The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.6

c16.6

But according to some geologists 20,000 or even 80,000 years have passed since the close of the last Glacial epoch; and as the oldest date assigned to the Vedic hymns does not go beyond 4500 B. C., it may be contended that the traditions of the Ice Age, or of the inter-glacial home, cannot be supposed to have been accurately preserved by oral transmission for thousands of years that elapsed between the commencement of the post-Glacial era and the oldest date of the Vedic hymns. It is, therefore, necessary to examine the point a little more closely in this place. In my *Orion* or *Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas*, I have shown that while the Taittirîya Samhitâ and the Brâhmanas begin the Nakshatras with the Krittikâs or the Pleiades, showing that the vernal equinox then coincided with the aforesaid asterism (2500 B. C.), the Vedic literature contains traces of Mriga or Orion being once the first of the Nakshatras and the hymns of the Rig-Veda, or at least many of them, which are undoubtedly older than the Taittirîya Samhitâ, contain reference to this period, that is, about 4500 B. C. approximately. It is also pointed out that there are faint traces of the same equinox being once in the constellation of Punarvasû, presided over by Aditi, which was possible in about 6000 B. C. I have in my later researches tried to push back this limit by searching for the older zodiacal positions of the vernal equinox in the Vedic literature, but I have not found any evidence of the same. My attention was, however, directed more and more to passages containing traces of an Arctic calendar and an Arctic home, and I have been gradually led to infer therefrom that at about 5000 or 6000 B. C., the Vedic Aryas had settled on the plains of Central Asia, and that at the time the traditions about the existence of the Arctic home and its destruction by snow and ice, as well as about the Arctic origin of the Vedic deities, were definitely known to the bards of these races. In short, researches in Vedic chronology and calendar do not warrant us in placing the advent of the last Glacial epoch, which destroyed the ancient Aryan home, at a time several thousands of years previous to the Orion period; and from what has been stated in the first two chapters of the book, it will be seen that this estimate well agrees with the conclusions of American geologists, who, from an examination of the erosion of valleys and similar other well-ascertained facts, assign to the close of the last Glacial epoch a date not older than about 8000 B. C. We might even go further and say that ancient Vedic chronology and calendar furnish an independent corroboration of the moderate view of the American geologists;