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

382 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
reason, except prejudice, why we should not regard the Avestic
account as a correct reminiscence of an old real historical fact.
The author of the Fargards in question cannot be supposed to
have given us by imagination such a graphic account of a
phenomenon, which is brought to light or discovered by the
scientists only during the last forty or fifty years. Dar-
mesteter in his translation of the Fargards observes in a foot-
note that the account of glaciation is the result of a mythical
misunderstanding by which winter was thought to be the
counter-creation of Irân Vêj. This passed off very well twenty
years ago; but the phenomenon of glaciation in the Ice-age
is now better understood, and we cannot accept guesses and
conjectures of scholars regarding the meaning of a passage
in the Avesta which describes the glaciation of the Iranian
paradise. It only proves how the ancient records, howsoever
express and distinct they may be, are apt to be misunderstood
and misinterpreted owing to our imperfect knowledge of the
climatic or other conditions or surroundings amongst which
the ancestors of our race lived in remote ages. But for such a
misunderstanding, it was not difficult to perceive that the
Airyana Vaêjo, or the original home of the Aryan race, was
situated near the North Pole, and that the ancestors of our
race abandoned it not out of "irresistible impulse," or "over-
crowding," but simply because it was ruined by the invasion
of snow and ice brought on by the Glacial epoch. In short,
the Avestic tradition, as recorded in this Fargard, is the oldest
documentary evidence of the great climatic convulsion, which
took place several hundreds of years ago, and the scientific
evidence of which was discovered only during the last forty
or fifty years. It is, therefore, a matter of regret that the im-
portance of this tradition should have been so long misunder-
stood or overlooked.
It will be seen from the foregoing discussion that the tra-
ditional evidence preserved in the first two Fargards of the