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

PREHISTORIC TIMES. 19
left unexplained. For reasons like these it seems to me more
probable that the Finns might have borrowed the culture words
from the Aryans when they came in contact with them, and that
the Aryans were autochthonous neither in Europe nor in Central
Asia, but had their original home somewhere near the North
Pole in the Palæolithic times, and that they migrated from this
place southwards in Asia and Europe, not by any 'irresistible
impulse,' but by unwelcome changes in the climatic conditions of
their original home. The Avesta preserves traditions which fully
support this view. But these have been treated as valueless by
scholars, who worked up their theories at a time when man was
regarded as post-glacial, and the Avestic traditions were, it was
believed, not supported by any Vedic authority. But with the
time-telescope of a wider range supplied to us by recent scientific
discoveries it has become possible to demonstrate that the Avestic
traditions represent a real historical fact and that they are fully
supported by the testimony of the Vedas. The North Pole is
already considered by several eminent scientific men as the most
likely place where plant and animal life first originated; and I
believe it can be satisfactorily shown that there is enough positive
evidence in the most ancient books of the Aryan race, the Vedas
and the Avesta, to prove that the oldest home of the Aryan people
was somewhere in regions round about the North Pole. I shall
take up this evidence after examining the climatic conditions of
the Pleistocene or the Glacial period and the astronomical
characteristics of the Arctic regions in the next two chapters,