The Arctic Home in the Vedas c12.4

c12.4

But the evidence, which I am now going to cite in support of the Arctic theory, is of a different character. If the ancestors of the Vedic bards ever lived near the North Pole, the cosmical or the meteorological conditions of the place could not have failed to influence the mythology of these people; and if our theory is true, a careful examination of the Vedic myths ought to disclose facts, which cannot be accounted for by any other theory. The probative value of such evidence will manifestly be inferior to that of the direct evidence previously cited, for myths and legends are variously explained by different scholars. Thus Yâska mentions three or four different schools of interpretation, each of which tries to explain the nature and character of the Vedic deities in a different way. One of these schools would have us believe that many of the deities were real historical personages, who were subsequently apotheosized for their supernatural virtues or exploits. Other theologians divide the deities into Karma-devatâs or those that have been raised to the divine rank by their own deeds, and Âjânadevatâs or those that were divine by birth; while the Nairuktas (or the etymologists) maintain that the Vedic deities represent certain cosmical and physical phenomena such as the appearance of the dawn or the breaking up of the storm-clouds by the lightning. The Adhyâtmikas, on the other hand, try to explain certain Vedic passages in their own philosophical way; and there are others, who endeavour to explain Vedic myths in other different ways. But this is not the place where the relative merits of these different schools can be discussed or examined. I only wish to point out that those, who explain the Vedic myths on the supposition that they represent, directly or allegorically, ethical, historical or philosophical facts, are not likely to accept any inference based upon the theory which interprets the Vedic myths as referring to certain cosmical and physical phenomena. It was for this reason that I reserved the discussion of the mythological evidence for consideration in a separate chapter, after all the evidence directly bearing on the subject has been examined. The evidence, which proves the existence of a long continuous dawn, or a long continuous day or night, is not affected by the different theories regarding the interpretation of the Vedic myths, and may, therefore, be termed, what the lawyers call, *direct*; but in the case of the mythological evidence only those, who accept the Nairukta method of interpretation, will admit the validity of any inference based upon the consideration of these myths. It is true that the Nairukta school of interpretation dates from ancient times, and that modern scholars have accepted the method almost without reserve, though they might differ from the ancient Nairuktas, like Yâska, in the details of the explanation suggested by them. But still when a new theory is to be established, I thought it safer to separate the mythological from the direct evidence bearing on the points at issue, even when the two lines of investigation seemed to converge towards the same point.