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

364 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
more likely that Rangha may be the Vedic Rasâ, a tri-
butary of the Indus? If the context is any guide to the deter-
mination of the sense of ambiguous words, the mention of
Hapta Heṇdu, as the fifteenth land, shows that Rasâ the six-
teenth must be sought for somewhere near it, and the point
is pretty well settled when we find Rasâ actually mentioned
in the Ṛig-Veda along with some other tributaries of the
Indus. The identification of Rangha with the western-
most river is, therefore, at best doubtful, and the same may
be said of Vanguhi, which by-the-by is not mentioned
in the Fargard at all. But Darmesteter's reasoning does
not stop here. On the strength of this doubtful identifica-
tion he would have us believe that the ancient land of
the Airyana Vaêjo was situated in the same region where the
river named Vanguhi, or Vêh, in later times was said to flow.
But the reasoning is obviously erroneous. The names of the
two rivers Vanguhi and Rangha in the primeval home may
have been subsequently transferred to the real rivers in the
new settlement; but we cannot infer therefrom that the
country through which these new rivers flowed was the
original site of the Airyana Vaêjo. It is a well-known fact that
persons migrating from their motherland to new countries
often name the places they come across after the names of
places familiar to them in their motherland. But on that
account no one has ventured to place England in America or
Australia; and it is strange how such a mistake should have
been committed by Zend scholars in the present case. For
even if a province or country in Central Asia had been named
Airyana Vaêjo, we could not have located the original home
in that Province; just as the abode of Varuṇa cannot be
placed in the land named Varena, which is the Zend equiva-
lent of Varuṇa. The whole of Darmesteter's reasoning must,
therefore, be rejected as unsound and illogical, and but for
the preconceived notion that the original home of the Iranians