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

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.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 433 advocates of the Central Asian as well as of the northern European home of the Aryans are both unwilling to carry back the beginning of the Aryan civilisation beyond post-glacial times, and we are told that Aryan mythology and religion cannot, therefore, claim any higher antiquity. All such guesses and speculations about the origin of the Aryan race and its civilization will have now to be revised in the new light thrown upon the subject by the theory of the Arctic home in pre-Glacial times. We cannot now maintain that primitive Aryans were a post-Glacial race, or that they advanced from barbarism to civilisation in the Neolithic period either in Central Asia or in the northern parts of Europe; nor is it possible to argue that because the mythologies of the differ- ent branches of the Aryan race do not disclose the existence of common deities, these mythologies must be taken to have developed after the separation of the Aryan races from their common home. Thus, for instance, we are told that though the word Uṣhas occurs in Zend as Ushangh, and may be com- pared to Greek Eos, Latin Aurora, Lithuanian Auszra, Teutonic Austrô and Anglo-Saxon Eostra, yet it is only in the Vedic mythology that we find Uṣhas raised to the dignity of the goddess of the morning; and from this we are asked to infer that the worship of the dawn was developed only on the Indian soil. The theory of the Arctic home, however, makes it impossible to argue in this way. If Vedic dieties are clothed with attributes which are unmistakably polar in their origin,—and in the case of Uṣhas, the polar character has been shown to be unquestionable,—we cannot hold that the legends pertaining to these deities were developed on the plains of Central Asia. It was impossible for the Indian priests to conceive or picture the splendours of the dawn in the way we meet with in the Ṛig-Veda; for it has been shown that the evanescent dawn, with which they were familiar, is quite dissimilar in character to the Arctic dawn, the subject of the 28

434 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Vedic hymns. And what applies to the dawn can be predic- ated as well of other deities and myths, e. g., of Indra and Vṛitra or the captive Waters, of Viṣhṇu hibernating for four months in a year, or of Trita or the Third going down in a well, or of the Ashvins rescuing or saving the gods from the temporary affliction to which they were again and again sub- jected. These very names may not be found in the Celtic or the Teutonic mythology, but an examination of the latter has been found to disclose the same polar characteristics which are possessed by Vedic deities or myths; and so long as this fundamental coincidence exists between the two, it is unreason- able to contend that the mythologies of the different branches of the Aryan race had no common origin, or that the resem- blances between the names of the deities are more linguistic than mythological. The destruction of the ancient Aryan home by glaciation and deluge introduces a new factor in the history of the Aryan civilisation; and any short-comings or defects in the civilisation of the Aryan races, that are found to have inhabited the northern parts of Europe in the beginning of the Neolithic age, as distinguished from the civilisation of the Asiatic Aryan races, must now be accounted for as the result of a natural relapse into barbarism after the great catastrophe. It is true that ordinarily we cannot conceive a race that has once launched on a career of progress and civili- sation suddenly retrograding or relapsing into barbarism. But the same rule cannot be applied to the case of the continu- ation of the ante-diluvian civilisation into post-diluvian times. In the first place very few people could have survived a cataclysm of such magnitude as the deluge of snow and ice; and those that survived could hardly be expected to have carried with them all the civilisation of the original home, and introduced it intact in their new settlements, under adverse circumstances, amongst the non-Aryan tribes in the north of Europe or on the plains of Central Asia. We must also bear

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 435 in mind the fact that the climate of northern Europe and Asia, though temperate at present, must have been very much colder after the great deluge, and the descendants of those who had to migrate to these countries from the Polar regions, born only to a savage or nomadic life, could have, at best, preserved only fragmentary reminiscences of the ante-diluvian culture and civi- lisation of their forefathers living in the once happy Arctic home. Under these circumstances we need not be surprised if the European Aryas are found to be in an inferior state of civi- lisation at the beginning of the Neolithic age. On the contrary the wonder is that so much of the ante-diluvian religion or cul- ture should have been preserved from the general wreck, caused by the last Glacial epoch, by the religious zeal and industry of the bards or priests of the Iranian or the Indian Aryas. It is true that they looked upon these relics of the an- cient civilisation, as a sacred treasure entrusted to them to be scrupulously guarded and transmitted to future generations. Yet considering the difficulties with which they had to contend, we cannot but wonder how so much of the ante-diluvian civilisation, religion, or worship was preserved in the Veda or the Avesta. If the other Aryan races have failed to preserve these ancient traditions so well, it would be unreasonable to argue therefrom that the civilisation or the culture of these races was developed after their separation from the common stock. It has been shown previously that the climate of the Arctic regions in the inter-Glacial period was so mild and temperate as to be almost an approach to a perpetual spring, and that there was then a continent of land round about the Pole, the same being submerged during the glacial epoch. The primitive Aryans residing in such regions must, therefore, have lived a happy life. The only inconvenience experienced by them was the long Arctic night; and we have seen how this phenomenon has served to give rise to various myths or

436 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. legends describing the struggle between the powers of light and darkness. The occurrence of the Arctic night, its tiresome length, and the long expected morning light on the horizon after some months were, naturally enough, the most import- ant facts which attracted the attention of our primeval fore- fathers, and it is no wonder if they believed it to be the grea- test exploit of their gods when the beneficent dawn came dawn ing up, after several months of darkness, from the nether world of aerial waters, inaugurating a new yearly round of sacri- fices, festivals, or other religious or social ceremonies. It was the beginning of the Devayâna, when the powers of light cele- brated their victory over the demons of darkness, and the Child of the Morning, the Kumâra, the leader of the army of gods, walked victoriously along the Devayâna path commencing the cycle of human ages, or mânushâ yugâ, as mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda. The Pitṛiyâna, or the walk of the Manes, corres- ponded with the dark winter, the duration of which extended in the original home from two to six months. This was the period of rest or repose during which, as observed previously, people refrained even from disposing the bodies of the dead owing to the absence of sunshine. All social and religious ceremonies or feasts were also suspended during this period as the powers of darkness were believed to be in the ascendant. In short, the oldest Aryan calendar was, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, divided into two parts, a summer of seven or ten months and a corresponding winter of five or two months. But it seems to have been an ancient practice to reckon the year by counting the recurrence of summers or winters rather than by combining the two seasons. It is thus that we can account for a year of seven or ten months in old times, or annual sacrificial sattras extending over the same period. This calendar is obviously unsuited to places to the south of the Arctic circle; and the Aryans had, therefore, to change or reform the same, as was done by Numa, in post-glacial

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 437 times, when, expatriated from their mother-land, they settled in the northern parts of Europe and Central Asia. But the reminis- cence of the Devayâna as a special period of sacrifices and cere- monies was tenaciously preserved, and even now it is looked upon as a season of special religious merit. We can, on this theory, easily explain why the Gṛihya-Sûtras attach special importance to the Uttarâyaṇa from a ceremonial point of view, and why death dur- ing the Dakshiṇâyana is regarded as inauspicious. How the inter-glacial year of seven or ten months was changed to a year of twelve months in post-glacial times, and how the equi- . noctial division which obtained at first on the analogy of the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna, was subsequently altered to the solstitial one, the old meaning of the word Uttarâyaṇa undergo- ing (Orion, p. 25 f.) a similar change, are questions, which, though important in the history of the Aryan calendar, are not relevant in this place ; and we shall, therefore, proceed with the subject in hand. It is urged by some writers that though the worship of natural elements is found to obtain in several ancient Indo- European religions, yet its beginnings cannot be supposed to go back to the time of the common origin of the related peoples. Dr. Schrader has ably refuted this view in the concluding pages of his book on the pre-historic antiquities of Aryan peoples ; and the theory of the Arctic home powerfully supports Dr. Schrader in his conclusions. " If we put aside everything un- safe and false," observes Dr. Schrader, " that Comparative My- thology and History of Religion has accumulated on this subject, we are solely, from the consideration of perfectly trustworthy material, more and more driven, on all sides, to assume that the common basis of ancient European religions was a worship of the powers of Nature practised in the Indo-European period."* * See Dr. Schrader's Pre His. Antiqui. Ary. Peoples, ..; ; by Jevons, p. 418.

438 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. The fact that the Vedic deities like Uṣhas, the Âdityas, the Ashvins or the Vṛitrahán are found invested with Polar cha- racteristics, further goes to confirm the conclusion based on linguistic grounds, or common etymological equations for sky, morning, fire, light or other natural powers. In short, what- ever be the stand-point from which we view the subject in question, we are led to the conclusion that the shining sky (Dyaus pitâ), the sun (Sûrya), the fire (Agni), the Dawn (Uṣhas), the storm or thunder (Tânyatu) had already attained to the dig- nity of divine beings or gods in the primeval period ; and etymo- logical equations like Sanskrit yaj, Zend yaz and Greek azomai, show that these gods were worshipped and sacrifices offered to them to secure their favour even in primeval times. Whether this worship originated, or, in other words, whether the powers of nature were invested with divine honours only in inter-glacial times, or in times anterior to it, cannot, as stated above, be ascertained from the materials in our hands at present. But this much is beyond question that the worship of these elements, as manifestations of divine power, had already become established amongst the undivided Aryans in the Arctic home, and the post-diluvian Aryan religions were developed from this ancient system of worship and sacrifices. We have seen that the Ṛig-Veda mentions the ancient sacrificers of the race like Manu, Aṅgirases, Bhṛigus and others, and the fact that they completed their sacrificial sessions in seven, nine or ten months proves that they were the sacrificers of the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home. It was these sacrificers who performed the sacrifices of the people during a summer of seven or ten months and worshipped the matutinal deities with offerings in primeval times. But when the sun went down below the horizon, these sacrificers naturally closed their sessions and made their offer- ings only to Vṛitrahan, the chief hero in the struggle with the demons of darkness, in order that he may, invigorated by

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 439 their offerings, eventually bring back the light of the dawn to these worshippers. I do not mean to assert that an elaborate system of sacrifices existed in inter-glacial times; but I do maintain that sacrifice was the main ritual of the primeval Aryan religion, and that it is a mistake to suppose that it origi- nated or was invented only in post-glacial times. I have dwelt at some length on the question of ancient religious worship and ritual in this place because the theory of the Arctic home very well exposes, in my opinion, the fallacious character of many of the existing views on this subject. A people, who had come to worship the powers of Nature as manifestations of divine will and energy, who had a well- developed language of their own, and who had already evolved a legendary literature out of the Arctic conditions of the year in their congenial home near the North Pole, may well be expected to have made a good advance in civilisation. But we have at present very few means by which we can ascertain the exact degree of civilisation attained by the undivided Aryans in their primitive home. Comparative Philology tells us that primitive Aryans were familiar with the art of spinning and weaving, knew and worked in metals, constructed boats and chariots, founded and lived in cities, carried on buying and selling, and had made considerable progress in agriculture. We also know that important social or political institutions or organisations, as, for instance, marriage or the laws of property, prevailed amongst the forefathers of our race in those early days; and linguistic palæontology furnishes us with a long list of the fauna and the flora known to the undivided Aryans. These are important linguistic discoveries, and taking them as they are, they evidently disclose a state of civilisation higher than that of the savages of the Neolithic age. But in the light of the Arctic theory we are naturally led to inquire if the culture of the primitive Aryans was con- fined only to the level disclosed by Comparative Philology, or

440 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. whether it was of a higher type than the one we can predicate of them simply on linguistic grounds. We have seen above that in the case of the mythological deities and their worship the Polar character of many of the deities at once enables us to assign them to the primitive period even when their names are not found in all the Aryan languages; and the results of Comparative Philology regarding primitive Aryan culture will have to be checked and revised in the same way. The very fact that after compulsary dispersion from their mother-land the surviving Aryans, despite the fragmentary civilisation they carried with them, were able to establish their supremacy over the races they came across in their migrations from the original home at the beginning of the post-Glacial period, and that they succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in Aryanising the latter in language, thought and religion under circumstances which could not be expected to be favourable to them, is enough to prove that the original Aryan civilisation must have been of a type far higher than that of the non-Aryan races, or than the one found among the Aryan races that migrated southward after the destruction of their home by the Ice Age. So long as the Aryan races inhabiting the northern parts of Europe in the beginning of the Neolithic age were believed to be autochthonous there was no necessity of going beyond the results of Comparative Philology to ascertain the degree of civilisation attained by the undivided Aryans. But now we see that the culture of the Neolithic Aryans is obviously only a relic, an imperfect fragment, of the culture attained by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home; and it would, there- fore, be unreasonable to argue that such and such civilisation, or culture cannot be predicated of the undivided Aryans simply because words indicating the same are found only in some and not in all the Aryan languages. In other words, though we may accept the results of Comparative Philology so far as they go, we shall have to be more cautious hereafter

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 441 in inferring that such and such a thing was not known to the primitive Aryans because common etymological equations for the same cannot be discovered in all the Aryan languages. We have, it is true, no means of ascertaining how much of the original civilisation was lost in the deluge, but we cannot, on that account, deny that some portion of it must have been irrecoverably lost in the great cataclysm that destroyed the original home. Under these circumstances all that we can safely assert is that the degree of culture disclosed by Compa- rative Philology is the lowest or the minimum that can be pre- dicated of the undivided Aryans. It is important to bear this reservation in mind because undue importance is some- times attached to the results of Comparative Philology by a kind of reasoning which appeared all right so long the question of the site of the original home was unsettled. But now that we know that Aryan race and religion are both inter-Glacial and their ultimate origin is lost in geological antiquity, it does not stand to reason to suppose that the inter-Glacial Aryans were a race of savages. The archæologists, it is true, have established the succession of the ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron ; and according to this theory the Aryan race must have once been in the Stone age. But there is nothing in archæology which requires us to place the Stone age of the Aryan races in post-Glacial times; and when Comparative Philology has established the fact that undivided Aryans were acquainted with the use of metals, it becomes clear that the degree of civilisation reached by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home was higher than the culture of the Stone age or even that of the age of metals. I have referred in the first chapter of the book to the opinion of some eminent archæologists that the metal age was introduced into Europe from other countries either by commerce or by the Indo-European race going there from outside, and the theory of the Arctic home with its inter-Glacial civilisation lends support to this view.

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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 443 . Aryans were familiar with some metal, either copper or bronze, as a medium of exchange. There are many other points si- milar in character. But it is impossible to go further into this subject in this place. I only want to point out the re- servation with which we shall have now to accept the results of Comparative Philology in forming our estimate of the degree of culture reached by the primitive Aryans, and show that when the primitive Aryan culture is carried back to the inter-Glacial age, the hypothesis that primitive Aryans were hardly better than the savage races of the present day at once falls to the ground. If the civilisation of some Aryan races in the Neolithic age appears to be inferior or imperfect it must, therefore, be, as observed above, ascribed to relapse or retrogression after the destruction of the ancient civilisation by the Ice Age, and the necessarily hard and nomadic life led by the people who survived the cataclysm. The Asiatic Aryans, it is true, were able to preserve a good deal more of the origin- al religion and culture, but it seems to be mainly due to their having incorporated the old traditions into their religious hymns or songs; and made it the exclusive business of a few to preserve and hand down with religious scrupulosity these prayers and songs to future generations by means of memory specially trained and cultivated for the purpose. But even then how difficult the task was can be very well seen from the fact that a greater portion of the hymns and songs originally comprised in the Avesta has been lost; and though the Veda is better preserved, still what we have at present is only a portion of the literature which is believed on good grounds to have once been in existence. It may seem pass- ing strange that these books should disclose to us the ex- istence of an original Arctic home so many centuries after the traditions were incorporated into them. But the evidence in the foregoing pages shows that it is a fact; and if so, we must hold that the Neolithic Aryan people in Europe were not as

444 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Prof. Max Muller thinks, progressive, but, for the time at least, necessarily retrogressive savages working only with such residua of the ante-diluvian civilisation as were saved from its general wreck.* But though the Vedic or Aryan people and their religion and culture can thus be traced to the last inter-glacial period, and though we know that the degree of culture attained by the primitive Aryans was of a higher type than some scholars seem to be willing to assign to them, yet there are many points in the primitive Aryan history which still remain unsolved. For instance, when and where the Aryan race was differenti- ated from other human races, or how and where the Aryan speech was developed, are important questions from the anthropological point of view, but we have, at present, no means to answer the same satisfactorily. It is quite possible that other human races might have lived with the Aryans in their home at this time; but the Vedic evidence is silent on this point. The existence of the human race is traced by geologists to the Tertiary era; and it is now geologically cer- tain that the gigantic changes wrought on this globe by glacial epochs were witnessed by man. But anthropology does not supply us with any data from which we can ascertain when, where, or how the human race came to be differenti- ated according to colour or language. On the contrary, it is now proved that at the earliest date at which human remains have been found, the race was already divided into several sharply distinguished types; and this, as observed by Laing, leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completety open to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists to contend for their respective views with plausible argu- ments and without fear of being refuted by facts.† The evid- ence, set forth in the foregoing pages, does not enable us to

• Max Muller's Last Essays, pp. 172 ff. † Laing's Human Origins, pp. 404-5.