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

456 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
theological views mentioned above. We may not be able to
fix definitely when each hymn of the Ṛig-Veda was sung; but
we may safely say that those who survived the catastrophe, or
their immediate descendants, must have incorporated into
hymns the religious knowledge they had inherited as a sacred
trust from their forefathers at the first opportunity, that is, soon
after they were able to make at least temporary settlements.
The hymns cannot, therefore, be supposed to promulgate a new
religion consciously or unconsciously evolved on the plains of
Central Asia in post-Glacial times; and the Polar character of
the Vedic deities removes every doubt on the point. How far
the language of the hymns, as we have them at present, resem-
bled the ante-diluvian forms of speech is a different question;
and according to Patanjali and Vyâsa, we are not here concerned
with the words or the syllables of the hymns, which, it is admit-
ted, have not remained permanent. We have to look to the
subject matter of the hymns; and there is no reason to doubt
either the competency or the trustworthiness of the Vedic
bards to execute what they considered to be their sacred
task or duty, viz., that of preserving and transmitting,
for the benefit of future generations, the religious knowledge
they had inherited from their ante-diluvian forefathers. It
was by an agency similar to this that the hymns have
been preserved accent for accent, according to the lowest
estimate, for the last 3000 or 4000 years; and what is
achieved in more recent times can certainly be held to
have been done by the older bards in times when the tradi-
tions about the Arctic home and religion were still fresh in
their mind. We may also observe that the hymns were
publicly sung and recited, and the whole community, which
must be supposed to have been interested in preserving its an-
cient religious rites and worship, must have keenly watched
the utterances of these Ṛiṣhis. We may, therefore, safely assert
that the religion of the primeval Arctic home was correctly