The Arctic Home in the Vedas c2.5

Language: English

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It has been already stated that the beginnings of Aryan civilisation must be supposed to date back several thousand years before the oldest Vedic period; and when the commencement of the Post-glacial epoch is brought down to 8000 B. C., it is not at all surprising if the date of primitive Aryan life is found to go back to it from 4500 B. C., the age of the oldest Vedic period. In fact, it is the main point sought to be established in the present volume. There are many passages in the Rig-Veda, which, though hitherto looked upon as obscure and unintelligible, do, when interpreted in the light of recent scientific researches, plainly disclose the Polar attributes of the Vedic deities, or the traces of an ancient Arctic calendar; while the Avesta expressly tells us that the happy land of Airyana Vaêjo, or the Aryan Paradise, was located in a region where the sun shone but once a year, and that it was destroyed by the invasion of snow and ice, which rendered its climate inclement and necessitated a migration southward. These are plain and simple statements, and when we put them side by side with what we know of the Glacial and the Post-glacial epoch from the latest geological researches, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the primitive Aryan home was both Arctic and inter-glacial. I have often asked myself, why the real bearing of these plain and simple statements should have so long remained undiscovered;

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and let me assure the reader that it was not until I was convinced that the discovery was due solely to the recent progress in our knowledge regarding the primitive history of the human race and the planet it inhabits, that I ventured to publish the present volume. Some Zend scholars have narrowly missed the truth, simply because 40 or 50 years ago they were unable to understand how a *happy* home could be located in the ice-bound regions near the North Pole. The progress of geological science in the latter half of the last century has, however, now solved the difficulty by proving that the climate at the Pole during the interglacial times was mild, and consequently not unsuited for human habitation. There is, therefore, nothing extraordinary, if it be left to us to find out the real import of these passages in the Veda and the Avesta. It is true that if the theory of an Arctic and inter-glacial primitive Aryan home is proved, many a chapter in Vedic exegetics, comparative mythology, or primitive Aryan history, will have to be revised or re-written, and in the last chapter of this book I have myself discussed a few important points which will be affected by the new theory. But as remarked by me at the end of the book, considerations like these, howsoever useful they may be in inducing caution in our investigations, ought not to deter us from accepting the results of an inquiry conducted on strictly scientific lines.

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It is very hard, I know, to give up theories upon which one has worked all his life. But, as Mr. Andrew Lang has put it, it should always be borne in mind that “Our little systems have their day, or their hour : as knowledge advances they pass into the history of the efforts of pioneers.” Nor is the theory of the Arctic home so new and startling as it appears to be at the first sight. Several scientific men have already declared their belief that the original home of man must be sought for in the Arctic regions; and Dr. Warren, the President of the Boston University, has anticipated me, to a certain extent, in his learned and suggestive work, the *Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole*, the tenth edition of which was published in America in 1893. Even on strict philological grounds the theory of a primitive Aryan home in Central Asia has been now almost abandoned in favour of North Germany or Scandinavia; while Prof. Rhys, in his *Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom*, is led to suggest “some spot within the Arctic circle” on purely mythological considerations. I go only a step further, and show that the theory, so far as the primitive Aryan home is concerned, is fully borne out by Vedic and Avestic traditions, and, what is still more important, the latest geological researches not only corroborate the Avestic description of the destruction of the Aryan Paradise, but enable us to place its existence in times before the last Glacial epoch.

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The evidence on which I rely is fully set forth in the following pages; and, though the question is thus brought for the first time within the arena of Vedic and Avestic scholarship, I trust that my critics will not prejudge me in any way, but give their judgment, not on a passage here or an argument there,—for, taken singly, it may not sometimes be found to be conclusive,—but on the whole mass of evidence collected in the book, irrespective of how far-reaching the ultimate effects of such a theory may be.