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, or Varuṇa and Uranus, must be taken to be merely verbal and not mythological in their origin. In short, the

• See Taylor's Origin of the Aryans, p. 57.