The Arctic Home in the Vedas c14.s2.11

c14.s2.11

We may here refer to certain passages cited by Muir in his Original Sanskrit Texts (3rd Ed. Vol. II. pp 322-329) to show that the reminiscences of the northern home have been preserved in the Indian literature. He first refers to the expression shatam himâḥ, or ‘a hundred winters,’ occurring in several places in the Rig-Veda (I, 64, 14; II, 33, 2; V, 54, 15; VI, 48, 8), and remarks that though the expression sharadaḥ shatam, or ‘a hundred autumns,’ also occurs in the Rig-Veda (II, 27, 10; VII, 66, 16), yet shatam himâḥ may be regarded as a relic of the period when the recollection of the colder regions from which the Vedic Aryas migrated had not yet been entirely forgotten. The second passage quoted by him is from the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa (VIII, 14) which says "wherefore in this northern region all the people who dwell beyond the Himavat, (called) the Uttara Kurus and the Uttara Madras are consecrated to the glorious rule (Vairâjyam)." The Uttara Kurus are again described in the same Brâhmaṇa (VIII, 23) as the land of gods which no mortal may conquer, showing that the country had come to be regarded as the domain of mythology. The Uttara Kurus are also mentioned in the Râmâyaṇa (IV, 43, 38) as the abode of those who performed the meritorious works, and in the Mahâbhârata (Sabhâ-Parvan, Ch. 28) Arjuna is told "Here are the Uttara Kurus whom no one attempts to combat." That the Uttara Kurus were not a fabulous land is shown by the fact that a mountain, a people and a city called Ottorocorra is mentioned by Ptolemy, and Lassen thinks that Megasthenes had the Uttara Kurus in view when he referred to the Hyperboreans. Muir concludes this section with a passage from the Sânkhyâyana or the Kaushîtakî Brâhmaṇa (VII, 6) where Pathyâ Svasti, or the goddess of speech, is said to know the northern region (udîchîm disham), and we are told that "Hence in the northern region speech is better known and better spoken, and it is to the north that men go to learn speech." Muir thinks that some faint reminiscence of an early conncetion with the north may be traced in these passages. But none of them are conclusive, nor have we any indication therein of the original home being in the Arctic regions, as we have in the case of the Vedic passages discussed previously which speak of the long, continuous dawn and night, or a year of ten months. We may, however, take the passages cited by Muir as corroborative evidence and they have been referred to here in the same light. It is upon the Vedic passages and legends examined in the previous chapters and the Avestic evidence discussed above that we mainly rely for establishing the existence of the primeval Aryan home in the Arctic regions; and when both these are taken together we get direct traditional testimony for holding that the original home of the Aryan races was situated near the North Pole and not in Central Asia, that it was destroyed by the advent of the Glacial epoch, and that the Indo-Iranians, who were compelled to leave the country, migrated southwards, and passing through several provinces of Central Asia eventually settled in the valleys of the Oxus, the Indus, the Kubhâ and the Rasâ, from which region we see them again migrating, the Indians to the east and the Persians to the west at the early dawn of the later traditional history.