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

2 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
In some cases, as in that of Greece, the historic period goes back
to 1000 B. C., while in the case of Egypt the contemporaneous
records, recently unearthed from ancient tombs and monuments,
carry back its history upto about 5000 B. C. But in either case
the historic period, the oldest limit of which may be taken to be
5000 or 6000 B. C., is preceded by a period of myths and tra-
ditions; and as these were the only materials available for
the study of prehistoric man up to the middle of the
nineteenth century, various attempts were made to systematise
these myths, to explain them rationally and see if they shed
any light on the early history of man. But, as observed by Prof.
Max Muller, "it was felt by all unprejudiced scholars that none
of these systems of interpretation was in the least satis-
factory." "The first impulse to 'a new consideration of the
mythological problem" observes the same learned author "came
from the study of comparative philology." Through the dis-
covery of the ancient language and sacred books of India—a
discovery, which the Professor compares with the discovery of
the new world, and through the discovery of the intimate re-
lationship between Sanskrit and Zend on the one hand and the
languages of the principal races of Europe on the other, a com-
plete revolution took place in the views commonly entertained
of the ancient history of the world. 1 It was perceived that the
languages of the principal European nations—ancient and mo-
dern—bore a close resemblance to the languages spoken by
the Brahmans of India and the followers of Zoroaster; and
from this affinity of the Indo-Germanic languages it followed
inevitably that all these languages must be the off-shoots or
dialects of a single primitive tongue, and the assumption of
such a primitive language further implied the existence of a
primitive Aryan people. The study of Vedic literature and
classical Sanskrit by Western scholars thus gradually effected

1. See Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. II, pp. 445-6.