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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 429
invaluable; and looking to the fact that a specially disciplined
memory was needed for such preservation, we cannot but grate-
fully remember the services of those whose hereditary devotion
to the task, we might say, the sacred religious task, rendered it
possible for so many traditions to be preserved for thousands of
years. Paṇḍits might analyse and explain the Vedic hymns
more or less elaborately or correctly; but for that reason, we
cannot forget that the very basis of their labours would have
been lost long ago, had the institution of priests who made disci-
plined memory their exclusive business in life not been in exis-
tence. If the institution has out-lived its necessity,—which is
doubtful, for the art of writing or printing can hardly be trusted
to the same extent as disciplined memory in such matters,—we
must remember that religious institutions are the hardest to die
in any country in the world.
We may, therefore, safely assert that Vedic and Avestic
traditions, which have been faithfully preserved by disciplin-
ed memory, and whose trustworthiness is proved by Compa-
rative Mythology, as well as by the latest researches in Geo-
logy and Archæology, fully establish the existence of an Arctic
home of the Aryan people in inter-glacial times; and that after
the destruction of this home by the last Glacial epoch the Aryan
people had to migrate southwards and settle at first in the
northern parts of Europe or on the plains of Central Asia
at the beginning of the post-Glacial-period, that is about
8000 B. C. The antiquity of the Aryan race is thus carried
back to interglacial times, and its oldest home to regions round
about the North Pole, where alone a long dawn of thirty
days is possible. Whether other human races, beside the
Aryan, lived with them in the circum-polar country is a ques-
tion which does not fall within the purview of this book. Dr.
Warren, in his Paradise Found, has cited Egyptian, Akkadian,
Assyrian, Babylonian, Chinese and even Japanese traditions