The Arctic Home in the Vedas c15.36

Language: English

c15.36.1

I have very little to add to the views expressed in the above passages; in fact Prof. Rhys has left us little to be done so far as Celtic and Teutonic myths are concerned. The way in which he proceeds to analyze the legends and show that they all point to a primeval home in the Arctic regions is at once interesting and instructive. He first clears the ground by ascribing the different prophecies occurring in the legends not to any fore-knowledge on the part of the poet, but to the simple fact that the events spoken of were of annual occurrence, and as they were known to recur regularly it was not difficult to adopt the language of prophecy and predict the happening of these events in future. He then collects a number of facts which go to prove that gods and heroes were afflicted with some disability or distress at certain intervals of time, which rendered them incapable to carry on the annual struggle with the powers of evil and darkness. The only physical phenomena corresponding to such distress of the solar hero, or the sun, are his daily setting, the decay of his powers in winter and his disappearing below the horizon for some months in the Polar regions. As the struggle between the Sun-god and his enemies is, as stated above, determined to be annual, the daily setting of the sun does not come within the range of the possible explanations of the temporary distress of the sun-god.

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Out of the two remaining physical phenomena, the decay of sun’s power in winter would have answered the purpose, had there been no legends or myths which indicated the cessation of the vicissitude of day and night for some time. I have pointed out before how Prof. Max-Muller, who has followed the same method of interpretation tion in his discussion of the achievements of the Ashvins, has failed to grasp the real meaning of the Ashvins' legends by disregarding the statements which distinctly speak of the proteges of the Ashvins as dwelling or labouring in darkness. Prof. Rhys is more cautious in this respect, and is anxious to account for all the incidents in the legends if they could possibly be accounted for on any theory. The result is that he has been gradually led, or we might even say forced, to adopt the theory of the ancient Arctic home of the Aryan people inasmuch as all the different incidents in the legends under consideration can be accounted for only by this theory. In short, Prof. Rhys has done for the Celtic and Teutonic myths what we have endeavoured to do in this book in regard to the Vedic and Avestic traditions. This has considerably lightened our labour in regard to the examination of Celtic and Teutonic myths from our point of view, and our thanks are due to Prof. Rhys for the same.

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But we feel sure that if the Vedic evidence and facts stated and discussed in the foregoing chapters had been known to the learned Professor before he wrote his work, he would have expressed himself still more confidently regarding the inference to be drawn from the traces of Arctic origin discernible in Teutonic myths; but even as it is, the value of his testimony stands very high in the decision of the question before us. It is the testimony of an expert given after a critical and careful examination of all Celtic and Teutonic myths, and after comparing them with similar Greek traditions; and when this testimony falls in so completely with the conclusions we have drawn from an independent consideration of the Vedic and Avestic myths, our results may, so to say, be regarded as doubly proved. It has already been shown that the results of comparative philology also support, or, at any rate, are not inconsistent with our conclusions. The theory of the Asiatic home may be said to have been now abandoned on linguistic or etymological grounds, but it has not yet been proved that the neolithic Aryan races of Europe were autochthonous 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 evidence before us. Prof.

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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 whether the home of other nations, beside the Aryan, can be traced to the North Pole, has been ably discussed by Dr. Warren on his *Paradise Found, or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole*. It is an important question from an anthropological 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 sections, 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 original 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.

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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 ce and snow of the Glacial period. The Vedic and the Avestic passages, quoted in the previous chapters, directly point to such a home in primeval times, and we now see that the testimony 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 conclusion 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 misinterpreted or mis-understood.