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

412 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
but it has not yet been proved that the neolithic Aryan races
of Europe were autochthonus in the countries where their
remains are now found. Therefore the question of the original
home of the Aryan people is still an open question, and
we are free to draw any conclusion regarding the ancient
home from a legitimate consideration of the traditional evi-
dence before us. Prof. Rhys has well described the situation by
observing that the teachings of evolution may force us to
look for the original home still farther north in the Arctic
regions. In fact we have to go to a latitude which will give
us seven months' sunshine, or a hundred nights' continuous
darkness, or thirty days' continuous dawn. The question whe-
ther the home of other nations, beside the Aryan, can be traced
to the North Pole, has been ably discussed by Dr. Warren in
his Paradise Found, or the Cradle of the Human Race at the
North Pole. It is an important question from an anthropolo-
gical point of view; but its very comprehensiveness precludes
us from collecting evidence from the traditional literatures of
the different human races living on the surface of this earth.
It is true that we sometimes derive help from the discussion of
the broader questions at first ; but for all practical purposes it
is always desirable to split up the inquiry into different sec-
tions, and when each section has been thoroughly investigated
to combine the results of the different investigators and see
what conclusions are common to all. Our inquiry of the ori-
ginal Aryan home is, therefore, not only not inconsistent with
the general theory about the cradle of the human race at the
North Pole, but a necessary complement to it; and it matters
little whether it is undertaken as an independent inquiry as
we have done, or as a part of the general investigation. Any
how ours is a limited task, namely, to prove that the original
home of the Aryan people was situated in the Arctic regions
before the last Glacial epoch and that the oldest ancestors of
the Aryan race had to abandon it owing to its destruction by

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 413
ice and snow of the Glacial period. The Vedic and the Ave-
stic passages, quoted in the previous chapters, directly point to
such a home in primeval times, and we now see that the testi-
mony of scholars, like Prof. Rhys, who have independently
examined the Celtic, Teutonic and other mythologies of the.
European branches of the Aryan race, fully bears out the con-
clusion we have deduced from the Indo-Iranian traditions.
We have also seen that our view is supported by the latest
scientific researches, and is not inconsistent with the results
of comparative philology. We may, therefore, take it as
established that the original home of the Aryan people
was in the far north, in regions round about the North Pole,
and that we have correctly interpreted the Vedic and the
Avestic traditions which had long remained mis-interpreted
or mis-understood.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BEARING OF OUR RESULTS ON THE HISTORY OF
PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION.
Proofs of the theory of the Arctic home summed up—They clear-
ly indicate a Polar home,but the exact spot in the Arctic regions,
that is, north of Europe or Asia, still undeterminable—An Arctic
home possible only in inter-Glacial times according to geology
—Ancient Vedic chronology and calendar examined—The in-
terval between the commencement of the Post-Glacial era and
the Orion period cannot, according to it, be so great as 80,000
years—Supported by the moderate estimate of the American
geologists-Purânic chronology of yugas, manvantaras and kalpas
—Rangâchârya's and Aiyer's views thereon—Later Purânic
system evolved out of an original cycle of four yugas of
10,000 years, since the last deluge—The theory of ‘divine
years’ unknown to Manu and Vyâsa—Adopted by later writers
who could not believe that they lived in the Krita age
—The original tradition of 10,000 years since the last deluge
fully in accord with Vedic chronology—And also with the
American estimate of 8,000 B. C. for the beginning of the
Post-Glacial period—All prove the existence of a Polar Aryan
home before 8,000 B. C.—Trustworthiness of the ancient tra-
ditions and the method of preserving them—The theory of the
Polar origin of the whole human race not inconsistent with the
theory of the Arctic Aryan home—Current views regarding pri-
mitive Aryan culture and religion examined—Primitive Aryan
man and his civilisation cannot now be treated as Post-Gla-
cial—Certain destruction of the primeval civilization and cul-
ture by the Ice Age—Short-comings or defects in the civilisa-
tion of the Neolithic Aryan races in Europe must, therefore, be
ascribed to a post-diluvian relapse into barbarism—Life and
calendar in the inter-Glacial Arctic home—Devayâna and Pitri-
yâna and the deities worshipped during the period—The ancient
sacrifices of the Aryan race—The degree of civilisation reached
by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home—The results of
Comparative Philology stated—The civilisation disclosed by them

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 415
must be taken to be the minimum or the lowest, that can be pre-
dicated of the undivided Aryans—The culture of the undivided
Aryans higher than the culture of the Stone or the Metal age-
—Use of metal coins among them highly probable—Beginnings
of the Aryan language, or the differentiation of human races ac-
cording to colour or language still untraceable—The origin of
Aryan man and religion lost in geological antiquity—Theologi-
cal views regarding the origin and character of the Vedas sum-
marised—Differently supported by writers on the different
schools of philosophy—Patanjali’s and Vyâsa's view that the
Vedas were lost in the last deluge and repromulgated in sub-
stance, if not in form, at the beginning of the new age—The
four periods into which the Post-Glacial era may be divided on
astronomical grounds—Compared with the characteristics of the
four yugas given in the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa—Theological and
historical views regarding the origin &c. of the Vedas stated in
parallel columns and compared —Vedic texts, showing that the
subject matter of the hymns is ancient though the language may
be new, cited—Vedic deities and their exploits all said to be
ancient—Improbability of Dr. Muir’s suggested reconciliation
—Vedas, or rather Vedic religion, shown to be inter-Glacial in
substance though post-Glacial in form—Concluding remarks.
WE have now completed our investigation of the question
of the original home of the ancestors of the Vedic Aryans
from different stand-points of view. Our arguments, it will be
seen, are not based on the history of culture, or on facts dis-
closed by linguistic palæontology. The evidence, cited in the
foregoing chapters, mainly consists of direct passages from
the Vedas and the Avesta, proving unmistakably that the poets
of the Ṛig-Veda were acquainted with the climatic conditions
witnessible only in the Arctic regions, and that the principal
Vedic deities, such as the revolving Dawn, the Waters capti-
vated by Vṛitra, the Ashvins the rescuers of the afflicted gods
and Sûrya, Indra the deity of a hundred sacrifices, Vishṇu the
vast-strider, Varuṇa the lord of night and the ocean, the Âditya
brothers or the seven monthly sun-gods, Trita or the Third,
and others, are clothed with attributes which clearly betray their

416 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
Arctic origin. In other words, all the differentiæ, mentioned
in the third chapter as characteristic of the Polar and Circum-
Polar regions, are met with in the Ṛig-Veda in such a way as
to leave no doubt regarding the conclusion to be drawn from
them. A day or a night of six months, and a long continuous
dawn of several days' duration with its revolving splendours,
not to mention the unusually long Arctic day and night or a
year of less than twelve months' sunshine, were all known to
the Vedic bards, and have been described by them not mytho-
logically or metaphorically but directly in plain and simple
words, which, though misinterpreted so long, can, in the light
thrown upon the question by recent scientific researches, be
now rightly read and understood. In fact the task, which I set
to myself, was to find out such passages, and show how in the
absence of the true key to their meaning, they have been sub-
jected to forced construction, or ignored and neglected, by
Vedic scholars both Indian and foreign, ancient and modern.
I do not mean, however, to underrate, on that account, the
value or the importance of the labours of Indian Nairuktas
like Yâska, or commentators like Sâyaṇa. Without their aid
we should have, it is readily admitted, been able to do little
in the field of the Vedic interpretation; and I am fully aware
of the service they have rendered to this cause. There is no
question that they have done their best in elucidating the
meaning of our sacred books; and their claims on the grateful
remembrance of their services by future generations of
scholars will ever remain unchallenged. But if the Vedas
are really the oldest records of our race, who can deny that in
the light of the advancing knowledge regarding primitive
humanity, we may still discover in these ancient records
facts and statements which may have escaped the attention
of older scholars owing to the imperfect nature, in their days,
of those sciences which are calculated to throw further light on
the habits and environments of the oldest ancestors of our

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 417
race? There is, therefore, nothing strange if some of the pass-
ages in the Ṛig-Veda and the Avesta disclose to us ideas which
the ancient commentators could not and did not perceive in
them; and I would request the reader to bear this in mind in
comparing the interpretations and explanations proposed by me
in the foregoing chapters with the current interpretations of
these passages by eastern or western Vedic scholars.
But our conclusions do not rest merely on the interpretation
of passages which, if rightly construed, disclose climatic charac-
teristics peculiar to the Arctic regions; though this evidence is,
by itself, sufficient to prove our hypothesis. We have seen that
in the sacrificial literature of the Vedic people as well as in their
mythology there are many indications which point to the same
conclusion; and these are fully corroborated by the ancient
traditions and legends in the Avesta and also by the mythologies
of the European branches of the Aryan race. A sacrificial session
of ten months held by the Dashagvas, or an annual sattra of
the same duration, compared with the oldest Roman year ending
in December or the tenth month, are the principal instances on
the point; and they have been fully discussed in the foregoing
chapters. I have also shown that the knowledge of the half-year-
long day or night is not confined to the traditions of the eastern
Aryas, but is common also to the European branches of the
Aryan race. The tradition preserved in the Vendidad about the
ancient Iranian Paradise in the far north, so that a year was
equal to a day to the inhabitants thereof, and its destruction by
snow and ice burying the land under a thick ice-cap, again affords
the most striking and cogent proof of the theory we have
endeavoured to prove in these pages. Thus if the traditions of
the western Aryas point out, according to Prof. Rhys, to Finland
or the White Sea as the original home of the Aryan people,
the Vedic and the Avestic traditions carry us still farther to
the north; for a continuous dawn of thirty days is possible only
27

418 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
within a few degrees of the North Pole. But though the latitude
of the original home can be thus ascertained more or less defini-
tely, yet there is unfortunately nothing in these traditions which
will enable us to determine the longitude of the place, or, in
other words, whether the original home of the Aryan race was to
the north of Europe or Asia. But considering the fact that the
traditions of the original Polar home are better preserved in the
sacred books of the Brahmins and the Parsis, it is not unlikely
that the primeval home was located to the north of Siberia
rather than to the north of Russia or Scandinavia. It is, how-
ever, useless to speculate on the point without further proof.
The Vedic and the Avestic evidence clearly establish the exist-
ence of a primeval Polar home, the climate of which was mild
and temperate in ancient times, before it was invaded by the
Glacial epoch ; and with this result we must rest content, until
we get sufficient new materials to ascertain the exact position of
the Aryan home within the Arctic regions.
We commenced the book with a summary of the results of
the latest geological and archæological researches regarding the
history of primitive humanity and the invasion of northern
Europe and Asia by a series of glacial epochs in the Quarternary
era. This discussion was prefixed to the book with the object of
clearing up certain misapprehensions regarding the early history
of our planet based on knowledge derived from older geological
works, when man was believed to be post-glacial; and it will now
be seen that our theory of the primeval Arctic home of the Aryan
races is in perfect accord with the latest and most approved
geological facts and opinions. A primeval Arctic home would have
been regarded an impossibility, had not science cleared the ground
by establishing that the antiquity of man goes back to the Terti-
ary era, that the climate of the Polar regions was mild and
temperate in inter-glacial times, and that it was rendered cold

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 419
and inclement by the advent of the Glacial epoch. We can
now also understand why attempts to prove the existence of an
Arctic home by discovering references to severe winter and
cold in the Vedas did not succeed in the past. The winter in
the primeval home was originally, that is, in inter-glacial
times, neither severe nor inclement, and if such expressions as
"a hundred winters" (shatam himâḥ) are found in the Vedic
literature, they cannot be taken for reminiscences of severe
cold winters in the original home; for the expression came
into use probably because the year in the original home
closed with a winter characterised by the long Arctic night.
It was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild
climate of the original home and converted it into an ice-
bound land unfit for the habitation of man. This is well ex-
pressed in the Avesta which describes the Airyana Vaêjo as
a happy land subsequently converted by the invasion of Angra
Mainyu into a land of severe winter and snow. This corres-
pondence between the Avestic description of the original
home and the result of the latest geological researches, at
once enables us to fix the age of the Arctic home, for it is
now a well-settled scientific fact that a mild climate in
the Polar regions was possible only in the inter-glacial and
not in the post-glacial times.
But according to some geologists 20,000 or even 80,000
years have passed since the close of the last Glacial epoch;
and as the oldest date assigned to the Vedic hymns does not
go beyond 4500 B. C., it may be contended that the traditions
of the Ice Age, or of the inter-glacial home, cannot be sup-
posed to have been accurately preserved by oral transmis-
sion for thousands of years that elapsed between the com-
mencement of the post-Glacial era and the oldest date of
the Vedic hymns. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the
point a little more closely in this place. In my Orion or
Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas, I have shown

420 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
that while the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas begin
the Nakṣhatras with the Kṛittikâs or the Pleiades, show-
ing that the vernal equinox then coincided with the aforesaid
asterism (2500 B. C.), the Vedic literature contains traces of
Mṛiga or Orion being once the first of the Nakṣhatras and the
hymns of the Ṛig-Veda, or at least many of them, which are
undoubtedly older than the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ, contain refer-
ence to this period, that is, about 4500 B. C. approximately.
It is also pointed out that there are faint traces of the same
equinox being once in the constellation of Punarvasû, presid-
ed over by Aditi, which was possible in about 6,000 B. C. I
have in my later researches tried to push back this limit by
searching for the older zodiacal positions of the vernal equinox
in the Vedic literature, but I have not found any evidence of
the same. My attention was, however, directed more and more
to passages containing traces of an Arctic calendar and an
Arctic home, and I have been gradually led to infer therefrom
that at about 5000 or 6000 B. C., the Vedic Aryas had settled
on the plains of Central Asia, and that at the time the tradi-
tions about the existence of the Arctic home and its destruc-
tion by snow and ice, as well as about the Arctic origin of the
Vedic deities, were definitely known to the bards of these races.
In short, reserches in Vedic chronology and calendar do not
warrant us in placing the advent of the last Glacial epoch,
which destroyed the ancient Aryan home, at a time several
thousands of years previous to the Orion period ; and from
what has been stated in the first two chapters of the book, it
will be seen that this estimate well agrees with the conclusions
of American geologists, who, from an examination of the
erosion of valleys and similar other well-ascertained facts, as-
sign to the close of the last Glacial epoch a date not older than
about 8000 B. C. We might even go further and say that an-
cient Vedic chronology and calendar furnish an independent
corroboration of the moderate view of the American geologists ;

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION, 421
and when two independent lines of research unexpectedly lead
us to the same result, we may very well reject, at least in the
present state of our knowledge, the extravagant speculations
of Croll and his followers, and, for all practical purposes, adopt
the view that the last Glacial epoch closed and the post-Glacial
period commenced at about 8000 B. C. From this to the
Orion period is an interval of about 3000 years, and it is not at
all improbable that the traditions of the ancient home should
have been remembered and incorporated into hymns whose
origin can be clearly traced to that period. In short, the Vedic
traditions, far from being contradictory to the scientific
evidence, only serve to check the extravagant estimates re-
garding the age of the last Glacial epoch; and if the sober
view of American geologists be adopted, both geology and
the traditions recorded in the ancient books of the Aryan race
will be found alike to point out to a period not much older
than 8000 B. C. for the commencement of the post-Glacial
era and the compulsory migration of the Aryan races from
their Arctic home.
And not only Vedic but also Purâṇic chronology, properly
understood, leads us to the same conclusion. According
to the Purâṇas the earth and the whole universe are occa-
sionally subjected to destruction at long intervals of time, the
earth by a small and the universe by a grand deluge. Thus we
are told that when the god Brahmâ is awake during his day
the creation exists; but when at the end of the day he goes to
sleep, the world is destroyed by a deluge, and is re-created
when he awakes from his sleep and resumes his activity the
next morning. Brahmâ's evening and morning are thus syn-
onymous with the destruction and the re-creation of the earth.
A day and a night of Brahmâ are each equal to a period of time
called a Kalpa, and a Kalpa is taken for a unit in measuring
higher periods of time. Two Kalpas constitute a nycthemeron
(day and night) of Brahmâ, and 360×2=720 Kalpas make

422 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
his year, while a hundred such years constitute his life-time, at
the end of which a grand deluge overtakes the whole universe
including Brahmâ. Now according to the Code of Manu and
the Mahâbhârata the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and
Kali form a yuga of gods, and a thousand such yugas make a
Kalpa or a day of Brahmâ of 12,000,000 years, at the end of
which a deluge destroys the world. The Purâṇas, however,
have adopted a different method of computation. The four
yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are thete said to con-
stitute a Mahâ-yuga ; 71 such Mahâ-yugas constitute a Man-
vantara, and 14 Manvantaras make a Kalpa, which, according
to this method of counting, contains 4,320,000,000 years. The
dieffrence between the durations of a Kalpa according to these
two methods is due to the fact that the years making up the
four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are considered
to be divine in the latter, while they are obviously human in
Manu and the Mahâbhârata. For further details the reader
is referred to the late Mr. S. B. Dixit's History of Indian
Astronomy in Marâṭhi, Prof. Raṅgâchârya's essay on Yugas,
and Mr. Aiyer's Chronology of Ancient India, a book, in, which
the question of yugas and especially that of the beginning of the
Kali yuga, is subjected to a searching and exhaustive examina-
tion. The Hindu writers on astronomy seem to have adopt-
ed the same system, except Âryabhaṭṭa, who holds that 72,
and not 71, Mahâ-yugas make a Manvantara, and that a Mahâ-
yuga is divided into four equal parts which are termed Kṛitâ,
Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali. According to this chronological
system, we are, at present, in the 5003rd year (elapsed) of
the Kali yuga of the 28th Mahâ-yuga of the 7th ( Vaivasvata )
Manvantara of the current Kalpa ; or, 1, 972, 949, 003 year s
have, in other words, elapsed since the deluge which occured
at the beginning of the present or the Shvëta-vârıha Kalpa.
This estimate is, as observed by Prof. Raṅgâchârya, quite be-
yond the limit admitted by modern geology ; and it is not

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 423
unlikely that Hindu astronomers, who held the view that the
sun, the moon, and all the planets were in a line at the beginning
of the Kalpa, arrived at this figure by mathematically calculating
the period during which the sun, the moon and all the planets
made an integral number of complete revolutions round the earth.
We need not, however, go into these details, which, howsoever
interesting, are not relevant to the subject in hand. A cycle of
the four yugas, viz., Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali, is, it will be
seen, the basis of this chronological system, and we have therefore
to examine more critically what this collection of four yugas,
otherwise termed a Mahâ-yuga, really signifies and whether the
period of time originally denoted by it was the same as it is said
to be at present.
Prof. Raṅgâchârya and especially Mr. Aiyer have ably trea-
ted this subject in their essays, and I agree in the main with them
in their conclusions. I use the words 'in the main' deliberately,
for though my researches have independently led me to reject the
hypothesis of 'divine years,' yet there are certain points which
cannot, in my opinion, be definitely settled without further
research. I have shown previously that the word yuga is used in
the Ṛig-Veda to denote 'a period of time,' and that in the phrase
mânushâ yugâ it cannot but be taken to denote 'a month.' Yuga
is, however, evidently used to denote a longer period of time in
such expressions as Devânâm prathame yuge in the Ṛig-
Veda, X, 72, 3; while in the Atharva Veda VIII, 2, 21,
which says "We allot to thee a hundred, ten thousand
years, two, three, (or) four yugas," a yuga evidently means
a period of not less than 10,000 years;* and Mr. Aiyer is
right in pointing out that the omission of the word 'one' in
the above verse is not accidental. According to this view a

• Atharva Veda, VIII, 2, 21, — शतं तेऽयुतं हायनान्द्वे युगे त्रीणि चत्वारि ,
  कृण्मः ।

424 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
yuga may be taken to have, at the longest, denoted a period of
10,000 years in the days of the Atharva Veda Saṁhitâ. Now
it is found that Manu and the Mahâbhârata both assign 1000,
2000, 3000 and 4000 years to the four yugas of Kali, Dvâpara,
Tretâ and Kṛita respectively. In other words, the durations of
Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita are obtained by doubling, trebling and
quadrupling the duration of Kali ; and taking into consideration
that Kṛita (which Mr. Aiyer compares with Latin quatuor) means
‘four’ in Sanskrit literature, the names of the yugas may perhaps
be derived from this fact. We are, however, concerned with
the duration of the four yugas, and adding up the numbers given
above, we obtain 10,000 years for a cycle of four yugas, or a
Mahâ-yuga, according to the terminology explained above. Manu
and Vyâsa, however, add to this 10,000 another period of 2,000
years, said to represent the Sandhyâ or the Sandhyâṁsha periods
intervening between the different yugas. Thus the Kṛita age
does not pass suddenly into Tretâ, but has a period of 400 years
interposed at each of its ends, while the Tretâ is protected from
the contact of the preceding and the succeeding yuga by two
periods of 300 years each, the Dvâpara of 200 and the Kali of 100
years. The word Sandhyâ denotes the time of the dawn in ordi-
nary literature ; and Mr. Aiyer points out that as the period of the
dawn and the gloaming, or the morning and the evening twilight,
is each found to extend over three out of thirty ghatîs of a day,
so one-tenth of the period of each yuga is assigned to its Sandhyâ
or the period of transition into another yuga ; and that it is not
improbable that these supplementary periods were subsequent
amendments. The period of 10,000 years for a cycle of the four
yugas is thus increased to 12,000, if the Sandhyâ periods are
included in it, making Kṛita comprise 4800, Tretâ 3600, Dvâpara
2400 and Kali 1200 years. Now at the time of the Mahâbhârata
or the Code of Manu, the Kali yuga had already set in ; and if the

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 425
yuga contained no more than 1,000, or, including the Sandhyâs,
1200 ordinary years, it would have terminated about the beginning
of the Christian era.* The writers of the Purâṇas, many of which
appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the
Christian era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali
yuga had passed away, and that they lived in the Kṛita yuga of a
new Mahâ-yuga; for the Kṛita yuga meant according to them a
golden age, while the times in which they lived showed signs of
degeneration on all sides. An attempt was, therefore, made to
extend the duration of the Kali yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200)
ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single
divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human
years. A Vedic authority for such an interpretation was found
in the text from the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa, which, we have quo-
ted and discussed previously, viz., "That which is a year is a day
of the gods." Manu and Vyâsa simply assign 1000 years to the
Kali yuga. But as Manu, immediately after recording the
duration of the yugas and their Sandhyâs, observes "that this
period of 12,000 years is called the yuga of the gods," the device
of converting the ordinary years of the different yugas into as
many divine years was, thereby, at once rendered plausible;
and as people were unwilling to believe that they could be
in a yuga other than the Kali, this solution of the difficulty

• Compare Manu, I, 69-71. In the Mahâbhârata the subject is
  treated in two places, once in the Shânti-Parvan, Chap. 231, and once
  in the Vana-Parvan, Chap. 188, V. 21-28, (Cal. Ed.). The following
  verses are taken from the latter place:—आदितो मनुजव्याघ्र कृत्स्नस्य जगतः
  क्षये । चत्वार्याहुः सहस्राणि वर्षाणां तत्कृतं युगम् ॥ तस्य तावच्छती संध्या संध्यांशश्च
  तथाविधः । त्रीणि वर्षसहस्राणि त्रेतायुगमिहोच्यते ॥ तस्य तावच्छती संध्या संध्यांशश्च
  ततः परं । तथा वर्षसहस्रे द्वे द्वापरं परिमाणतः ॥ तस्यापि द्विशती संध्या संध्यांशश्च
  तथाविधः । सहस्रमेकं वर्षाणां तथा कलियुगं स्मृतं ॥ तस्य वर्षशतं संधिः संध्यांशश्च ततः
  परं । संधिसंध्यांशयोस्तुल्यं प्रमाणमुपधारय । क्षीणे कलियुगे चैव प्रवर्तति कृतं युगं ॥ एषा
  द्वादशसाहस्री युगाख्या परिकीर्तिता । एतत्सहस्रपर्यन्तमहर्ब्राह्ममुदाहृतम् ॥ The first
  line clearly states that the Kṛita yuga commences after the deluge. Cf.
  Muir O. S. T., Vol. 1, 45-48.

426 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was
at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent
cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years.
The same device converted, at one stroke, the 12,000 ordinary
years of a Mahâ-yuga, into as many divine, or 360 × 12,000 =
4,320,000 ordinary years, affecting in a similar way the higher
cycles of time like Manvantaras and Kalpas. How the beginning
of the Kali yuga was thrown back, by astronomical calculations,
to 3102 B. C., when this hypothesis of 'divine years' was adopted
is a separate question by itself; but not being pertinent to the
subject in hand we need not go into it in this place. Suffice it
to say that where chronology is invested with semi-religious
character, artifices or devices, like the one noticed above, are not
unlikely to be used to suit the exigencies of the time; and those
who have to investigate the subject from a historical and anti-
quarian point of view must be prepared to undertake the task of
carefully sifting the data furnished by such chronology, as Prof.
Rangâchârya and Mr. Aiyer have done in their essays referred to
above.
From a consideration of the facts stated above it will be
seen that so far as the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata
are concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle
of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the Kṛita, the
Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of
one thousand years had then already set in. In other
words, Manu and Vyâsa obviously speak only of a period of
10,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, of 12,000 ordinary or hu-
man (not divine) years, from the beginning of the Kṛita to
the end of the Kali yuga; and it is remarkable that in the
Atharva Veda we should find a period of 10,000 years ap-
parently assigned to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely
that the Atharva Veda takes the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara
and the Kali together, and uses the word yuga to denote the
combined duration of all these in the passage referred to above.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 427
Now considering the fact that the Kṛita age is said to commence
after a pralaya or the deluge, Manu and Vyâsa must be under-
stood to have preserved herein an old tradition that about 10,000
years before their time (supposing them to have lived at the
beginning of the Kali age of 1200 years), the new order of things
commenced with the Kṛita age; or, in other words, the deluge
which destroyed the old order of things occured about 10,000
years before their time. The tradition has been very much
distorted owing to devices adopted in later times to make the
traditional chronology suit the circumstances of the day. But
still it is not difficult to ascertain the original character of the
tradition; and when we do so, we are led to conclude that the
beginning of the new order of things, or, to put it more scienti-
fically, the commencement of the current post-Glacial era was,
according to this tradition, not assigned to a period older than
10,000 years before the Christian era. We have shown that
researches in Vedic chronology do not allow us to carry back the
date of the post-Glacial era beyond this estimate, for traditions
of the Arctic home appear to have been well understood by the
bards of the Ṛig-Veda in the Orion period. It is, therefore, al-
most certain that the invasion of the Arctic Aryan home by the
last Glacial epoch did not take place at a time older than 10,000
B. C. The American geologists, we have seen, have arrived at
the same conclusion on independent scientific grounds; and
when the Vedic and the Purâṇic chronology indicate nearly the
same time,—a difference of one or two thousand years, in such
cases, does not matter much,—we may safely reject the extra-
vagant estimates of 20,000 or 80,000 years and adopt, for all
practical purposes, the view that the last Glacial epoch closed
and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8,000, or, at
best, about 10,000 B. C.
We have now to consider how the tradition about the exist-
ence of the original home at the North Pole and its destruction

428 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
by snow and ice of the Glacial epoch, and other cognate
reminiscences were preserved until they were incorporated into
the law-book of the Mazdayasnians and the hymns of the Ṛig-
Veda. That a real tradition is preserved in these books is
undoubted, for we have seen that an examination of the tradi-
tions preserved by the European branches of the Aryan race
have led Prof. Rhys to the same conclusion ; and those who
know the history of the preservation of our sacred books will
see nothing improbable herein. In these days of writing and
printing, we have no need to depend upon memory, and con-
sequently we fail to realise what memory, kept under the strict-
est discipline, is capable of achieving. The whole of the Ṛig-
Veda, nay, the Veda and its nine supplementary books, have
been preserved by the Brahmins of India, letter for letter and
accent for accent, for the last 3000 or 4000 years at least ; and
priests who have done so in recent times may well be credited
with having faithfully preserved the traditions of the an-
cient home, until they were incorporated into the sacred books.
These achievements of disciplined memory may appear mar-
vellous to us at present ; but, as stated above, they were
looked upon as ordinary feats when memory was trusted
better than books, and trained and cultivated with such
special care as to be a faithful instrument for transmitting
along many generations whatever men were most anxious to
have remembered. It has been a fashion to cry down the class of
priests who make it their sole profession to cultivate their me-
mory by keeping it under strict discipline and transmit by its means
our sacred writings without the loss of a single accent from genera-
tion to generation. They have been described, even by scholars like
Yâska, as the carriers of burden, and compared by others to parrots
who repeat words without understanding their meaning. But the
service, which this class has rendered to the cause of ancient his-
tory and religion by preserving the oldest traditions of the race, is

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

430 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
indicating the existence of an Arctic home of these races in an-
cient times; and from a consideration of all these he arrives at
the conclusion that the cradle of the whole human race must be
placed in the circum-polar regions, a conclusion in which he is
also supported by other scholars. But, as observed by Prof.
Rhys, it is no fatal objection to the view we have endeavoured
to prove in these pages that the mythologies of nations, beside
the Aryan, also point to the North Pole as their original home;
for it is not contended that the Aryans may be the only poeple
of northern origin. On the contrary, there are grounds to
believe that the five races of men (pañcha janâḥ) often mentioned
in the Ṛig-Veda may have been the races which lived with the
Aryans in their original home, for we cannot suppose that the
Vedic Aryas after their dispersion from the original home met
only with five races in their migrations, or were divided only in-
to five branches. But the question is one which can be finally de-
cided only after a good deal of further research; and as it is not
necessary to mix it up with the question of the original home of
the Aryans, we may leave it out for the present. If the North
Pole is conclusively shown to be the cradle of the human race
hereafter, it would not affect in the least the conclusion we
have drawn in these pages from a number of definite Vedic
and Avestic traditions, but if the existence of the Aryan home
near the North Pole is proved, as we have endeavoured to do
in the foregoing pages, by independent testimony, it is sure
to strengthen the probability of the northern home of the whole
human race; and as the traditions of the Aryan people are
admittedly better preserved in the Veda and the Avesta
than those of any other race, it is safer and even desirable to
treat the question of the primeval Aryan home independently
of the general problem taken up by Dr. Warren and other
scholars. That the Veda and the Avesta are the oldest books
of the Aryan race is now conceded by all, and we have seen

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 431
that it is not difficult to ascertain, from traditions contained
therein, the site of the Aryan Paradise, now that we begin to
search for it in the light thrown upon the subject by modern
scientific researches.
But if the fact of an early Aryan home in the far north is once
established by indisputable traditional evidence, it is sure to re-
volutionise the existing views regarding the primitive history or
religion of the Aryan races. Comparative philologists and Sans-
kritists, who looked for the primeval home " somewhere in Cen-
tral Asia," have advanced the theory that the whole progress of
the Aryan race, intellectual, social or moral from primeval sava-
gery to such civilisation as is disclosed by the Vedic hymns, was
effected on the plains of Central Asia. It was on these plains,
we are told, that our oldest ancestors gazed upon the wonders
of dawn or the rising sun with awe and astonishment, or rever-
entially watched the storm-clouds hovering in the sky to be
eventually broken up by the god of rain and thunder, thereby
giving rise to the worship of natural elements and thus laying
down the foundations of later Aryan mythology. It was on these
plains that they learnt the art of weaving, the products of which
superseded the use of hides for clothing, or constructed their
chariots, or trained their horses, or discovered the use of
metals like gold and silver. In short, all the civilisation and cul-
ture which Comparative Philology proves on linguistic grounds
to have been common to the different Aryan races before their
separation is regarded to have first originated or developed on
the plains of Central Asia in post-Glacial times. Dr. Schrader,
in his Pre-historic Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, gives us
an exhaustive summary of facts and arguments regarding
primitive Aryan culture and civilisation which can be deduced
from Linguistic Palæology, or Comparative Philology, and
as a repertory of such facts the book stands unrivalled. But we
must remember that the results of Comparative Philology,