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

390 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
are the Uttara Kurus whom no one attempts to combat.
That the Uttara Kurus were not a fabulous land is shown by
the fact that a mountain, a people and a city called Ottoro-
corra is mentioned by Ptolemy, and Lassen thinks that Me-
gasthenes had the Uttara Kurus in view when he referred to
the Hyperboreans. Muir concludes this section with a passage
from the Sânkhyâyana or the Kaushîtakî Brâhmaṇa (VII, 6)
where Pathyâ Svasti, or the goddess of speech, is said to
know the northern region (udîchîm disham), and we are told
that " Hence in the northern region speech is better known
and better spoken, and it is to the north that men go to learn
speech." Muir thinks that some faint reminiscence of an
early connection with the north may be traced in these pass-
ages. But none of them are conclusive, nor have we any in-
dication therein of the original home being in tho Arctic re-
gions, as we have in the case of the Vedic passages discussed
previously which speak of the long, continuous dawn and
night, or a year of ten months. We may, however, take the
passages cited by Muir as corroborative evidence and they
have been referred to here in the same light. It is upon the
Vedic passages and legends examined in the previous chapters
and the Avestic evidence discussed above that we mainly
rely for establishing the existence of the primeval Aryan home
in the Arctic regions; and when both these are taken together
we get direct traditional testimony for holding that the origi-
nal home of the Aryan races was situated near the North
Pole and not in Central Asia, that it was destroyed by the
advent of the Glacial epoch, and that the Indo-Iranians, who
were compelled to leave the country, migrated southwards,
and passing thr ough several provinces of Central Asia even-
tually settled in the valleys of the Oxus, the Indus, the
Kubhâ and the Rasâ, from which region we see them again
migrating, the Indians to the east and the Persians to the
west at the early dawn of the later traditional history.