The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.3

c16.3

WE have now completed our investigation of the question of the original home of the ancestors of the Vedic Aryans from different stand-points of view. Our arguments, it will be seen, are not based on the history of culture, or on facts disclosed by linguistic palæontology. The evidence, cited in the foregoing chapters, mainly consists of direct passages from the Vedas and the Avesta, proving unmistakably that the poets of the Rig-Veda were acquainted with the climatic conditions witnessible only in the Arctic regions, and that the principal Vedic deities, such as the revolving Dawn, the Waters captivated by Vritra, the Ashvins the rescuers of the afflicted gods and Sûrya, Indra the deity of a hundred sacrifices, Vishnu the vast-strider, Varuna the lord of night and the ocean, the Âditya brothers or the seven monthly sun-gods, Trita or the Third, and others, are clothed with attributes which clearly betray their Arctic origin. In other words, all the *differentiæ*, mentioned in the third chapter as characteristic of the Polar and Circum-Polar regions, are met with in the Rig-Veda in such a way as to leave no doubt regarding the conclusion to be drawn from them. A day or a night of six months, and a long continuous dawn of several days' duration with its revolving splendours, not to mention the unusually long Arctic day and night or a year of less than twelve months' sunshine, were all known to the Vedic bards, and have been described by them not mythologically or metaphorically but directly in plain and simple words, which, though misinterpreted so long, can, in the light thrown upon the question by recent scientific researches, be now rightly read and understood. In fact the task, which I set to myself, was to find out such passages, and show how in the absence of the true key to their meaning, they have been subjected to forced construction, or ignored and neglected, by Vedic scholars both Indian and foreign, ancient and modern. I do not mean, however, to underrate, on that account, the value or the importance of the labours of Indian Nairuktas like Yâska, or commentators like Sâyaṇa. Without their aid we should have, it is readily admitted, been able to do little in the field of the Vedic interpretation; and I am fully aware of the service they have rendered to this cause. There is no question that they have done their best in elucidating the meaning of our sacred books; and their claims on the grateful remembrance of their services by future generations of scholars will ever remain unchallenged. But if the Vedas are really the oldest records of our race, who can deny that in the light of the advancing knowledge regarding primitive humanity, we may still discover in these ancient records facts and statements which may have escaped the attention of older scholars owing to the imperfect nature, in their days, of those sciences which are calculated to throw further light on the habits and environments of the oldest ancestors of our race? There is, therefore, nothing strange if some of the passages in the Rig-Veda and the Avesta disclose to us ideas which the ancient commentators could not and did not perceive in them; and I would request the reader to bear this in mind in comparing the interpretations and explanations proposed by me in the foregoing chapters with the current interpretations of these passages by eastern or western Vedic scholars.