The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.4

c16.4

But our conclusions do not rest merely on the interpretation of passages which, if rightly construed, disclose climatic characteristics peculiar to the Arctic regions; though this evidence is, by itself, sufficient to prove our hypothesis. We have seen that in the sacrificial literature of the Vedic people as well as in their mythology there are many indications which point to the same conclusion; and these are fully corroborated by the ancient traditions and legends in the Avesta and also by the mythologies of the European branches of the Aryan race. A sacrificial session of ten months held by the Dashagvas, or an annual sattra of the same duration, compared with the oldest Roman year ending in December or the tenth month, are the principal instances on the point; and they have been fully discussed in the foregoing chapters. I have also shown that the knowledge of the half-year-long day or night is not confined to the traditions of the eastern Aryas, but is common also to the European branches of the Aryan race. The tradition preserved in the Vendidad about the ancient Iranian Paradise in the far north, so that a year was equal to a day to the inhabitants thereof, and its destruction by snow and ice burying the land under a thick ice-cap, again affords the most striking and cogent proof of the theory we have endeavoured to prove in these pages. Thus if the traditions of the western Aryas point out, according to Prof. Rhys, to Finland or the White Sea as the original home of the Aryan people, the Vedic and the Avestic traditions carry us still farther to the north; for a continuous dawn of thirty days is possible only within a few degrees of the North Pole. But though the latitude of the original home can be thus ascertained more or less definitely, yet there is unfortunately nothing in these traditions which will enable us to determine the longitude of the place, or, in other words, whether the original home of the Aryan race was to the north of Europe or Asia. But considering the fact that the traditions of the original Polar home are better preserved in the sacred books of the Brahmins and the Parsis, it is not unlikely that the primeval home was located to the north of Siberia rather than to the north of Russia or Scandinavia. It is, however, useless to speculate on the point without further proof. The Vedic and the Avestic evidence clearly establish the existence of a primeval Polar home, the climate of which was mild and temperate in ancient times, before it was invaded by the Glacial epoch; and with this result we must rest content, until we get sufficient new materials to ascertain the exact position of the Aryan home within the Arctic regions.