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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 419
and inclement by the advent of the Glacial epoch. We can
now also understand why attempts to prove the existence of an
Arctic home by discovering references to severe winter and
cold in the Vedas did not succeed in the past. The winter in
the primeval home was originally, that is, in inter-glacial
times, neither severe nor inclement, and if such expressions as
"a hundred winters" (shatam himâḥ) are found in the Vedic
literature, they cannot be taken for reminiscences of severe
cold winters in the original home; for the expression came
into use probably because the year in the original home
closed with a winter characterised by the long Arctic night.
It was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild
climate of the original home and converted it into an ice-
bound land unfit for the habitation of man. This is well ex-
pressed in the Avesta which describes the Airyana Vaêjo as
a happy land subsequently converted by the invasion of Angra
Mainyu into a land of severe winter and snow. This corres-
pondence between the Avestic description of the original
home and the result of the latest geological researches, at
once enables us to fix the age of the Arctic home, for it is
now a well-settled scientific fact that a mild climate in
the Polar regions was possible only in the inter-glacial and
not in the post-glacial times.
But according to some geologists 20,000 or even 80,000
years have passed since the close of the last Glacial epoch;
and as the oldest date assigned to the Vedic hymns does not
go beyond 4500 B. C., it may be contended that the traditions
of the Ice Age, or of the inter-glacial home, cannot be sup-
posed to have been accurately preserved by oral transmis-
sion for thousands of years that elapsed between the com-
mencement of the post-Glacial era and the oldest date of
the Vedic hymns. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the
point a little more closely in this place. In my Orion or
Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas, I have shown