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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 441
in inferring that such and such a thing was not known to the
primitive Aryans because common etymological equations for
the same cannot be discovered in all the Aryan languages.
We have, it is true, no means of ascertaining how much of the
original civilisation was lost in the deluge, but we cannot,
on that account, deny that some portion of it must have been
irrecoverably lost in the great cataclysm that destroyed the
original home. Under these circumstances all that we can
safely assert is that the degree of culture disclosed by Compa-
rative Philology is the lowest or the minimum that can be pre-
dicated of the undivided Aryans. It is important to bear
this reservation in mind because undue importance is some-
times attached to the results of Comparative Philology by a
kind of reasoning which appeared all right so long the question
of the site of the original home was unsettled. But now that
we know that Aryan race and religion are both inter-Glacial
and their ultimate origin is lost in geological antiquity, it does
not stand to reason to suppose that the inter-Glacial Aryans
were a race of savages. The archæologists, it is true, have
established the succession of the ages of Stone, Bronze and
Iron ; and according to this theory the Aryan race must have
once been in the Stone age. But there is nothing in archæology
which requires us to place the Stone age of the Aryan races
in post-Glacial times; and when Comparative Philology has
established the fact that undivided Aryans were acquainted
with the use of metals, it becomes clear that the degree of
civilisation reached by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic
home was higher than the culture of the Stone age or even that
of the age of metals. I have referred in the first chapter of
the book to the opinion of some eminent archæologists that
the metal age was introduced into Europe from other
countries either by commerce or by the Indo-European race
going there from outside, and the theory of the Arctic home
with its inter-Glacial civilisation lends support to this view.