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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 417
race? There is, therefore, nothing strange if some of the pass-
ages in the Ṛig-Veda and the Avesta disclose to us ideas which
the ancient commentators could not and did not perceive in
them; and I would request the reader to bear this in mind in
comparing the interpretations and explanations proposed by me
in the foregoing chapters with the current interpretations of
these passages by eastern or western Vedic scholars.
But our conclusions do not rest merely on the interpretation
of passages which, if rightly construed, disclose climatic charac-
teristics peculiar to the Arctic regions; though this evidence is,
by itself, sufficient to prove our hypothesis. We have seen that
in the sacrificial literature of the Vedic people as well as in their
mythology there are many indications which point to the same
conclusion; and these are fully corroborated by the ancient
traditions and legends in the Avesta and also by the mythologies
of the European branches of the Aryan race. A sacrificial session
of ten months held by the Dashagvas, or an annual sattra of
the same duration, compared with the oldest Roman year ending
in December or the tenth month, are the principal instances on
the point; and they have been fully discussed in the foregoing
chapters. I have also shown that the knowledge of the half-year-
long day or night is not confined to the traditions of the eastern
Aryas, but is common also to the European branches of the
Aryan race. The tradition preserved in the Vendidad about the
ancient Iranian Paradise in the far north, so that a year was
equal to a day to the inhabitants thereof, and its destruction by
snow and ice burying the land under a thick ice-cap, again affords
the most striking and cogent proof of the theory we have
endeavoured to prove in these pages. Thus if the traditions of
the western Aryas point out, according to Prof. Rhys, to Finland
or the White Sea as the original home of the Aryan people,
the Vedic and the Avestic traditions carry us still farther to
the north; for a continuous dawn of thirty days is possible only
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