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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 439
their offerings, eventually bring back the light of the dawn to
these worshippers. I do not mean to assert that an elaborate
system of sacrifices existed in inter-glacial times; but I do
maintain that sacrifice was the main ritual of the primeval
Aryan religion, and that it is a mistake to suppose that it origi-
nated or was invented only in post-glacial times. I have dwelt
at some length on the question of ancient religious worship and
ritual in this place because the theory of the Arctic home very
well exposes, in my opinion, the fallacious character of many of
the existing views on this subject.
A people, who had come to worship the powers of Nature
as manifestations of divine will and energy, who had a well-
developed language of their own, and who had already evolved
a legendary literature out of the Arctic conditions of the year
in their congenial home near the North Pole, may well be
expected to have made a good advance in civilisation. But we
have at present very few means by which we can ascertain
the exact degree of civilisation attained by the undivided
Aryans in their primitive home. Comparative Philology tells
us that primitive Aryans were familiar with the art of spinning
and weaving, knew and worked in metals, constructed boats
and chariots, founded and lived in cities, carried on buying
and selling, and had made considerable progress in agriculture.
We also know that important social or political institutions
or organisations, as, for instance, marriage or the laws of
property, prevailed amongst the forefathers of our race
in those early days; and linguistic palæontology furnishes us
with a long list of the fauna and the flora known to the
undivided Aryans. These are important linguistic discoveries,
and taking them as they are, they evidently disclose a state
of civilisation higher than that of the savages of the Neolithic
age. But in the light of the Arctic theory we are naturally
led to inquire if the culture of the primitive Aryans was con-
fined only to the level disclosed by Comparative Philology, or

440 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
whether it was of a higher type than the one we can predicate
of them simply on linguistic grounds. We have seen above
that in the case of the mythological deities and their worship
the Polar character of many of the deities at once enables us
to assign them to the primitive period even when their names
are not found in all the Aryan languages; and the results of
Comparative Philology regarding primitive Aryan culture will
have to be checked and revised in the same way. The very
fact that after compulsary dispersion from their mother-land
the surviving Aryans, despite the fragmentary civilisation they
carried with them, were able to establish their supremacy over
the races they came across in their migrations from the original
home at the beginning of the post-Glacial period, and that
they succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in Aryanising
the latter in language, thought and religion under circumstances
which could not be expected to be favourable to them, is
enough to prove that the original Aryan civilisation must
have been of a type far higher than that of the non-Aryan races,
or than the one found among the Aryan races that migrated
southward after the destruction of their home by the Ice Age.
So long as the Aryan races inhabiting the northern parts of
Europe in the beginning of the Neolithic age were believed
to be autochthonous there was no necessity of going beyond
the results of Comparative Philology to ascertain the degree
of civilisation attained by the undivided Aryans. But now we
see that the culture of the Neolithic Aryans is obviously only
a relic, an imperfect fragment, of the culture attained by the
undivided Aryans in their Arctic home; and it would, there-
fore, be unreasonable to argue that such and such civilisation,
or culture cannot be predicated of the undivided Aryans
simply because words indicating the same are found only in
some and not in all the Aryan languages. In other words,
though we may accept the results of Comparative Philology
so far as they go, we shall have to be more cautious hereafter

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.

442 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
I might in passing here refer to an instance which illustrates
the danger of relying exclusively on Comparative Philology in
this respect. Dr. Schrader has shown that copper, at any rate,
was known to the primitive Aryans; and he admits the possi-
bility that this metal may, in isolated cases, have been employ-
ed in the manufacture of weapons like fighting knives or lance-
heads. But we are told that there are linguistic difficulties
which prevent us from assuming that gold and silver were
known in the primitive period. On an examination of the sub-
ject it will, however, be seen that in cases like these the phi-
lologist relies too much on his own methods or follows them
too rigidly. For instance khalkos (copper or bronze) is men-
tioned by Homer as a medium of exchange (II. vii, 472); and
Comparative Philology discloses two etymological equa-
tions, one derived from the root *mei (Sans. me) denoting
'barter,' and the other derived from the Sanskrit krî, Greek
priamai, meaning purchase. The Ṛig-Veda (VIII. I, 5) also
mentions a measure of value called shulka, and, as the word is
used in later Sanskrit literature to denote a small payment made
at a toll-house, it is not unlikely that shulka originally meant a
small coin of copper or bronze similar in character to the
khalkos mentioned by Homer. Now it is true that ordinarily
Greek kh, is represented by h in Sanskrit, and that if this
rule be rigidly applied to the present case it would not be
possible to phonetically identify khalkos with shulka. Philo-
logists have, therefore, tried to compare khalkos with Sans-
krit hriku or hliku. But, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, the
connection seems to be altogether improbable. Hrîku is not
a Vedic word, nor does it mean copper or bronze. Despite
the phonetic difficulty,—and the difficulty is not so serious as it
seems to be at the first sight, for Sanskrit sh is represented by
k in Greek, and this k sometimes gives place to the aspir-
ated kh,—I am, therefore, inclined to identify khalkos with
shulka; and if this is correct, we must conclude that undivided

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 443 .
Aryans were familiar with some metal, either copper or bronze,
as a medium of exchange. There are many other points si-
milar in character. But it is impossible to go further into
this subject in this place. I only want to point out the re-
servation with which we shall have now to accept the results
of Comparative Philology in forming our estimate of the
degree of culture reached by the primitive Aryans, and show
that when the primitive Aryan culture is carried back to the
inter-Glacial age, the hypothesis that primitive Aryans were
hardly better than the savage races of the present day at
once falls to the ground. If the civilisation of some Aryan
races in the Neolithic age appears to be inferior or imperfect
it must, therefore, be, as observed above, ascribed to relapse or
retrogression after the destruction of the ancient civilisation by
the Ice Age, and the necessarily hard and nomadic life led by
the people who survived the cataclysm. The Asiatic Aryans,
it is true, were able to preserve a good deal more of the origin-
al religion and culture, but it seems to be mainly due to their
having incorporated the old traditions into their religious
hymns or songs; and made it the exclusive business of a
few to preserve and hand down with religious scrupulosity these
prayers and songs to future generations by means of memory
specially trained and cultivated for the purpose. But even
then how difficult the task was can be very well seen from
the fact that a greater portion of the hymns and songs
originally comprised in the Avesta has been lost; and though
the Veda is better preserved, still what we have at present is
only a portion of the literature which is believed on good
grounds to have once been in existence. It may seem pass-
ing strange that these books should disclose to us the ex-
istence of an original Arctic home so many centuries after the
traditions were incorporated into them. But the evidence in the
foregoing pages shows that it is a fact; and if so, we must
hold that the Neolithic Aryan people in Europe were not as

444 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
Prof. Max Muller thinks, progressive, but, for the time at least,
necessarily retrogressive savages working only with such residua
of the ante-diluvian civilisation as were saved from its general
wreck.*
But though the Vedic or Aryan people and their religion
and culture can thus be traced to the last inter-glacial period,
and though we know that the degree of culture attained by
the primitive Aryans was of a higher type than some scholars
seem to be willing to assign to them, yet there are many points
in the primitive Aryan history which still remain unsolved.
For instance, when and where the Aryan race was differenti-
ated from other human races, or how and where the Aryan
speech was developed, are important questions from the
anthropological point of view, but we have, at present, no
means to answer the same satisfactorily. It is quite possible
that other human races might have lived with the Aryans
in their home at this time; but the Vedic evidence is silent
on this point. The existence of the human race is traced by
geologists to the Tertiary era; and it is now geologically cer-
tain that the gigantic changes wrought on this globe by
glacial epochs were witnessed by man. But anthropology does
not supply us with any data from which we can ascertain
when, where, or how the human race came to be differenti-
ated according to colour or language. On the contrary, it is
now proved that at the earliest date at which human remains
have been found, the race was already divided into several
sharply distinguished types; and this, as observed by Laing,
leaves the question of man's ultimate origin completety open
to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists
to contend for their respective views with plausible argu-
ments and without fear of being refuted by facts.† The evid-
ence, set forth in the foregoing pages, does not enable us to

• Max Muller's Last Essays, pp. 172 ff.
  † Laing's Human Origins, pp. 404-5.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 445
solve any of these questions regarding the ultimate origin of
the human race or even of the Aryan people or their language
and religion. We have nothing in this evidence for ascert-
aining how far the existence of the Aryan race can be traced
back to pre-glacial, as distinguished from inter-glacial times;
or whether the race was descended from a single pair (mo-
nogeny) or plurality of pairs (polygeny) in the remotest ages.
The traditional evidence collected by us only warrants us in
taking back the Aryan people and their civilisation from the
Temperate zone in post-glacial to the Arctic regions in inter-
glacial times. It is true that Aryans and their culture or religion
cannot be supposed to have developed all of a sudden at the
close of the last inter-glacial period, and the ultimate origin
of both must, therefore, be placed in remote geological
times. But it is useless to speculate on this question without
further evidence, and in the present state of our knowledge
we must rest content with the result that though Aryan
race or religion can be traced to the last inter-glacial-
period yet the ultimate origin of both is still lost in geological
antiquity.
I cannot conclude this chapter without briefly examining
the bearing of our results on the views entertained by Hindu
theological scholars regarding the origin, character and autho-
rity of the Vedas. It is a question which has been dis-
cussed with more or less acuteness, subtlety, or learning ever
since the days of the Brâhmaṇas; and from a purely theologi-
cal point of view I do not think there remains anything to be
now said upon it. Again, for the purposes of scientific investi-
gation, it is necessary to keep he theological and the antiqua-
rian aspect of the question quite distinct from each other. Yet
when our investigation, conducted on strict scientific lines, is
completed, we may usefully compare our conclusions with the
theological views and see how far they harmonise or clash
with each other. In fact no Hindu who reads a book like the

446 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
present, can avoid making such a comparison ; and we shall
be lightening his task by inserting in this place a few remarks
on this subject. According to the view held by Hindu theo-
logians, the Vedas are eternal (nitya), without a beginning
(anâdi), and also not created by a human author (a-pauru-
sheya); and we are told that these attributes have been predi-
cated of our sacred books from the most ancient times known
to our divines or philosophers. The whole of the third Volume
of Dr. Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts is devoted to the
discussion of this subject, a number of original passages and
arguments bearing on which are there collected, including
Sâyaṇa's lucid summary in the introduction to his commen-
tary on the Ṛig-Veda ; and more recently the late Mahâ-
mahopâdhyâya Râjârâma Shâstri Bodas, the editor of the
Bombay edition of the Ṛig-Veda, has done the same in a
Sanskrit pamphlet, the second edition of which is now pub-
lished by his son, Mr. M. R. Bodas, of the Bombay High Court
Bar. I shall, therefore, give in this place only a summary of
the different views of Hindu theologians, without entering into
the details of the controversy which can be studied from
the above books. The question before us is whether the Vedic
hymns, that is, not only the words of the hymns but also the
religious system found or referred to therein, are the composi-
tions of the Ṛiṣhis to whom they are assigned in the Anu-
kramaṇikâs, or the ancient Indexes of the Veda, in the sense
in which the Shâkuntala is a composition of Kâlidâsa ; or
whether these hymns existed from times immemorial, in other
words, whether they are eternal and without a beginning. The
hymns themselves are naturally the best evidence on the
point. But, as shewn by Dr. Muir in the second chapter
(pp. 218–86) of the Volume above mentioned, the utterances of
the Vedic Ṛiṣhis on this point are not unanimous. Thus side
by side with passages in which the Vedic bards have express-
ed their emotions, hopes or fears, or prayed for worldly comforts

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 447
and victory over their enemies, condemning evil practices like
gambling with dice (X, 34), or have described events, which on
their face seem to be the events of the day; side by side with
passages where the poet says that he has made (kṛi), generated
(jan), or fabricated (taksh) a new (navyasî or apūrvya) hymn,
much in the same way as a carpenter fashions a chariot (I, 47,
2; 62, 13; II, 19, 8; IV, 16, 20; VIII, 95, 5; X, 23, 6; 39,
14; 54, 6; 160, 5; &c.); or with hymns in which we are plainly
told that they are composed by so and so, the son of so and so,
(I, 60, 5; X, 63, 17; 67, 1; &c.), there are to be found in
the Ṛig-Veda itself an equally large number of hymns where the
Ṛiṣhis state in unmistakable terms that the hymns sung by them
were the results of inspiration from Indra, Varuṇa, Soma, Aditi,
or some other deity; or that the Vedic verses (ṛichaḥ) directly
emanated from the Supreme Puruṣha, or some other divine
source; or that they were given by gods (devatta), or generated
by them and only seen or perceived (pashyat) by the poets in
later times, (I, 37, 4; II, 23, 2; VII, 66, 11; VIII, 59, 6; X, 72,
1; 58, 8; 90, 9; &c.). We are also told that Vâch (Speech)
is nityâ or eternal (VIII, 75, 6, also cf. X, 125); or that the gods
generated the divine Vâch and also the hymns (VIII, 100, 11;
101, 16; X, 88, 8). The evidence of the Vedic hymns does not,
therefore, enable us to decide the question one way or the
other; but if the composition of the hymns is once ascribed to
human effort, and once to divine inspiration or to the gods di-
rectly, it is clear that at least some of these old Ṛiṣhis believed the
hymns to have been sung under inspiration or generated directly
by the goddess of speech or other deities. We may reconcile
the former of these views with the passages where the hymns are
said to be made by human effort, on the supposition that the poets
who sang the hymns believed themselves to be acting under divine
inspiration. But the explanation fails to account for the statement

448 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
that the Ṛik, the Yajus, and the Sâman, all emanated from the
Supreme Puruṣha or the gods ; and we must, therefore, conclude
that the tradition about the eternity of the Vedas, or their divine
origin is as old as the Veda itself. Accordingly, when we come
to the Brâhmaṇas and the Upaniṣhads, we naturally find the
same view prevailing. They tell us that the Ṛig-Veda pro-
ceeded from Agni (fire), the Yajur-Veda from Vâyu (wind), and
the Sâma-Veda from Sûrya (the sun), and that these three
deities got their warmth from Prajâpati who practised tapas
for the purpose, (Shat. Brâh, XI, 5, 8, 1 ff; Ait, Brâh. V,
32-34; Chhân. Up. IV, 17, 1); or that the Vedas are the
breathings of the Supreme Being (Bṛih. Up. II, 4, 10); or
that Prajâpati by means of the eternal Vâch created the Vedas
and everything else in this world ; and the same view is met
with in the Smṛitis like those of Manu (I, 21-23) and others, or
in the Purâṇas, several extracts from which are given by Dr.
Muir in the volume above referred to. It is admitted that the
Vedas, with other things, are destroyed, at the end of a Kalpa,
by the deluge (pralaya) which overtakes the world at the time.
But we are told that this does not affect the question of the
eternity of the new Kalpa by Brahmâ himself after the grand
deluge, and by the Ṛiṣhis, who survive, after minor deluges.
The authority generally quoted in support of this view
is a verse from the Mahâbhârata (Shânti-Parvan, Chap.
210, v. 19) which says, "The great Ṛiṣhis, empowered by
Svayambhû (the self-born), formerly obtained, through tapas
(religious austerity), the Vedas and the Itihâsas, which
had disappeared at the end of the (preceding) Yuga."*
The Ṛiṣhis are, therefore, called the seers and not

• The verse is as follows:— युगान्तेऽन्तर्हितान् वेदान् सेतिहासान् म-
  हर्षयः । लेभिरे तपसा पूर्वमनुज्ञाता स्वयंभुवा ॥ Bhavabhûti, Utt, 1, 15,
  similarly says in another connection:— ब्रह्मर्षयो ब्रह्महिताय तप्त्वा । परः
  सहस्राः शरदस्तपांसि ॥ एतान्यपश्यन् गुरवः पुराणाः । स्वाम्येव तेजांसि तपो-
  मयानि ॥ Also Cf. Ṛig. VIII, 59, 6, quoted infra.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 449
the makers of the Vedic hymns; and the personal designa-
tion of some Shâkhâs, branches or recensions of Vedas, as
Taittirîya, Kâṭhaka, &c., as well as the statements in the Vedic
hymns, which say that so and so has made or generated such
and such a hymn, are understood to mean that the particu-
lar Shâkhâ or hymn was perceived, and only perceived, by
the particular Ṛiṣhi or poet. It is not, however, till we come
to the works of the authors and expositors of the different
schools of Hindu philosophy (darshanas) that we find the
doctrine of the eternity of the Vedas subjected to a searching
examination; and, as remarked by Dr. Muir, one who reads
the discussions of these writers cannot fail to be struck "with
the acuteness of their reasoning, the logical precision with
which their arguments are presented, and the occasional live-
liness and ingenuity of their illustrations."* They all bear wit-
ness to the fact that so far as tradition went,—an unbroken
tradition of great antiquity,—there was no remembrance of
the Vedas having been ever composed by or ascribed to any
human author; and taking into consideration the learning and
the piety of these scholars, their testimony must be regarded
as an unimpeachable proof of the existence of such a tradition,
which was considered ancient several centuries before the
Christian era. But though a tradition whose high antiquity can
be so well established deserves to be seriously considered in
our investigations regarding the character of the Vedas, yet
it is, after all, a negative proof, showing, it may be urged,
nothing more than no human author of the Veda has been
known from times beyond the memory of all these ancient
scholars. Jaimini, the author of Mimâmsâ Sutras, therefore,
further deduces (I, 1, 5) the eternity of the Vedas from the re-
lation or connection between words and their meanings, which
he holds to be eternal (autpattika) and not conventional. 'A
word is defined to be an aggregate of letters in a particular

• Muir, O. S. T., Vol. III, p. 58.
  29

450 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.

order, and its sense is said to be conveyed by these letters fol-
lowing each other in a definite succession. But Grammarians
are not satisfied with this view, and maintain that the sense of
a word is not expressed by the aggregate of its constituent
letters which are transient, but by a certain super-sensuous-
entity, called sphoṭa (i. e., manifester, from sphuṭ), which su-
pervenes the aggregate of the letters as soon as they are pro-
nounced, and reveals their meaning. Jaimini denies that there
are words in the Vedas which denote any transient objects, and
as the Vedic words and their sense are eternal, it follows, ac-
cording to him, that the Vedas are self-demonstrative, or that
they shine, like the sun, by their own light, and are, therefore
perfect and infallible. If particular parts of the Vedas are
designated after some Ṛiṣhis, it does not, we are told, prove
those sages to have been their authors, but merely the teachers
who studied and handed them down. Bâdarâyaṇa, as inter-
preted by Shaṅkarâchârya (I, 3, 26–33), the great leader of the
Vedânta School, accepts the doctrine of the eternity of sound
or words, but adds that it is the species to which the word be-
longs, and not the word itself, that is eternal or indestruct-
ible, and, therefore, though the names of deities, like Indra
and others, which are all created and hence liable to destruc-
tion, are mentioned in the Veda, it does not affect the question
of its eternity as the species to which Indra and others are said
to belong is still eternal. In short, Vedic names and forms of
species are eternal, and it is by remembering these that the
world is created by Brahmâ at the beginning of each Kalpa,
(Maitr. Up., VI, 22). The Veda is, therefore, the original
WORD the source from which every thing else in the world
emanated, and as such it cannot but be eternal; and it is
interesting, as pointed out by Prof. Max Muller in his Lectures
on Vedânta Philosophy, to compare this doctrine with that of
Divine Logos of the Alexandrian Schools in the West. The
Naiyâyikas, on the other hand, deny the doctrine of the

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 451
eternity of sound or word, but hold that the authority of the
Vedas is established by the fact of their having emanated
from competent (ápta) persons who had an intuitive percep-
tion of duty (sâkshâtkṛita dharmâṇaḥ, as Yâska puts it), and
whose competence is fully proved by the efficacy of such
of the Vedic injunctions as relate to mundane matters, and
can, therefore, be tested by experience; while the author of
the Vaisheṣhika Sûtras clearly refers (I, 1, 3) the Veda. to
Îshvara or God as its framer. The Sâṅkhyas (Sâṅkhya Sû-
tras, V, 40-51) agree with the Naiyâyikas in rejecting the
doctrine of the eternity of the connection of a word with its
meaning; and though they regard the Veda as paurusheya
in the sense that it emanated from the Primeval Purusha, yet
they maintain that it was not the result of a conscious effort
on the part of this Purusha, but only an unconscious emanation
from him like his breathing. According to this view the Veda
cannot be called eternal in the same sense as the Mîmâmsa-
kas have done, and, therefore, the texts which assert the eter-
nity of the Vedas, are said to refer merely to "the un-
broken continuity of the stream of homogeneous succession,"
(Veda-nityatâ-vâkyâni cha sajâtîyânupûrvî-pravâhânuchcheda-parâṇi).*
Patanjali, the great grammarian, in his gloss on Pâṇini IV, 3,
101, solves the question by making a distinction between
the language (the succession of words or letters, varṇânupûrvî, as
we find it in the present texts) of the Vedas and their
contents (artha), and observing that the question of the eter-
nity of the Vedas refers to their sense which is eternal
or permanent (artho nityaḥ), and not to the order of
their letters, which has not always remained the same
(varṇânupûrvî anityâ), and that it is through this difference

• Cf. Vedântaparibhâshâ Âgama-parichcheda, p. 55, quoted in
  Mahâmahopâdhyâya Jhalkikar's Nyâya-kosha, 2nd Ed. p. 736. s. v.
  वेदः—सर्गाद्यकाले परमेश्वरः पूर्वसर्गसिद्धवेदानुपूर्वीसमानानुपूर्वीकं वेदं विर-
  चितवान् न तु तद्विजातीयं वेदम् ।

452 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
in the latter respect that we have the different versions of Kaṭhas,
Kalâpas, Mudakas, Pippalâdas and so on. This view is
opposed to that of the Mîmâṁsakas who hold both sense and
order of words to be eternal. But Patanjali is led to reject
the doctrine of the eternity of the order of words, because in
that case we cannot account for the different versions or
Shâkhâs of the same Veda, all of which are considered to be
equally authoritative though their verbal readings are some-
times different. Patanjali, as explained by his commentators
Kaiyyaṭa and Nâgojî Bhaṭṭa, ascribes this difference in the
different versions of the Veda to the loss of the Vedic texts in
the pralayas or deluges which occasionally overtake the world,
and their reproduction or repromulgation, at the beginning of
each new age, by the sages, who survived, according to their
remembrance.* Each manvantara or age has thus a Veda of
its own which differs only in expression and not in sense from
the ante-diluvian Veda, and that different recensions of co-ordi-
nate authority of the same Veda are due to the difference in the
remembrance of the Ṛiṣhis whose names are associated with the
different Shâkhâs, and who repromulgate, at the beginning of
the new age, the knowledge inherited by them, as a sacred
trust, from their forefathers in the preceding Kalpa. This
view substantially accords with that of Vyâsa as recorded in the
verse from the Mahâbhârata quoted above. The later exposi-
tors of the different schools of philosophy have further developed
these views of the Sûtra-writers and criticised or defended the
doctrine of the self-demonstrated authority of the scriptural
texts (shabda-pramâṇa) in various ways. But we cannot

• Patanjali's words are,—ननु चोक्तं न हि च्छन्दांसि क्रियन्ते नित्यानि
  च्छन्दांसीति। यद्यप्यर्थो नित्यो या त्वसौ वर्णानुपूर्वी साऽनित्या। तद्भेदाच्चैतद्भव-
  यति काठकं कालापकं मौदकं पैप्पलादकमिति॥ Nâgojî Bhaṭṭa in his gloss
  quotes the verse— प्रतिमन्वन्तरं चैषा श्रुतिरन्याऽभिधीयते; and observes that
  धाता यथापूर्वमकल्पयत् (Rig. X, 190, 3) does not require us to assume that
  the order of words was the same in the new Kalpa. See Muir O. S. T.,
  Vol. III, pp. 96-97.

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 453
go into their elaborate discussions in this place; nor is it
necessary to do so, for eventually we have to fall back upon the
view of Vyâsa and Patanjali, mentioned above, if the destruction
of the Vedas during each pralaya, and its repromulgation at the
commencement of the new age is admitted.
Such, in brief, are the views entertained by Hindu ortho-
dox theologians, scholars and philosophers in regard to the
origin, character and authority of the Vedas; and on compar-
ing them with the results of our investigation, it will be found
that Patanjali's and Vyâsa's view about the antiquity and the
eternity of the Vedas derives material support from the theory
of the Arctic home which we have endeavoured to prove in
the foregoing pages on strict scientific and historical grounds.
It has been shown that Vedic religion and worship are both
inter-glacial; and that though we cannot trace their ultimate
origin, yet the Arctic character of the Vedic deities fully
proves that the powers of Nature represented by them had
been already clothed with divine attributes by the primitive
Aryans in their original home round about the North Pole, or
the Meru of the Purâṇas. When the Polar home was destroy-
ed by glaciation, the Aryan people that survived the catastrophe
carried with them as much of their religion and worship as
it was possible to do under the circumstances; and the
relic, thus saved from the general wreck, was the basis of the
Aryan religion in the post-Glacial age. The whole period
from the commencement of the post-Glacial era to the birth of
Buddha may, on this theory, be approximately divided into four
parts :—
10000 or 8000 B. C.—The destruction of the original Arctic
home by the last Ice Age and the commencement of the
post-Glacial period.
8000-5000 B. C.—The age of migration from the original
home. The survivors of the Aryan race roamed over the
northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands

454 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
suitable for new settlements. The vernal equinox was
then in the constellation of Punarvasû, and as Aditi is the
presiding deity of Punarvasû, according to the termino-
logy adopted by me in Orion, this may, therefore, be call-
ed the Aditi or the Pre-Orion Period.
5000-3000 B. C.—The Orion Period, when the vernal equi-
nox was in Orion. Many Vedic hymns can be traced to
the early part of this period and the bards of the race
seem to have not yet forgotten the real import or signi-
ficance of the traditions of the Arctic home inherited by
them. It was at this time that first attempts to reform
the calendar and the sacrificial system appear to have been
systematically made.
3000-1400 B. C.—The Kṛittikâ Period, when the vernal
equinox was in Pleiades. The Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and
the Brâhmaṇas, which begin the series of nakshatras with
the Kṛittikâs, are evidently the productions of this period.
The compilation of the hymns into Saṁhitâ's also appears
to be a work of the early part of this period. The tradi-
tions about the original Arctic home had grown dim by
this time and very often misunderstood, making the
Vedic hymns more and more unintelligible. The
sacrificial system and the numerous details thereof found
in the Brâhmaṇas seem to have been developed during
this time. It was at the end of this Period that the
Vedâṅga-jyotisha was originally composed, or at any rate
the position of the equinoxes mentioned therein observed
and ascertained.
1400-500 B. C.—The Pre-Buddhistic Period, when the
Sûtras and the Philosophical systems made their ap-
pearance.
These periods differ slightly from those mentioned by me
in Orion; but the change is needed in consequence of the
theory of the Arctic home which carries back the beginning of

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE. AND RELIGION. 455
the Pre-Orion or the Aditi Period to the commencement of
the present post-Glacial era. In the language of the Purâṇas
the first period after the close of the Ice Age (8000-5000 B. C,)
may be called the Kṛita Yuga, or the age of wandering, as the
Aitareya Brâhmaṇa (VII, 15) describes it to be. It was the
period when the Aryan races, expatriated from their mother
land, roamed over the northern parts of Europe and Asia in
search of new homes. It is doubtful if the Brâhmaṇa meant as
much when it described Kṛita to be the age of wandering.
But nevertheless it is interesting to notice the new light thrown
upon the characteristics of the four Yugas mentioned in the
Brâhmaṇa. Thus we are told that "Kali is lying, Dvâpara is slow-
ly moving, Tretâ is standing up, and Kṛita is wandering."* Dr.
Haug understands this stanza to refer to the game of dice, and
other scholars have proposed different interpretations. But in
the light of the Arctic theory we may as well suppose that the
different stages of life through which the Aryan races had to
pass in post-Glacial times, from wandering in search of homes
to final settlement in some lands of their choice, are here des-
cribed, somewhat after the manner of the Avestic account of
the sixteen ancient lands created by Ahura Mazda, and invaded
in succession by Angra Mainyu. But even apart from this
verse, we can very well see that during the first of the above
periods the Aryan races had no fixed home, and many must
have been the settlements made and abandoned by them before
they permanently settled in congenial lands. I have already
stated above that Aryan religion and worship are both inter-
glacial ; and that Vedic religion and ritual is a post-Glacial deve-
lopment of such relics of the ancient religion as were preserved
from the general wreck caused by the Ice Age ; and this affords
in my opinion a safe basis to compare our results with the

• Ait. Brâh. VII, 15. — कलिः शयानो भवति संजिहानस्तु द्वापरः ।
  उत्तिष्ठंस्त्रेता भवति कृतं संपद्यते चरन् ॥

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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 457
preserved in the form of traditions by the disciplined
memory of the Ṛishis until it was incorporated first into crude
as contrasted with the polished hyms (su-uktas) of the Ṛig-Veda
in the Orion period, to be collected later on in Maṇḍalas and
finally into Saṁhitâs; and that the subject matter of these
hymns is inter-glacial, though its ultimate origin is still lost in
geological antiquity. Without mixing up the theological and
historical views we may, therefore, now state the two in parallel
columns as follows :—
Theological view. Historical view.

1. The Vedas are eternal 1. The Vedic or the Aryan
   (nitya), beginning-less (anâ- religion can be proved to be
   di), and not made by man inter-glacial; but its ultimate
   (a-paurusheya). origin is still lost in geological
   antiquity.
2. The Vedas were destroy- 2. Aryan religion and cul-
   ed in the deluge, at the end ture were destroyed during the
   of the last Kalpa. last Glacial period that in-
   vaded the Arctic Aryan home.
3. At the beginning of the 3. The Vedic hymns were
   present Kalpa, the Ṛiṣhis, sung in post-Glacial times by
   through tapas, reproduced in poets, who had inherited the
   substance, if not in form, the knowledge or contents there-
   ante-diluvian Vedas, which of in an unbroken tradition
   they carried in their memory from their ante-diluvian fore-
   by the favour of god. fathers.
   On a comparison of the two columns it will be found that
   the tradition about the destruction and the reproduction of the
   Vedas, recorded by Vyâsa in the Mahâbhârata verse referred
   to above, must be taken to have been founded substantially on a
   historical fact. It is true that according to the Purâṇic
   chronology the beginning of the current Kalpa is placed
   several thousands of years before the present time;
   but if, according to the estimates of some modern geologists,

458 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
the post-Glacial period is, even now, said to have com-
menced some 80,000 years ago, if not earlier, we need not be
much surprised at the Purâṇic estimate, especially when, as
stated above, it is found to disclose a real tradition of 10,000
years assigned to a cycle of the four yugas, the first of which
began with the new Kalpa, or, in the language of geology,
with the present post-Glacial period. Another point wherein
the two views may be said to differ is the beginning-less-ness
(anâditva) of the Vedas. It is impossible to demonstrate histori-
cally or scientifically that Vedic religion and worship is
absolutely without a beginning. All that we can say is that its
beginning is lost in geological antiquity, or that the Vedic religion
is as old as the Aryan language or the Aryan man himself. If
theologians are not satisfied with the support which this scienti-
fic view accords to their theory about the eternity of the
Vedas, the scientific and the theological views must stand,
as they are, distinct from each other, for the two methods of
investigation are essentially different. It is for this reason
that I have stated the views in parallel columns for comparison
without mixing them up. Whether the world was produced
from the original WORD, or the Divine Logos, is a question
which does not fall within the pale of historical investiga-
tion; and any conclusions based upon it or similar other
doctrines cannot, therefore, be treated in this place. We may,
however, still assert that for all practical purposes the Vedic
religion can be shown to be beginning-less even on strict scienti-
fic grounds.
A careful examination of the Ṛig-Vedic hymns will show
that the Vedic Ṛishis were themselves conscious of the fact
that the subject matter of the hymns sung by them was ancient
or ante-diluvian in character, though the expressions used
were their own productions. We have already referred
before to the two sets of Vedic passages, the first expressly
saying that the hymns were made, generated or fashioned like