The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.23.3

c16.23.3

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 original 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 passing strange that these books should disclose to us the existence 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 Prof.