The Arctic Home in the Vedas c4.6

c4.6

The mythologists carried on their researches at a time when man was believed to be post-glacial, and when the physical and geographical surroundings of the ancient man were assumed not to have been materially different from those of the present day. All ancient myths were, therefore, interpreted on the assumption that they were formed and developed in countries, the climatic or other conditions of which varied very little, if at all, from those by which we are now surrounded. Thus every Vedic myth or legend was explained either on the Storm or the Dawn theory, though in some cases it was felt that the explanation was not at all satisfactory. Indra was only a Storm-God and Vritra the demon of drought or darkness brought on by the daily setting of the sun. This system of interpretation was first put forward by the Indian Etymologists; and though it has been improved upon by Western Vedic scholars, yet upto now it has remained practically unchanged in character. It was again believed that we must look for the original home of the Aryan race somewhere in Central Asia, and that the Vedic hymns, which were supposed to be composed after the separation of the Indian Aryans from the common stock, contained the ideas only of that branch of the Aryan race which lived in the Temperate zone. The scientific researches of the latter half of the nineteenth century have, however, given a rude shock to these theories. From hundreds of stone and bronze implements found buried in the various places in Europe the archæologists have now established the chronological sequence of the Iron, the Bronze and the Stone age in times preceding the historic period. But the most important event of the latter half of the last century, so far as it concerns our subject, was the discovery of the evidence proving the existence of the Glacial period at the close of Quarternary era, and the high antiquity of man, who was shown to have lived not only throughout the Quarternary but also in the Tertiary era, when the climatic conditions of the globe were quite different from those in the present or the Post-Glacial period. The remains of animals and men found in the Neolithic or Palæolithic strata also threw new light on the ancient races inhabiting the countries where these remains were found; and it soon became evident that the time-telescope set up by the mythologists must be adjusted to a wider range, and the results previously arrived at by the study of myths and legends must be checked in the light of the facts disclosed by these scientific discoveries. The philologists had now to be more cautious in formulating their views, and some of them soon realised the force of the arguments advanced on the strength of these scientific discoveries. The works of German scholars, like Posche and Penka, freely challenged the Asiatic theory regarding the original home of the Aryan race, and it is now generally recognised that we must give up that theory and seek for the original home of the Aryans somewhere else in the further north. Canon Taylor in his *Origin of the Aryans* has summed up the work done during the last few years in this direction. “It was” he says “mainly a destructive work,” and concludes his book with the observation that “the whilom tyranny of the Sanskritists is happily overpast, and it is seen that hasty philological deductions require to be systematically checked by the conclusions of prehistoric archæology, craniology, anthropology, geology, and common-sense.” Had the remark not been used as a peroration at the end of the book, it would certainly be open to the objection that it unnecessarily deprecates the labours of the comparative mythologists and philologists. In every department of human knowledge old conclusions have always to be revised in the light of new discoveries, but for that reason it would never be just to find fault with those whose lot it was to work earlier in the same field with scanty and insufficient materials.