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

THE AVESTIC EVIDENCE. 361
the original text. Professor Darmesteter further observes
that as the enumeration of the sixteen lands begins with
Airyana Vaêjo by the river Vanguhi Dâitya and ends with
Rangha, which corresponds with the Vedic Rasâ, a mythical
river that divides the gods from the fiends, and that as the
Vanguhi and the Rangha were originally the celestial rivers
that came down from heaven (like the two heavenly Gânges)
to surround the earth, the one in the east and the other in
the west, (Bundahish, XX), the Airyana Vaêjo and the Rangha
must be taken to denote the eastern and the western bounda-
ries of the countries known to the ancient Iranians at the time
when the Fargard was composed. Spiegel also takes the same
view, and places Airyana Vaêjo "in the farthest east of the
Iranian plateau, in the region where the Oxus and Jaxartes
take their rise;" and Darmesteter seems to quote with approval
the identification of the Rangha or the sixteenth land, in
the commentary on the Vedidad, with Arvastân-i-Rûm or
Roman Mesopotamia. The whole Fargard is thus taken to be
a geographical description of the ancient Iran, and Professor
Darmesteter at the end of his introduction to the Fargard ob-
serves "It follows hence no historical conclusion can be drawn
from this description : it was necessary that it should begin
with the Vanguhi and end with the Rangha. To look to it for
an account of geographical migrations is converting cosmology
into history." Bunsen and Haug, on the other hand, maintain
that the Airyana Vaêjo represents the original home of the
Iranians in the far north, and the countries mentioned in the
Fargard must, therefore, be taken to represent the lands
through which the Aryans passed after leaving their ancient
home. The first question which we have, therefore, to decide
is whether the Airyana Vaêjo was merely the easternmost
boundary of the ancient Iran, or whether it was the primeval
abode of the Iranians in the far north. In the former case we
may take the Fargard to be merely a chapter on ancient