The Arctic Home in the Vedas c14.s2.3.3

c14.s2.3.3

Darmesteter in his translation of the Fargards observes in a footnote that the account of glaciation is the result of a mythical misunderstanding by which winter was thought to be the counter-creation of Irân Vêj. This passed off very well twenty years ago; but the phenomenon of glaciation in the Ice-age is now better understood, and we cannot accept guesses and conjectures of scholars regarding the meaning of a passage in the Avesta which describes the glaciation of the Iranian paradise. It only proves how the ancient records, howsoever express and distinct they may be, are apt to be misunderstood and misinterpreted owing to our imperfect knowledge of the climatic or other conditions or surroundings amongst which the ancestors of our race lived in remote ages. But for such a misunderstanding, it was not difficult to perceive that the Airyana Vaêjo, or the original home of the Airyan race, was situated near the North Pole, and that the ancestors of our race abandoned it not out of "irresistible impulse," or "overcrowding," but simply because it was ruined by the invasion of snow and ice brought on by the Glacial epoch. In short, the Avestic tradition, as recorded in this Fargard, is the oldest documentary evidence of the great climatic convulsion, which took place several hundreds of years ago, and the scientific evidence of which was discovered only during the last forty or fifty years.