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

THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 43
is well-known that the sun shines at the North Pole continuously
for 6 months, and then sinks down below the horizon, producing
a night of 6 months' duration. But a closer examination of the
subject will show that the statement is only roughly true, and
requires to be modified in several particulars before it can be
accepted as scientifically accurate. In the first place we must
distinguish between the Pole and the Polar regions. The Pole is
merely a point, and all the inhabitants of the original ancient
home, if there was one near the North Pole, could not have lived
precisely at this single point. The Polar or the Arctic regions,
on the other hand, mean the tracts of land included between the
North Pole and the Arctic circle. But the duration of day and
night, as well as the seasons, at different places within the Arctic
regions cannot be, and are not, the same as at the point called the
North Pole. The characteristics of the circum-polar region may
indeed be derived from the strictly Polar characteristics; but still
they are so unlike each other that it is absolutely necessary to bear
this distinction in mind in collecting evidence of a circum-polar
Aryan home in ancient times. Men living round about the Pole,
or, more accurately speaking, in regions between the North Pole
and the Arctic circle, when these regions were habitable, were
sure to know of a day and night of 6 months, but living a little
southward from the Pole, their own calendar must have been
different from the strictly Polar calendar; and it is, therefore,
necessary to examine the Polar and the circum-polar charac-
teristics separately, in order that the distinction may be clearly
understood.
The terrestrial Poles are the termini of the axis of the
earth, and we have seen that there is no evidence to show
that this axis ever changed its position, relatively to the
earth, even in the earliest geological eras. The terrestrial
poles and the circum-polar regions were, therefore, the same