386 antiquity — Theological views regarding the origin and character of the Vedas summarized — Differently supported by writers on the different schools of philosophy — Patanjali’s and Vyâsa’s view that the Vedas were lost in the last deluge and repromulgated in substance, if not in form, at the beginning of the new age — The four periods into which the Post-Glacial era may be divided on astronomical grounds — Compared with the characteristics of the four yugas given in the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa — Theological and historical views regarding the origin &c. of the Vedas stated in parallel columns and compared — Vedic texts, showing that the subject matter of the hymns is ancient though the language may be new, cited — Vedic deities and their exploits all said to be ancient — Improbability of Dr. Muir’s suggested reconciliation — Vedas, or rather Vedic religion, shown to be inter-Glacial in substance though post-Glacial in form — Concluding remarks. 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 paleontology. 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 Ṛig-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 Vṛitra, the Ashvins the rescuers of the afflicted gods and Sûrya, Indra the deity of a hundred sacrifices, Vishnu the vast-strider, Varuṇa the lord of night and the ocean, the Âditya brothers or the seven monthly sun-gods, Tṛita or the Third, and others, are clothed with attributes which clearly betray their Arctic origin. In other words, all the differential, mentioned in the third chapter as characteristic of the Polar and Circum-Polar regions, are met with in the Ṛig-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 splendors, 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

387 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 labors 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 Ṛig-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. 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

388 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 endeavored 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

389 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. We commenced the book with a summary of the results of the latest geological and archeological researches regarding the history of primitive humanity and the invasion of northern Europe and Asia by a series of glacial epochs in the Quarternary era. This discussion was prefixed to the book with the object of clearing up certain misapprehensions regarding the early history of our planet based on knowledge derived from older geological works, when man was believed to be postglacial; and it will now be seen that our theory of the primeval Arctic home of the Aryan races is in perfect accord with the latest and most approved geological facts and opinions. A primeval Arctic home would have been regarded an impossibility, had not science cleared the ground by establishing that the antiquity of man goes back to the Tertiary era, that the climate of the Polar regions was mild and temperate in inter-glacial times, and that it was rendered cold and inclement by the advent of the Glacial epoch. We can now also understand why attempts to prove the existence of an Arctic home by discovering references to severe winter and cold in the Vedas did not succeed in the past. The winter in the primeval home was originally, that is, in inter-glacial times, neither severe nor inclement, and if such expressions as “a hundred winters” (shatam himâḥ) are found in the Vedic literature, they cannot be taken for reminiscences of severe cold winters in the original home; for the expression came into use probably because the year in the original home closed with a winter characterized by the long Arctic night. It was the advent of the Ice Age that destroyed the mild climate of the original home and converted it into an ice-bound land unfit for the habitation of man. This is well expressed in the Avesta which describes the Airyana Vaêjo as a happy land subsequently converted by the invasion of Angra Mainyu into a land of severe winter and snow. This correspondence between

390 the Avestic description of the original home and the result of the latest geological researches, at once enables us to, fix the age of the Arctic home, for it is now a well-settled scientific fact that a mild climate in the Polar regions was possible only in the inter-Glacial and not in the post-Glacial times. 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 Saṁhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas begin the Nakṣhatras with the Kṛittikâs or the Pleiades, showing that the vernal equinox then coincided with the aforesaid asterism (2500 B.C.), the Vedic literature contains traces of Mṛiga or Orion being once the first of the Nakṣhatras and the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda, or at least many of them, which are undoubtedly older than the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ, 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 6,000 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 raditions about the existence of the Arctic hone and its destruction

391 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; and when two independent lines of research unexpectedly lead us to the same result, we may very well reject, at least in the present state of our knowledge, the extravagant speculations of Croll and his followers, and, for all practical purposes, adopt the view that the last Glacial epoch closed and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8000 B.C. From this to the Orion period is an interval of about 3000 years, and it is not at all improbable that the traditions of the ancient home should have been remembered and incorporated into hymns whose origin can be clearly traced to that period. In short, the Vedic traditions, far from being contradictory to the scientific evidence, only serve to check the extravagant estimates regarding the age of the last Glacial epoch; and if the sober view of American geologists be adopted, both geology and the traditions recorded in the ancient books of the Aryan race will be found alike to point out to a period not much older than 8000 B.C. for the commencement of the post-Glacial era and the compulsory migration of the Aryan races from their Arctic home. And not only Vedic but also Purâṇic chronology, properly understood, leads us to the same conclusion. According to the Purâṇas the earth and the whole universe are occasionally subjected to destruction at long intervals of time, the earth by

392 a small and the universe by a grand deluge. Thus we are told that when the god Brahmâ is awake during his day the creation exists; but when at the end of the day he goes to sleep, the world is destroyed by a deluge, and is re-created when he awakes from his sleep and resumes his activity the next morning. Brahmâ’s evening and morning are thus synonymous with the destruction and the re-creation of the earth. A day and a night of Brahmâ are each equal to a period of time called a Kalpa, and a Kalpa is taken for a unit in measuring higher periods of time. Two Kalpas constitute a nycthemeron (day and night) of Brahmâ, and 360 × 2 = 720 Kalpas make his year, while a hundred such years constitute his life-time, at the end of which a grand deluge overtakes the whole universe including Brahmâ. Now according to the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali form a yuga of gods, and a thousand such yugas make a Kalpa or a day of Brahmâ of 12,000,000 years, at the end of which a deluge destroys the world. The Purâṇas, however, have adopted a different method of computation. The four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are there said to constitute a Mahâ-yuga; 71 such Mahâ-yugas constitute a Manvantara, and 14 Manvantaras make a Kalpa, which, according to this method of counting, contains 4,320,000,000 years. The difference between the durations of a Kalpa according to these two methods is due to the fact that the years making up the four yugas of Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali are considered to be divine in the latter, while they are obviously human in Manu and the Mahâbhârata. For further details the reader is referred to the late Mr. S. B. Dixit’s History of Indian Astronomy in Marâthi, Prof. Raṅgâchârya’s essay on Yugas, and Mr. Aiyer’s Chronology of Ancient India, a book, in which the question of yugas and especially that of the beginning of the Kali yuga, is subjected to a searching and exhaustive examination. The Hindu writers on astronomy seem to have adopted the same system, except Âryabhaṭṭa, who holds that 72, and not 71, Mahâyugas make a Manvantara, and that a Mâhayuga is divided

393 into four equal parts which are termed Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali. According to this chronological system, we are, at present, in the 5003rd year (elapsed) of the Kali yuga of the 28th Mahâ-yuga of the 7th (Vaivasvata) Manvantara of the current Kalpa; or, 1,972,949,003 years have, in other words, elapsed since the deluge which occurred at the beginning of the present or the Shveta-vârâha Kalpa. This estimate is, as observed by Prof. Raṅgâchârya, quite beyond the limit admitted by modern geology; and it is not unlikely that Hindu astronomers, who held the view that the sun, the moon, and all the planets were in a line at the beginning of the Kalpa, arrived at this figure by mathematically calculating the period during which the sun, the moon and all the planets made an integral number of complete revolutions round the earth. We need not, however, go into these details, which howsoever interesting are not relevant to the subject in hand. A cycle of the four yugas, viz., Kṛita, Tretâ, Dvâpara and Kali, is, it will be seen, the basis of this chronological system, and we have therefore to examine more critically what this collection of four yugas, otherwise termed a Mahâ-yuga, really signifies and whether the period of time originally denoted by it was the same as it is said to be at present. Prof. Raṅgâchârya and especially Mr. Aiyer have ably treated this subject in their essays, and I agree in the main with them in their conclusions. I use the words “in the main” deliberately, for though my researches have independently led me to reject the hypothesis of “divine years,” yet there are certain points which cannot, in my opinion, be definitely settled without further research. I have shown previously that the word yuga is used in the Ṛig-Veda to denote “a period of time,” and that in the phrase mânuṣhâ yugâ it cannot but be taken to denote “a month.” Yuga is, however, evidently used to denote a longer period of time in such expressions as Devânâm prathame yuge in the Ṛig-Veda, X, 72, 3; while in the Atharva Veda VIII, 2, 21, which says “We allot to thee a hundred, ten thousand years, two, three, (or) four yugas,” a yuga evidently means a period of not less than 10,000

394 years;* and Mr. Aiyer is right in pointing out that the omission of the word “one” in the above verse is not accidental. According to this view a yuga may be taken to have, at the longest, denoted a period of 10,000 years in the days of the Atharva Veda Saṁhitâ. Now it is found that Manu and the Mahâbhârata both assign 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 years to the four yugas of Kali, Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita respectively. In other words, the durations of Dvâpara, Tretâ and Kṛita are obtained by doubling, trebling and quadrupling the duration of Kali; and taking into consideration that Kṛita (which Mr. Aiyer compares with Latin quatuor) means “four” in Sanskrit literature, the names of the yugas may perhaps be derived from this fact. We are, however, concerned with the duration of the four yugas, and adding up the numbers given above, we obtain 10,000 years for a cycle of four yugas, or a Mahâ-yuga according to the terminology explained above. Manu and Vyâsa, however, add to this 10,000 another period of 2,000 years, said to represent the Sandhyâ or the Sandhyâmsha periods intervening between the different yugas. Thus the Kṛita age does not pass suddenly into Tretâ, but has a period of 400 years interposed at each of its ends, while the Tretâ is protected from the contact of the preceding and the succeeding yuga by two periods of 300 years each, the Dvâpara of 200 and the Kali of 100 years. The word Sandhyâ denotes the time of the dawn in ordinary literature; and Mr. Aiyer points out that as the period of the dawn and the gloaming, or the morning and the evening twilight, is each found to extend over three out of thirty ghatis of a day, so one-tenth of the period of each yuga is assigned to its Sandhyâ or the period of transition into another yuga: and that these supplementary periods were subsequent amendments. The period of 10,000 years for a cycle of the four yugas is thus increased to 12,000, if the Sandhyâ periods are included in it, making Kṛita comprise 4800, Tretâ 3600, Dvâpara 2400 and Kali 1200 years. Now at * Atharva Veda, VIII, 2, 21.

395 the time of the Mahabharata or the Code of Manu, the Kali yuga had already set in; and if the yuga contained no more than 1000, or, including the Sandhyâs, 1200 ordinary years, it would have terminated about the beginning of the Christian era.* The writers of the Purâṇas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian, era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali yuga had passed away, and that they lived in the Kṛita yuga of a new Mahâ-yuga; for the Kṛita yuga meant according to them a golden age, while the times in which they lived showed signs of degeneration on all sides. An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years. A Vedic authority for such an interpretation was found in the text from the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa, which, we have quoted and discussed previously, viz., “That which is a year is a day of the gods.” Manu and Vyâsa simply assign 1000 years to the Kali yuga. But as Manu, immediately after recording the duration of the yugas and their Sandhyâs, observes “that this period of 12,000 years is called the yuga of the gods,” the device of converting the ordinary years of the different yugas into as many divine years was, thereby, at once rendered plausible; and as people were unwilling to believe that they could be in a yuga other * Compare Manu, I, 69-71. In the Mahâbhârata the subject is treated in two places, once in the Shânti-Parvan, Chap. 231, and once in the Vana-Parvan, Chap. 188, V. 21-28, (Cal. Ed.). The first line clearly states that the Kṛita yuga commences after the deluge. Cf. Muir O. S. T., Vol. I, 45-48.

396 than the Kali, this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years. The same device converted, at one stroke, the 12,000 ordinary years of a Mahâ-yuga, into as many divine, or 360 × 12,000 = 4,320,000 ordinary years, affecting in a similar way the higher cycles of time like Manvantaras and Kalpas. How the beginning of the Kali yuga was thrown back, by astronomical calculations, to 3102 B.C., when this hypothesis of “divine years” was adopted is a separate question by itself; but not being pertinent to the subject in hand we need not go into it in this place. Suffice it to say that where chronology is invested with semi-religious character, artifices or devices, like the one noticed above, are not unlikely to be used to suit the exigencies of the time; and those who have to investigate the subject from a historical and antiquarian point of view must be prepared to undertake the task of carefully sifting the data furnished by such chronology, as Prof. Raṅgâchârya and Mr. Aiyer have done in their essays referred to above. From a consideration of the facts stated above it will be seen that so far as the Code of Manu and the Mahâbhârata are concerned, they preserve for us a reminiscence of a cycle of 10,000 years comprising the four yugas, the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali; and that the Kali yuga of one thousand years had been already set in. In other words, Manu and Vyâsa obviously speak only of a period of 10,000, or, including the Sandhyâs, of 12,000 ordinary or human (not divine) years, from the beginning of the Kṛita to the end of the Kali yuga; and it is remarkable that in the Atharva Veda we should find a period of 10,000 years apparently assigned to one yuga. It is not, therefore, unlikely that the Atharva Veda takes the Kṛita, the Tretâ, the Dvâpara and the Kali together, and uses the word yuga to denote the combined duration of all these in the passage referred to above. Now considering the fact that the Kṛita age is said to commence after a pralaya or the deluge, Manu and Vyâsa must be understood

397 to have preserved herein an old tradition that about 10,000 years before their time (supposing them to have lived at the beginning of the Kali age of 1200 years), the new order of things commenced with the Kṛita age; or, in other words, the deluge which destroyed the old order of things occurred about 10,000 years before their time. The tradition has been very much distorted owing to devices adopted in later times to make the traditional chronology suit the circumstances of the day. But still it is not difficult to ascertain the original character of the tradition; and when we do so, we are led to conclude that the beginning of the new order of things, or, to put it more scientifically, the commencement of the current post-Glacial era was, according to this tradition, not assigned to a period older than 10,000 years before the Christian era. We have shown that researches in Vedic chronology do not allow us to carry back the date of the post-Glacial era beyond this estimate, for traditions of the Arctic home appear to have been well understood by the bards of the Ṛig-Veda in the Orion period. It is, therefore, almost certain that the invasion of the Arctic Aryan home by the last Glacial epoch did not take place at a time older than 10,000 B.C. The American geologists, we have seen, have arrived at the same conclusion on independent scientific grounds; and when the Vedic and the Purâṇic chronology indicate nearly the same time, — a difference of one or two thousand years, in such cases, does not matter much, — we may safely reject the extravagant estimates of 20,000 or 80,000 years and adopt, for all practical purposes, the view that the last Glacial epoch closed and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8,000, or, at best, about 10,000 B.C. We have now to consider how the tradition about the existence of the original home at the North Pole and its destruction by snow and ice of the Glacial epoch, and other cognate reminiscences were preserved until they were incorporated into the law-book of the Mazdayasnians and the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda. That a real tradition is preserved in these books is undoubted, for we have seen that an examination of the traditions

398 preserved by the European branches of the Aryan rage have led Prof. Rhys to the same conclusion; and those who know the history of the preservation of our sacred books will see nothing improbable herein. In these days of writing and printing, we have no need to depend upon memory, and consequently we fail to realize what memory, kept under the strictest discipline, is capable of achieving. The whole of the Ṛig-Veda, nay, the Veda and its nine supplementary books, have been preserved by the Brahmins of India, letter for letter and accent for accent, for the last 3000 or 4000 years at least; and priests who have done so in recent times may well be credited with having faithfully preserved the traditions of the ancient home, until they were incorporated into the sacred books. These achievements of disciplined memory may appear marvelous to us at present; but, as stated above, they were looked upon as ordinary feats when memory was trusted better than books, and trained and cultivated with such special care as to be a faithful instrument for transmitting along many generations whatever men were most anxious to have remembered. It has been a fashion to cry down the class of priests who make it their sole profession to cultivate their memory by keeping it under strict discipline and transmit by its means our sacred writings without the loss of a single accent from generation to generation. They have been described, even by scholars like Yâska, as the carriers of burden, and compared by others to parrots who repeat words without understanding their meaning. But the service, which this class has rendered to the cause of ancient history and religion by preserving the oldest traditions of the race, is invaluable; and looking to the fact that a specially disciplined memory was needed for such preservation, we cannot but gratefully remember the services of those whose hereditary devotion to the task, we might say, the sacred religious task, rendered it possible for so many traditions to be preserved for thousands of years. Paṇḍits might analyze and explain the Vedic hymns more or less elaborately or correctly; but for that reason, we cannot forget that the very basis of their

399 labors would have been lost long ago, had the institution of priests who made disciplined memory their exclusive business in life not been in existence. If the institution has outlived its necessity, — which is doubtful, for the art of writing or printing can hardly be trusted to the same extent as disciplined memory in such matters, — we must remember that religious institutions are the hardest to die in any country in the world. We may, therefore, safely assert that Vedic and Avestic traditions, which have been faithfully preserved by disciplined memory, and whose trustworthiness is proved by Comparative Mythology, as well as by the latest researches in Geology and Archaeology, fully establish the existence of an Arctic home of the Aryan people in inter-glacial times; and that after the destruction of this home by the last Glacial epoch the Aryan people had to migrate southwards and settle at first in the northern parts of Europe or on the plains of Central Asia at the beginning of the post-Glacial period, that is about 8000 B.C. The antiquity of the Aryan race is thus carried back to inter-glacial times, and its oldest home to regions round about the North Pole, where alone a long dawn of thirty days is possible. Whether other human j races, beside the Aryan, lived with them in the circumpolar country is a question which does not fall within the purview of this book. Dr. Warren, in his Paradise Found, has cited Egyptian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chinese and even Japanese traditions indicating the existence of an Arctic home of these races in ancient times; and from a consideration of all these he arrives at the conclusion that the cradle of the whole human race must be placed in the circum-polar regions, a conclusion in which he is also supported by other scholars. But, as observed by Prof. Rhys, it is no fatal objection to the view we have endeavored to prove in these pages, that the mythologies of nations, beside the Aryan, also point to the North Pole as their original home; for it is not contended that the Aryans may be the only people of northern origin. On the contrary, there are grounds to believe that the five races of men (pañcha janâḥ) often mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda may have been the

400 races which lived with the Aryans in their original home, for we cannot suppose that the Vedic Aryas after their dispersion from the original home met only with five races in their migrations, or were divided only into five branches. But the question is one which can be finally decided only after a good deal of further research; and as it is not necessary to mix it up with the question of the original home of the Aryans, we may leave it out for the present. If the North Pole is conclusively shown to be the cradle of the human race hereafter, it would not affect in the least the conclusion we have drawn in these pages from a number of definite Vedic and Avestic traditions, but if the existence of the Aryan home near the North Pole is proved, as we have endeavored to do in the foregoing pages, by independent testimony, it is sure to strengthen the probability of the northern home of the whole human race; and as the traditions of the Aryan people are admittedly better preserved in the Veda and the Avesta than those of any other race, it is safer and even desirable to treat the question of the primeval Aryan home independently of the general problem taken up by Dr. Warren and other scholars. That the Veda and the Avesta are the oldest books of the Aryan race is now conceded by all, and we have seen that it is not difficult to ascertain, from traditions contained therein, the site of the Aryan Paradise, now that we begin to search for it in the light thrown upon the subject by modern scientific researches. But if the fact of an early Aryan home in the far north is once established by indisputable traditional evidence, it is sure to revolutionize the existing views regarding the primitive history or religion of the Aryan races. Comparative philologists and Sanskritists, who looked for the primeval home “somewhere in Central Asia,” have advanced the theory that the whole progress of the Aryan race, intellectual, social or moral from primeval savagery to such civilization as is disclosed by the Vedic hymns, was effected on the plains of Central Asia. It was on these plains, we are told, that our oldest ancestors gazed upon the wonders of dawn or the rising sun with awe and astonishment, or reverentially watched the storm-clouds

401 hovering in the sky to be eventually broken up by the god of rain and thunder, thereby giving rise to the worship of natural elements and thus laying down the foundations of later Aryan mythology. It was on these plains that they learnt the art of weaving, the products of which superseded the use of hides for clothing, or constructed their chariots, or trained their horses, or discovered the use of metals like gold and silver. In short, all the civilization and culture which Comparative Philology proves on linguistic grounds to have been common to the different Aryan races before their separation is regarded to have, first originated or developed on the plains of Central Asia in post-Glacial times. Dr. Schrader, in his Pre-historic Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, gives us an exhaustive summary of facts and arguments regarding primitive Aryan culture and civilization which can be deduced from Linguistic Palæology, or Comparative Philology, and as a repertory of such facts the book stands unrivalled. But we must remember that the results of Comparative Philology, howsoever interesting and instructive they may be from the linguistic or the historical point of view, are apt to mislead us if we know not the site of the original home, or the time when it was inhabited or abandoned by the ancestors of our race. Comparative Philology may teach us that cow was an animal known and domesticated before the Aryan separation, or that the art of weaving was known in those old days, because the words “cow” and “weave” can be traced in all the Aryan languages. But it is now found that equations like these do not help us much in definitely ascertaining where the united Aryans lived and when they separated; while recent researches in Archaeology and Anthropology have exhibited the improbability of a Central Asian home of the Aryan races and successive migrations therefrom to European countries. The hypothesis of a Central Asian home is, therefore, now almost abandoned; but strange to say, that those, who maintain that Europe was inhabited at the beginning of the Neolithic age by the ancestors of the races who now inhabit the same regions, are prepared to leave undetermined the question whether

402 these races originated in Europe or went there from some other land. Thus Canon Taylor, in his Origin of the Aryans, confidently advises us that we need not concern ourselves with the arguments of those who assert that Europe was inhabited by the ancestors of the existing races even in the Paleolithic period; for, says he, “philologists will probably admit that within the limits of the Neolithic age, it would be possible to find sufficient time for the evolution and the differentiation of the Aryan languages.”* In the last chapter of the same book we are further informed that the mythologies of the different branches of the Aryan race must have been developed after their separation, and that resemblances, like Dyaus-pitar and Jupiter, or Varuṇa and Uranus, must be taken to be merely verbal and not mythological in their origin. In short, the advocates of the Central Asian as well, as of the northern European home of the Aryans are both unwilling to carry back the beginning of the Aryan civilization beyond post-Glacial times, and we are told that Aryan mythology and religion cannot, therefore, claim any higher antiquity. All such guesses and speculations about the origin of the Aryan race and its civilization will have now to be revised in the new light thrown upon the subject by the theory of the Arctic home in pre-Glacial times. We cannot now maintain that primitive Aryans were a post-Glacial race, or that they advanced from barbarism to civilization in the Neolithic period either in Central Asia or in the northern parts of Europe; nor it is possible to argue that because the mythologies of the different branches of the Aryan race do not disclose the existence of common deities, these mythologies must be taken to have developed after the separation of the Aryan races from their common home. Thus, for instance, we are told that though the word Uṣhas occurs in Zend as Uṣhangh, and may be compared to Greek Eos, Latin Aurora, Lithuanian Auszra, Teutonic Asustrô and Anglo-Saxon Eostra, yet it is only in the Vedic mythology that we find Uṣhas raised to * See: Taylor’s Origin of the Aryans, p. 57.

403 the dignity of the goddess of the morning; and from this we are asked to infer that the worship of the dawn was developed only on the Indian soil. The theory of the Arctic home, however, makes it impossible to argue in this way. If Vedic deities are clothed with attributes which are unmistakably polar in their origin, — and in the case of Uṣhas, the polar character has been shown to be unquestionable, — we cannot hold that the legends pertaining to these deities were developed on the plains of Central Asia. It was impossible for the Indian priests to conceive or picture the splendors of the dawn in the way we meet with in the Ṛig-Veda; for it has been shown that the evanescent dawn, with which they were familiar, is quite dissimilar in character to the Arctic dawn, the subject of the Vedic hymns. And what applies to the dawn can be predicated as well of other deities and myths, e.g., of Indra and Vṛitra or the captive Waters, of Viṣhṇu hibernating for four months in a year, or of Trita or the Third going down in a well, or of the Ashvins rescuing or saving the gods from the temporary affliction to which they were again and again subjected. These very names may not be found in the Celtic or the Teutonic mythology, but an examination of the latter has been found to disclose the same polar characteristics which are possessed by Vedic deities or myths; and so long as this fundamental coincidence exists between the two, it is unreasonable to contend that the mythologies of the different branches of the Aryan race had no common origin, or that the resemblances between the names of the deities are more linguistic than mythological. The destruction of the ancient Aryan home by glaciation and deluge introduces a new factor in the history of the Aryan civilization; and any shortcomings or defects in the civilization of the Aryan races, that are found to have inhabited the northern parts of Europe in the beginning of the Neolithic age, as distinguished from the civilization of the Asiatic Aryan races, must now be accounted for as the result of a natural relapse into barbarism after the great catastrophe. It is true that ordinarily we cannot conceive a race that has once launched on a career of

404 progress and civilization suddenly retrograding or relapsing into barbarism. But the same rule cannot be applied to the case of the continuation of the ante-diluvian civilization into post-diluvian times. In the first place very few people could have survived a cataclysm of such magnitude as the deluge of snow and ice; and those that survived could hardly be expected to have carried with them all the civilization of the original home, and introduced it intact in their new settlements, under adverse circumstances, amongst the non-Aryan tribes, in the north of Europe or on the plains of Central Asia. We must also bear in mind the fact that the climate of northern Europe and Asia, though temperate at present, must have been very much colder after the great deluge, and the descendants of those who had to migrate to these countries from the Polar regions, born only to a savage or nomadic life, could have, at best, preserved only fragmentary reminiscences of the ante-diluvian culture and civilization of their forefathers living in the once happy Arctic home. Under these circumstances we need not be surprised if the European Aryas are found to be in an inferior state of civilization at the beginning of the Neolithic age. On the contrary the wonder is that so much of the ante-diluvian religion or culture should have been preserved from the general wreck, caused by the last Glacial epoch, by the religious zeal and industry of the bards or priests of the Iranian or the Indian Aryas. It is true that they looked upon these relics of the ancient civilization, as a sacred treasure entrusted to them to be scrupulously guarded and transmitted to future generations. Yet considering the difficulties with which they had to contend, we cannot but wonder how so much of the ante-diluvian civilization, religion or worship was preserved in the Veda or the Avesta. If the other Aryan races have failed to preserve these ancient traditions so well, it would be unreasonable to argue therefrom that the civilization or the culture of these races was developed after their separation from the common stock. It has been shown previously that the climate of the Arctic

405 tic regions in the inter-Glacial period was so mild and temperate as to be almost an approach to a perpetual spring, and that there was then a continent of land round about the Pole, the same being submerged during the glacial epoch. The primitive Aryans residing in such regions must, therefore, have lived a happy life. The only inconvenience experienced by them was the long Arctic night; and we have seen how this phenomenon has served to give rise to various myths or legends describing the struggle between the powers of light and darkness. The occurrence of the Arctic night, its tiresome length, and the long expected morning light on the horizon after some months were, naturally enough, the most important facts which attracted the attention of our primeval forefathers, and it is no wonder if they believed it to be the greatest exploit of their gods when the beneficent dawn came dawning up, after several months of darkness, from the nether world of aerial waters, inaugurating a new yearly round of sacrifices, festivals, or other religious or social ceremonies. It was the beginning of the Devayâna, when the powers of light celebrated their victory over the demons of darkness, and the Child of the Morning, the Kumâra, the leader of the army of gods, walked victoriously along the Devayâna path commencing the cycle of human ages, or mânuṣhâ yugâ, as mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda. The Pitṛiyâna, or the walk of the Manes, corresponded with the dark winter, the duration of which extended in the original home from two to six months. This was the period of rest or repose during which, as observed previously, people refrained even from disposing the bodies of the dead owing to the absence of sunshine. All social and religious ceremonies of feasts were also suspended during this period as the powers of darkness were believed to be in the ascendant. In short, the oldest Aryan calendar was, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, divided into two parts, a summer of seven or ten months and a corresponding winter of five or two months. But it seems to have been an ancient practice to reckon the year by counting the recurrence of summers or winters rather than by combining the two seasons. It is thus

406 that we can account for a year of seven or ten months in old times, or annual sacrificial sattras extending over the same period. This calendar is obviously unsuited to places to the south of the Arctic circle; and the Aryans had, therefore, to change or reform the same, as was done by Numa, in postglacial times, when, expatriated from their mother-land, they settled in the northern parts of Europe and Central Asia. But the reminiscence of the Devayâna as a special period of sacrifices and ceremonies was tenaciously preserved, and even now it is looked upon as a season of special religious merit. We can, on this theory, easily explain why the Gṛihya-Sûtras attach special importance to the Uttarâyaṇa from a ceremonial point of view, and why death during the Dakṣhiṇâyana is regarded as inauspicious. How the inter-Glacial year of seven or ten months was changed to a year of twelve months in post-Glacial times, and how the equinoctial division which obtained at first on the analogy of the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna, was subsequently altered to the solstitial one, the old meaning of the word Uttarâyaṇa undergoing (Orion, p. 25ƒ.) a similar change, are questions, which, though important in the history of the Aryan calendar, are not relevant in this place; and we shall, therefore, proceed with the subject in hand. It is urged by some writers that though the worship of natural elements is found to obtain in several ancient Indo-European religions, yet its beginnings cannot be supposed to go back to the time of the common origin of the related peoples. Dr. Schrader has ably refuted this view in the concluding pages of his book on the pre-historic antiquities of Aryan peoples; and the theory of the Arctic home powerfully supports Dr. Schrader in his conclusions. “If we put aside every thing unsafe and false,” observes Dr. Schrader, “that Comparative Mythology and History of Religion has accumulated on this subject, we are solely, from the consideration of perfectly trustworthy material, more and more driven, on all sides, to assume that the common basis of ancient European religions was a worship of the powers of Nature practiced in

407 the Indo-European period.” The fact that the Vedic deities like Uṣhas, the Âdityas, the Ashvins or the Vṛitrahan are found invested with Polar characteristics, further goes to confirm the conclusion based on linguistic grounds, or common etymological equations for sky, morning, fire, light or other natural powers. In short, whatever be the stand-point from which we view the subject in question, we are led to the conclusion that the shining sky (Dyaus pitâ), the sun (Sûrya), the fire (Agni), the Dawn (Uṣhas), the storm or thunder (Tanyatu) had already attained to the dignity of divine beings or gods in the primeval period; and etymological equations like Sanskrit yaj, Zend yaz and Greek azomai, show that these gods were worshipped and sacrifices offered to them to secure their favor even in primeval times. Whether this worship originated, or, in other words, whether the powers of nature were invested with divine honors only in inter-Glacial times or in times anterior to it, cannot, as stated above, be ascertained from the materials in our hands at present. But this much is beyond question that the worship of these elements, as manifestations of divine power, had already become established amongst the undivided Aryans in the Arctic home, and the post-diluvian Aryan religions were developed from this ancient system of worship and sacrifices. We have seen that the Ṛig-Veda mentions the ancient sacrificers of the race like Manu, Aṅgirases, Bhṛigus and others, and the fact that they completed their sacrificial sessions in seven, nine or ten months proves that they were the sacrifices of the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home. It was these sacrificers who performed the sacrifices of, the people during a summer of seven or ten months and worshipped the mutational deities with offerings in primeval times. But when the sun went down below the horizon, these sacrificers naturally closed their sessions and made their offerings only to Vṛitrahan, the chief hero in the struggle with the demons of darkness, in order that he may, invigorated by their offerings eventually bring back the * See Dr. Schrader’s Pre-His. Antiqui. Ary. Peoples, transl. by Jevons, p. 418.

408 light of the dawn to these worshippers. I do not mean to assert that an elaborate system of sacrifices existed in inter-Glacial times; but I do maintain that sacrifice was the main ritual of the primeval Aryan religion, and that it is a mistake to suppose that it originated or was invented only in post-Glacial times. I have dwelt at some length on the question of ancient religious worship and ritual in this place because the theory of the Arctic home very well exposes, in my opinion, the fallacious character of many of the existing views on this subject. A people, who had come to worship the powers of Nature as manifestations of divine will and energy, who had a well-developed language of their own, and who had already evolved a legendary literature out of the Arctic conditions of the year in their congenial home near the North Pole, may well be expected to have made a good advance in civilization. But we have at present very few means by which we can ascertain the exact degree of civilization attained by the undivided Aryans in their primitive home. Comparative Philology tells us that primitive Aryans were familiar with the art of spinning and weaving, knew and worked in metals, constructed boats and chariots, founded and lived in cities, carried on buying and selling, and had made considerable progress in agriculture. We also know that important social or political institutions or organizations, as, for instance marriage or the laws of property, prevailed amongst the forefathers of our race in those early days; and linguistic paleontology furnishes us with a long list of the fauna and the flora known to the undivided Aryans. These are important linguistic discoveries, and taking them as they are, they evidently disclose a state of civilization higher than that of the savages of the Neolithic age. But in the light of the Arctic theory we are naturally led to inquire if the culture of the primitive Aryans was confined only to the level disclosed by Comparative Philology, or whether it was of a higher type than the one we can predicate of them simply on linguistic grounds. We have seen above that in the case of the mythological deities and their

409 worship the Polar character of many of the deities at once enables us to assign them to the primitive period even when their names are not found in all the Aryan languages; and the results of Comparative Philology regarding primitive Aryan culture will have to be checked and revised in the same way. The very fact that after compulsory dispersion from their mother-land the surviving Aryans, despite the fragmentary civilization they carried with them, were able to establish their supremacy over the races they came across in their migrations from the original home at the beginning of the post-Glacial period, and that they succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in Aryanising the latter in language, thought and religion under circumstances which could not be expected to be favorable to them, is enough to prove that the original Aryan civilization must have been of a type far higher than that of the non-Aryan races, or than the one found among the Aryan races that migrated southward after the destruction of their home by the Ice Age. So long as the Aryan races inhabiting the northern parts of Europe in the beginning of the Neolithic age were believed to be autochthonous there was no necessity of going beyond the results of Comparative Philology to ascertain the degree of civilization attained by the undivided Aryans. But now we see that the culture of the Neolithic Aryans is obviously only a relic, an imperfect fragment, of the culture attained by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home; and it would, therefore, be unreasonable to argue that such and such civilization, or culture cannot be predicated of the undivided Aryans simply because words indicating the same are found only in some and not in all the Aryan languages. In other words, though we may accept the result of Comparative Philology so far as they go, we shall have to be more cautious hereafter in inferring that such and such a thing was not known to the primitive Aryans because common etymological equations for the same cannot be discovered in all the Aryan languages. We have, it is true, no means of ascertaining how much of the original civilization was lost in the deluge, but we cannot, on that account, deny that some portion

410 of it must have been irrecoverably lost in the great cataclysm that destroyed the original home. Under these circumstances all that we can safely assert is that the degree of culture disclosed by Comparative. Philology is the lowest or the minimum that can be predicated of the undivided Aryans. his important to bear this reservation in mind because undue importance is sometimes attached to the results of Comparative Philology by a kind of reasoning which appeared all right so long the question of the site of the original home was unsettled. But now that we know that Aryan race and religion are both inter-Glacial and their ultimate origin is lost in geological antiquity, it does not stand to reason to suppose that the inter-Glacial Aryans were a race of savages. The archaeologists, it is true, have established the succession of the ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron; and according to this theory the Aryan race must have once been in the Stone age. But there is nothing in archeology which requires us to place the Stone age of the Aryan races in post-Glacial times; and when Comparative Philology has established the fact that undivided Aryans were acquainted with the use of metals, it becomes clear that the degree of civilization reached by the undivided Aryans in their Arctic home was higher than the culture of the Stone age or even that of the age of metals. I have referred in the first chapter of the book to the opinion of some eminent archaeologists that the mete] age was introduced into Europe from other countries either by commerce or by the Indo-European race going there from outside, and the theory of the Arctic home with its inter-Glacial civilization lends support to this view. I might in passing here refer to an instance which illustrates the danger of relying exclusively on Comparative Philology in this respect. Dr. Schrader has shown that copper, at any rate, was known to the primitive Aryans; and he admits the possibility that this metal may, in isolated cases, have been employed in the manufacture of weapons like fighting knives or lance-heads. But we are told that there are linguistic difficulties which prevent us from assuming that gold and silver were known in the primitive period. On an examination

411 of the subject it will, however, be seen that in cases like these the philologist relics too much on his own methods or follows them too rigidly. For instance khalkos (copper or bronze) is mentioned by Homer as a medium of exchange (II, vii, 472); and Comparative Philology discloses two etymological equations, one derived from the root mei (Sans. me) denoting “barter,” and the other derived from the Sanskrit krî Greek priamai, meaning purchase. The Ṛig-Veda (VIII, 1, 5) also mentions a measure of the value called shulka, and, as, the word is used in later Sanskrit literature to denote a small payment made at a toll-house, it is not unlikely that shulka, originally meant a small coin of copper or bronze similar in character to the khalkos mentioned by Homer. Now it is true that ordinarily Greek kh, is represented by h in Sanskrit, and that if this rule be rigidly applied to the present case it would not be possible to phonetically identify khalkos with shulka. Philologists have, therefore, tried to compare khalkos with Sanskrit hrîku or hlîku. But, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, the connection seems to be altogether improbable. Hrîku is not a Vedic word, nor does it mean copper or bronze. Despite the phonetic difficulty, — and the difficulty is not so serious as it seems to be at the first sight, for Sanskrit sh is represented by k in Greek, and this k sometimes gives place to the aspirated kh, — I am, therefore, inclined to identify khalkos with shulka; and if this is correct, we must conclude that undivided Aryans were familiar with some metal, either copper or, bronze, as a medium of exchange. There are many other points similar in character. But it is impossible to go further into this subject in this place. I only want to point out the reservation with which we shall have now to accept the results of Comparative Philology in forming our estimate of the degree of culture reached by the primitive Aryans, and show that when the primitive Aryan culture is carried back to the inter-Glacial age, the hypothesis that primitive Aryans were hardly better than the savage races of the present day at once falls to the ground. If the civilization of some Aryan races in the Neolithic age appears to be inferior or imperfect it must,

412 therefore, be, as observed above, ascribed to relapse or retrogression after the destruction of the ancient civilization by the Ice Age, and the necessarily hard and nomadic life led by the people who survived the cataclysm. The Asiatic Aryans, it is true, where able to preserve a good deal more of the original religion and culture, but it seems to be mainly due to their having incorporated the old traditions into their religious hymns or songs; and made it the exclusive business of a few to preserve and hand down with religious scrupulosity these prayers and songs to future generations by means of memory specially trained and cultivated for the purpose. But even then how difficult the task was can be very well seen from the fact that a greater portion of the hymns and songs originally comprised in the Avesta has been lost; and though the Veda is better preserved, still what we have at present is only a portion of the literature which is believed on good grounds to have once been in existence. It may seem passing- strange that these books should disclose to us the existence of an original Arctic home so many centuries after the traditions were incorporated into them. But the evidence in the foregoing pages shows that it is a fact; and if so, we must hold that the Neolithic Aryan people in Europe were not, as Prof. Max Müller thinks, progressive, but, for the time at least, necessarily retrogressive savages working only with such residua of the ante-diluvian civilization as were saved from its general wreck.* But though the Vedic or Aryan people and their religion and culture can thus be traced to the last inter-Glacial period, and though we know that the degree of culture attained by the primitive Aryans was of a higher type than some scholars seem to be willing to assign to them, yet there are many points in the primitive Aryan history which still remain unsolved. For instance, when and where the Aryan race was differentiated from other human races, or how and where the Aryan speech was developed, are important questions from * Max Müller’s Last Essays, pp. 172ƒƒ.

413 the anthropological point of view, but we have, at present, no, means to answer the same satisfactorily. It is quite possible that other human races might have lived with the Aryans in their home at this time; but the Vedic evidence is silent on this point. The existence of the human race is traced by geologists to the Tertiary era; and it is now geologically certain that the gigantic changes wrought on this globe by glacial epochs were witnessed by man. But anthropology does not supply us with any data from which we can ascertain when, where, or how the human race came to be differentiated according to color or language. On the contrary, it is now proved that at the earliest date at which human remains. have been found, the race was already divided into several, sharply distinguished types; and this, as observed by Laing, leaves the question of man’s ultimate origin completely open to speculation, and enables both monogenists and polygenists, to contend for their respective views with plausible arguments and without fear of being refuted by facts.* The evidence, set forth in the foregoing pages, does not enable us to solve any of these questions regarding the ultimate origin of the human race or even of the Aryan people or their language and religion. We have nothing in this evidence for ascertaining how far the existence of the Aryan race can be traced back to pre-Glacial, as distinguished from inter-Glacial times; or whether the race was descended from a single pair (monogeny) or plurality of pairs (polygeny) in the remotest ages. The traditional evidence collected by us only warrants us in. taking back the Aryan people and their civilization from the Temperate zone in post-Glacial to the Arctic regions in inter-Glacial times. It is true that Aryans and their culture or religion cannot be supposed to have developed all of a sudden at the close of the last inter-Glacial period, and the ultimate origin of both must, therefore, be placed in remote geological times. But it is useless to speculate on this question without further evidence, and in the present state of our knowledge * Laing’s Human Origins, pp. 404-5.

414 we must rest content with the result that though Aryan race or religion can be traced to the last inter-Glacial-period yet the ultimate origin of both is still lost in geological antiquity. I cannot conclude this chapter without briefly examining the bearing of our results on the views entertained by Hindu theological scholars regarding the origin, character and authority of the Vedas. It is a question which has been discussed with more or less acuteness, subtlety, or learning ever since the days of the Brâhmaṇas; and frond a purely theological point of view I do not think there remains anything to be now said upon it. Again, for the purposes of scientific investigation, it is necessary to keep the theological and the antiquarian aspect of the question quite distinct from each other. Yet when our investigation, conducted on strict scientific lines, is completed, we may usefully compare our conclusions with the theological views and see how far they harmonize or clash with each other. In fact no Hindu who reads a book like the present, can avoid making such a comparison; and we shall be lightening his task by inserting in this place a few remarks on this subject. According to the view held by Hindu theologians, the Vedas are eternal (nitya), without a beginning (anâdi), and also not created by a human author (a-pauruṣheya); and we are told that these attributes have been predicated of our sacred books from the most ancient times known to our divines or philosophers. The whole of the third Volume of Dr. Muir’s Original Sanskrit Texts is devoted to the discussion of this subject, a number of original passages and arguments bearing on which are there collected, including Sâyaṇa’s lucid summary in the introduction to his commentary on the Ṛig-Veda; and more recently the late Mahâmahopâdhyâya Râjârâma Shâstri Bodas, the editor of the Bombay edition of the Ṛig-Veda, has done the same in a Sanskrit pamphlet, the second edition of which is now published by his son, Mr. M. R. Bodas, of the Bombay High Court Bar. I shall, therefore, give in this place only a summary of the different views of Hindu theologians, without entering into the details of the controversy which can be studied from the

415 above books. The question before us is whether the Vedic hymns, that is, not only the words of the hymns but also the religious system found or referred to therein, are the compositions of the Ṛiṣhis to whom they are assigned in the Anukramaṇikâs, or the ancient Indexes of the Veda, in the sense in which the Shâkuntala is a composition of Kâlidâsa; or whether these hymns existed from times immemorial, in other words, whether they are eternal and without a beginning. The hymns themselves are naturally the best evidence on the point. But, as shown by Dr. Muir in the second chapter (pp. 218-86) of the Volume above mentioned, the utterances of the Vedic Ṛiṣhis on this point are not unanimous. Thus side by side with passages in which the Vedic bards have expressed their emotions, hopes or fears, or prayed for worldly comforts and victory over their enemies, condemning evil practices like gambling with dice (X, 34), or have described events, which on their face seem to be the events of the day; side by side with passages where the poet says that ho has made (kṛî) generated (jan), or fabricated (takṣh) a new (navyasî or apûrvya) hymn, much in the same way as a carpenter fashions a chariot (I, 47, 2; 62, 13; II, 19, 8; IV, 16, 20; VIII, 95, 5; X, 23, 6; 39, 14; 54, 6; 160, 5; &c.); or with hymns in which we are plainly told that they are composed by so and so, the son of so and so, (I, 60, 5; X, 63, 17; 67, 1; &c.), there are to be found in the Ṛig-Veda itself an equally large number of hymns where the Ṛiṣhis state in unmistakable terms that the hymns sung by them were the results of inspiration from Indra, Varuṇa, Soma, Aditi, or some other deity; or that the Vedic verses (ṛichaḥ) directly emanated from the Supreme Puruṣha, or some other divine source; or that they were given by gods (devatta), or generated by them and only seen or perceived (pashyât) by the poets in later times, (I, 37, 4; II, 23, 2; VII, 66, 11; VIII, 59, 6; X, 72, 1; 88, 8; 93, 9; &c.). We are told that Vâch (Speech) is nityâ or eternal (VIII, 75, 6, also cf. X, 125); or that the gods generated the divine Vâch and also the hymns (VIII, 100, 11; 101, 16; X, 88, 8). The evidence of the Vedic hymns does not, therefore, enable us to decide the

416 question one way or the other; but if the composition of the hymns is once ascribed to human effort, and one to divine inspiration or to the gods directly, it is clear that at least some of these old Ṛiṣhis believed the hymns to have been sung under inspiration or generated directly by the goddess of speech or other deities. We may reconcile the former of these views with the passages where the hymns are said to be made by human effort, on the supposition that the poets who sang the hymns believed themselves to be acting under divine inspiration. But the explanation fails to account for the statement that the Ṛik, the Yajus, and the Sâman, all emanated from the Supreme Puruṣha or the gods; and we must, therefore, conclude that the tradition about the eternity of the Vedas, or their divine origin is as old as the Veda itself. Accordingly, when we come to the Brâhmaṇas and the Upaniṣhads, we naturally find the same view prevailing. They tell us that the Ṛig-Veda proceeded from Agni (fire), the Yajur-Veda from Vâyu (wind), and the Sâma-Veda from Sûrya (the sun), and that these three deities got their warmth from Prajâpati who practiced lapas for the purpose (Shat. Brâh, XI, 5, 8, 1 ƒƒ; Ait. Brâh. V, 32-34; Chhân. Up. IV, 17, 1); or that the Vedas are the breathings of the Supreme Being (Bṛih. Up. II, 4, 10); or that Prajâpati by means of the eternal Vâch created the Vedas and everything else in this world; and the same view is met with in the Smṛitis like those of Manu (I, 21-23) and others, or in the Purâṇas, several extracts from which are given by Dr. Muir in the volume above referred to. It is admitted that the Vedas, with other things, are destroyed, at the end of a Kalpa, by the deluge (pralaya) which overtakes: the world at the time. But we are told that this does not affect the question of the eternity of the new Kalpa by Brahmâ himself after the grand deluge, and by the Ṛiṣhis, who survive, after minor deluges. The authority generally quoted in support of this view is a verse from the Mahâbhârata (Shânti-Parvan, Chap. 210, v. 19) which says, “The great Ṛiṣhis, empowered by Svayambhû (the self-born), formerly obtained, through tapas (religious austerity), the Vedas and the Itihâsas, which had

417 disappeared at the end of the (preceding) Yuga.” The Ṛiṣhis are, therefore, called the seers and not the makers of the Vedic hymns; and the personal designation of some Shâkhâs, branches or recessions of Vedas, as Taittirîya, Kâṭhaka, &c., as well as the statements in the Vedic hymns, which say that so and so has made or generated such and such a hymn, are understood to mean that the particular Shâkhâ or hymn was perceived, and only perceived, by the particular Ṛiṣhi or poet. It is not, however, till we come to the works of the authors and expositors of the different schools of Hindu philosophy (darshanas) that we find the doctrine of the eternity of the Vedas subjected to a searching examination; and, as remarked by Dr. Muir, one who reads the discussions of these writers cannot fail to be struck “with the acuteness of their reasoning, the logical precision with which their arguments are presented, and the occasional liveliness and ingenuity of their illustrations.”* They all bear witness to the fact that so far as tradition went, — an unbroken tradition of great antiquity, — there was no remembrance of the Vedas having been ever composed by or ascribed to any human author; and taking into consideration the, learning and the piety of these scholars, their testimony must be regarded as an unimpeachable proof of the existence of such a tradition, which was considered ancient several centuries before the Christian era. But though a tradition whose high antiquity can be so well established deserves to be seriously considered in our investigations regarding the character of the Vedas, yet it is, after all, a negative proof, showing, it may be urged, nothing more than no human author of the Veda has been known from times beyond the memory of all these ancient scholars. Jaimini, * Muir, O. S. T., Vol. III, p. 58.

418 the author of Mîmâṁsâ Sutras, therefore, further deduces (I, 1, 5) the eternity of the Vedas from the relation or connection between words and their meanings, which he holds to be eternal (autpattika) and not conventional. A word is defined to be an aggregate of letters in a particular order, and its sense is said to be conveyed by these letters following each other in a definite succession. But Grammarians are not satisfied with this view, and maintain that the sense of a word is not expressed by the aggregate of its constituent letters which are transient, but by a certain super-sensuous entity, called sphoṭa (i.e., manifester, from sphuṭ), which supervenes the aggregate of the letters as soon as they are pronounced, and reveals their meaning. Jaimini denies that there are words in the Vedas which denote any transient objects, and as the Vedic words and their sense are eternal, it follows, according to him, that the Vedas are self-demonstrative, or that they shine, like the sun, by their own light, and are, therefore, perfect and infallible. If particular parts of the Vedas are designated after some Ṛiṣhis, it does not, we are told, prove those sages to have been their authors, but merely the teachers who studied and handed them down. Bâdarâyaṇa, as interpreted by Shaṅkarâchârya (I, 31, 26-33), the great leader of the Vedânta School, accepts the doctrine of the eternity of sound or words, but adds that it is the species to which the word belongs, and not the word itself, that is eternal or indestructible, and, there fore, though the names of deities, like Indra and others, which are all created and hence liable to destruction, are mentioned in the Veda, it does not affect the question of its eternity as the species to which Indra and others are said to belong is still eternal. In short, Vedic names and forms of species are eternal, and it is by remembering these that the world is created by Brahmâ at the beginning of each Kalpa (Maitr. Up., VI, 22). The Veda is, therefore, the original WORD the source from which every thing else in the world emanated, and as such it cannot but be eternal; and it is interesting, as pointed out by Prof. Max Müller in his Lectures on Vedanta Philosophy, to compare this doctrine with that of Divine

419 Logas of the Alexandrian Schools in the West. The Naiyâyikas, on the other hand, deny the doctrine of the eternity of sound or word, but hold that the authority of the Vedas is established by the fact of their having emanated from competent (âpta) persons who had an intuitive perception of duty (sâkṣhâtkṛita dharmâṇaḥ, as Yâska puts it), and whose competence is fully proved by the efficacy of such of the Vedic injunctions as relate to mundane matters, and can, therefore, be’ tested by experience; while the author of the Vaisheṣhika Sûtras clearly refers (I, 1, 3) the Veda to Îshvara or God as its framer. The Sâṅkhyas (Sâṇkhya Sûtras, V, 40-51) agree with the Naiyâyikas in rejecting the doctrine of the eternity of the connection of a word with its meaning; and though they regard the Veda as pauruṣheya in the sense that it emanated from the Primeval Puruṣha, yet they maintain that it was not the result of a conscious effort on the part of this Puruṣha, but only an unconscious emanation from him like his breathing. According to this view the Veda cannot be called eternal in the same sense as the Mîmâṁsakas have done, and, therefore, the texts which assert the eternity of the Vedas, are said to refer merely to “the unbroken continuity of the stream of homogeneous succession,” (Veda-nityatâ-vâkyâni cha sajâtîyâ-nupûrvî-pravâhânuchcheda-parâṇi).* Patanjali, the great grammarian, in his gloss on Pâṇini IV, 3, 101, solves the question by making a distinction between the language (the succession of words or letters, varṇânupûrvî, as we find it in the present texts) of the Vedas and their contents (artha), and observing that the question of the eternity of the Vedas refers to their sense which is eternal or permanent (artho nityaḥ), and not to the order of their letters, which has not always remained the same (varṇânupûrvî anityâ), and that it is through this difference in the latter respect that we have the different versions * Cf. Vedântaparibhâṣhâ Âgama-parichcheda, p. 55, quoted in Mahâmahopâdhyâya Jhalkikar’s Nyâya-kosha, 2nd Ed. p. 736. s.v.

420 of Kaṭhas, Kalâpas, Mudakas, Pippalâdas and so on. This view is opposed to that of the Mîmâṁsakas who hold both sense and order of words to be eternal. But Patanjali is led to reject the doctrine of the eternity of the order of words, because in that case we cannot account for the different versions or Shâkhâs of the same Veda, all of which are considered to be equally authoritative though their verbal readings are sometimes different. Patanjali, as explained by his commentators Kaiyyaṭa and Nâgoji Bhaṭṭa, ascribes this difference in the different versions of the Veda to the loss of the Vedic text in the pralayas or deluges which occasionally overtake the world and their reproduction or repromulgation, at the beginning of each new age, by the sages, who survived, according to their remembrance.* Each manvantara or age has thus a Veda of its own which differs only in expression and not in sense from the ante-diluvian Veda, and that different recessions of co-ordinate authority of the same Veda are due to the difference in the remembrance of the Ṛiṣhis whose names are associated with the different Shâkhâs, and who repromulgate, at the beginning of the new age, the knowledge inherited by them, as a sacred trust, from their forefathers in the preceding Kalpa. This view substantially accords with that of Vyâsa as recorded in the verse from the Mahâbhârata quoted above. The later expositors of the different schools of philosophy have further developed these views of the Sutra-writers and criticized or defended the doctrine of the self-demonstrated authority of the scriptural texts (shabda-pramâṇa) in various ways. But we cannot go into their elaborate discussions in this place; nor is it necessary to do so, for eventually we have to fall back upon the view of Vyâsa and Patanjali, mentioned * See Muir O.S.T., Vol. III, pp. 96-97.

421 above, if the destruction of the Vedas during each pralaya, and its repromulgation at the commencement of the new age is admitted. Such, in brief, are the views entertained by Hindu orthodox theologians, scholars and philosophers in regard to the origin, character and authority of the Vedas; and on comparing them with the results of our investigation, it will be found that Patanjali’s and Vyâsa’s view about the antiquity and the eternity of the Vedas derives material support from the theory of the Arctic home which we have endeavored to prove in the foregoing pages on strict scientific and historical grounds. It has been shown that Vedic religion and worship are both inter-Glacial; and that though we cannot trace their ultimate origin, yet the Arctic character of the Vedic deities fully proves that the powers of Nature represented by them had been already clothed with divine attributes by the primitive Aryans in their original home round about the North Pole, or the Meru of the Purâṇas. When the Polar home was destroyed by glaciation, the Aryan people that survived the catastrophe carried with them as much of their religion and worship as it was possible to do under the circumstances; and the relic, thus saved from the general wreck, was the basis of the Aryan religion in the post-Glacial age. The whole period from the commencement of the post-Glacial era to the birth of Buddha may, on this theory, be approximately divided into four parts: — 1000 or 8000 B.C. — The destruction of the original Arctic home by the last Ice Age and the commencement of the post-Glacial period. 8000–5000 B.C. — The age of migration from the original home. The Survivors of the Aryan race roamed over the northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands suitable for new settlements. The vernal equinox was then in the constellation of Punarvasû, and as Aditi is the presiding deity of Punarvasû, according to the terminology adopted by me in Orion, this may, therefore, be called the Aditi or the Pre-Orion Period.

422 5000–3000 B.C. — The Orion Period, when the vernal equinox was in Orion. Many Vedic hymns can be traced to the early part of this period and the bards of the race, seem to have not yet forgotten the real import or significance of the traditions of the Arctic home inherited by them. It was at this time that first attempts to reform the calendar and the sacrificial system appear to have been systematically made. 3000–1400 B.C. — The Kṛittikâ Period, when the vernal equinox was in Pleiades. The Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas, which begin the series of nakṣhatras with the Kṛittikâs, are evidently the productions of this period. The compilation of the hymns into Saṁhitâ’s also appears, to be a work of the early part of this period. The traditions about the original Arctic home had grown dim by this time and very often misunderstood, making the Vedic hymns more and more unintelligible. The sacrificial system and the numerous details thereof found in the Brâhmaṇas seem to have been developed during this, time. It was at the end of this Period that the Vedâṅga-jyotiṣha was originally composed, or at any rate the position of the equinoxes mentioned therein observed and ascertained. 1400–500 B.C. — The Pre-Buddhistic Period, when the Sûtras and the Philosophical systems made their appearance. These periods differ slightly from those mentioned by me in Orion; but the change is needed in consequence of the theory of the Arctic home which carries back the beginning of the Pre-Orion or the Aditi Period to the commencement of the present post-Glacial era. In the language of the Purâṇas the first period after the close of the Ice Age (8000-5000 B.C.) may be called the Kṛita Yuga or the age of wandering, as the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa (VII, 15) describes it to be. It was the period when the Aryan races, expatriated from their motherland, roamed over the northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of new homes. It is doubtful if the Brâhmaṇa meant

423 as much when it described Kṛita to be the age of wandering. But nevertheless it is interesting to notice the new light thrown upon the characteristics of the four Yugas mentioned in the Brâhmaṇa. Thus we are told that “Kali is lying, Dvâpara is slowly moving, Tretâ is standing up, and Kṛita is wandering.” Dr. Haug understands this stanza to refer to the game of dice, and other scholars have proposed different interpretations. But in the light of the Arctic theory we may as well suppose that the different stages of life through which the Aryan races had to pass in post-Glacial times, from wandering in search of homes to final settlement in some lands of their choice, are here described, somewhat after the manner of the Avestic account of the sixteen ancient lands created by Ahura Mazda, and invaded in succession by Angra Mainyu. But even apart from this verse, we can very well see that during the first of the above periods the Aryan races had no fixed home, and many must have been the settlements made and abandoned by them before they permanently settled in congenial lands. I have already stated above that Aryan religion and worship are both inter-Glacial; and that Vedic religion and ritual is a post-Glacial development of such relics of the ancient religion as were preserved from the general wreck caused by the Ice Age; and this affords in my opinion a safe basis to compare our results with the, theological views mentioned above. We may not be able to fix definitely when each hymn of the Ṛig-Veda was sung; but we may safely say that those who survived the catastrophe, or their immediate descendants, must have incorporated into hymns the religious knowledge they had inherited as a sacred trust from their forefathers at the first opportunity, that is, soon after they were able to make at least temporary settlements. The hymns cannot, therefore, be supposed to promulgate a new religion consciously or unconsciously evolved on the plains of Central Asia in post-Glacial times; and the Polar character of the * Ait. Brâh. VII, 15.

424 Vedic deities removes every doubt on the point. How far the language of the hymns, as we have them at present, resembled the ante-diluvian forms of speech is a different question; and according to Patanjali and Vyâsa, we are not here concerned with the words or the syllables of the hymns, which, it is admitted, have not remained permanent. We have to look to the subject-matter of the hymns; and there is no reason to doubt either the competency or the trustworthiness of the Vedic bards to execute what they considered to be their sacred task or duty, viz., that of preserving and transmitting for the benefit of future generations, the religious knowledge they had inherited from their ante-diluvian forefathers. It was by an agency similar to this that the hymns have been preserved accent for accent, according to the lowest estimate, for the last 3000 or 4000 years; and what is achieved in more, recent times can certainly be held to have been done by the older bards in times when the traditions about the Arctic home and religion were still fresh in their mind. We may also observe that the hymns were publicly sung and recited, and the whole community, which must be supposed to have been interested in preserving its ancient religious rites and worship, must have keenly watched the utterances of these Ṛiṣhis. We may, therefore, safely assert that the religion of the primeval Arctic home was correctly preserved in the form of traditions by the disciplined memory of the Ṛiṣhis until it was incorporated first into crude as contrasted with the polished hymns (su-uktas) of the Ṛig-Veda in the Orion period, to be collected later on in Maṇḍalas and finally into Saṁhitâs; and that the subject-matter of these hymns is inter-Glacial, though its ultimate origin is still lost in geological antiquity. Without miring up the theological and historical views we may, therefore, now state the two in parallel columns as follows: — Theological view Historical view 1. The Vedas are eternal (nitya), beginningless (anâdi) and not made by man (a-pauruṣheya). 1. The Vedic or the Aryan religion can be proved to be inter-Glacial; but its ultimate origin is still lost in geological antiquity.

425 2. The Vedas were destroyed in the deluge, at the end of the last Kalpa. 2. Aryan religion and culture were destroyed during the last Glacial period that invaded the Arctic Aryan home. 3. At the beginning of the present Kalpa, the Ṛiṣhis, through tapas, reproduced in substance, if not in form, the ante-diluvian Vedas, which they carried in their memory by the favor of god. 3. The Vedic hymns were sung in post-Glacial times by poets, who had inherited the knowledge or contents thereof in an unbroken tradition from their ante-diluvian forefathers. On a comparison of the two columns it will be found that the tradition about the destruction and the reproduction of the Vedas, recorded by Vyâsa in the Mahâbhârata verse referred to above, must be taken to have been founded substantially on a historical fact. It is true that according to the Pûraṇic chronology the beginning of the current Kalpa is placed several thousands of years before the present time; but if, according to the estimates of some modern geologists, the post-Glacial period is, even now, said to have commenced some 80,000 years ago, if not earlier, we need not be much surprised at the Pûraṇic estimate, especially when, as stated above, it is found to disclose a real tradition of 10,000 years assigned to a cycle of the four yugas, the first of which began with the new Kalpa, or, in the language of geology, with the present post-Glacial period. Another point wherein the two views may be said to differ is the beginninglessness (anâditva) of the Vedas. It is impossible to demonstrate historically or scientifically that Vedic religion and worship is absolutely without a beginning. All that we can say is that its beginning is lost in geological antiquity, or that the Vedic religion is as old as the Aryan language or the Aryan man himself. If theologians are not satisfied with the support which this scientific view accords to their theory about the eternity of the Vedas,

426 the scientific and the theological views must stand, as they are, distinct from each other, for the two methods of investigation are essentially different. It is for this reason that I have stated the views in parallel columns for comparison without mixing them up. Whether the world was produced from the original WORD, or the Divine Logos, is a question which does not fall within the pale of historical investigation; and any conclusions based upon it or similar other doctrines cannot, therefore, be treated in this place. We may, however, still assert that for all practical purposes the Vedic religion can be shown to be beginningless even on strict scientific grounds. A careful examination of the Rig-Vedic hymns will show that the Vedic Ṛiṣhis were themselves conscious of the fact that the subject-matter of the hymns sung by them was ancient or ante-deluvian in character, though the expressions used were their own productions. We have already referred before to the two sets of Vedic passages, the first expressly saying that the hymns were made, generated or fashioned like a chariot by the Ṛiṣhis to whom they are ascribed, and the other stating in equally unmistakable terms that the hymns were inspired, given or generated by gods. Dr. Muir attempts to reconcile these two contradictory views by suggesting that the different Ṛiṣhis probably held different views; or that when both of them can be traced to the same author, he may have expressed the one at the time when it was uppermost in his mind, and the other at another; or that the Vedic Ṛiṣhis or poets had no very clearly defined ideas of inspiration, and thought that the divine assistance of which they were conscious did not render their hymns the less truly the production of their own mind.* In short, the existence of a human is not supposed to be incompatible with that of the super-human element in the composition of these hymns. But it will be seen that the above reconciliation is at once weak and unsatisfactory. A better way to reconcile the conflicting utterances * See Muir O. S. T. Vol. III, pp. 274-5.

427 of the Ṛiṣhis would be to make a distinction between the expression, language, or form on the one hand, and the contents, substance or the subject-matter of the hymns on the other; and to hold that while the expression was human, the subject matter was believed to be ancient or superhuman. There are numerous passages in the Ṛig-Veda where the bards speak of ancient poets (pûrve ṛiṣhayaḥ), or ancient hymns (I, 1, 2; VI, 44, 13; VII, 29, 4; VIII, 40, 12; X, 14, 15; &c.); and Western scholars understand by these phrases the poets or hymns of the past generations of Vedic bards, but not anterior to the post-Glacial times. But there are clear indications in the hymns themselves which go to refute this view. It is true that the Vedic bards speak of ancient and modern hymns; but they often tell us that though the hymn is new (navyasî), yet the god or the deity to whom it is addressed is old (pratna), or ancient (VI, 22, 7; 62, 4; X, 91, 13; &c.). This shows that the deities whose exploits were sung in the hymns ware considered to be ancient deities. Nay, we have express passages where not only the deities but their exploits are said. to be ancient, evidently meaning that the achievement spoken of in the hymns were traditional and not witnessed by the poet-himself; thus, in I, 32, I, the poet opens his song with a clear statement that he is going to sing those exploits of Indra which were achieved at first (prathamâni) or in early times, and the adjective pûrvyâṇî and pûrvîḥ are applied to Indra’s exploits in I, 11, 3, and I, 61 13. The achievements of the Ashvins are similarly said to be pûrvyâṇî in I, 117, 25; and the long list of the exploits given in this hymn clearly shows that the poet is here rather summarizing the exploits traditionally known to him than enumerating events witnessed by himself or by his forefathers in the near past. This is also evident from the fact that the ancient Ṛiṣhis mentioned in the hymns, like the Aṅgirases or Vasiṣhṭha, are believed to have been invested with supernatural powers (VII, 33, 7-13), or to have lived and conversed with (I, 179, 2), or shared in the enjoyments of the gods (Devânâm sadhamâdaḥ VIII, 76, 4). They are also said to be the earliest guides (pathikṛit, X, 14, 15)

428 for future generations. It is impossible to suppose that Vedic poets could have ascribed such superhuman character to their ancestors in the near past; and we are, therefore, led to the conclusion that the ancestors here spoken of were the ante-diluvian ancestors (naḥpûrve pitaraḥ) who completed their sacrifices in the Arctic year of 7 or 10 months. And what is true of the ancestors applies as well to the ancient deities mentioned in the hymns. I have pointed out previously that the legend of Aditi and her sons is expressly stated to be a legend of the past age (pûrvyam yugam); and the same thing may be predicated of the legends of Indra, the Ashvins or the other deities whose exploits are described in the Ṛig-Veda as pûrvyâṇi or prathamâni, that is, old or ancient. In short, the ancient hymns, poets, or deities, mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda must be referred to a by-gone age and not to post-Glacial times. The Arctic character of these deities, it may be further observed, is intelligible only on this view. The Vedic bards may well be credited with having composed, or fashioned, new songs or hymns; but the question still remains whether the subject-matter of these hymns was of their own creation, and the fact that the deities. have been called ancient in contradistinction with the songs offered to them (VI, 62, 4), and are clothed with Polar attributes, at once enables us to solve the question by answering that though the wording of the hymns was new, their subject-matter was old, that is, traditionally handed down to the poet from remote ages. Thus in a hymn of the tenth Maṇḍala (X, 72, 1-2), the poet desiring to celebrate the births or the origin of gods, thus begins his hymn, “Let us, from the love of praise, celebrate, in recited hymns, the births of gods, — any one of us who in this later age may see them, (yaḥ pashyâd uttare yuge).” Here we have a distinct contrast between the births of gods on the one hand and the poet who may see the hymn in the later age on the other, evidently meaning that the subject-matter of the hymn is an occurrence of the former age (yuga), and that the poet celebrates as he perceives or sees it in the later age. The view that the Vedic hymns, or

429 rather their contents, were perceived and not made by the Ṛiṣhis, derives material support from this statement. A similar expression is also found in VIII, 59, 6, which says “Indra and Varuṇa! I have seen (abhi apashyam); through tapas that which ye formerly gave to the Ṛiṣhis, wisdom, understanding of speech, sacred lore (shrutam) and all the places which the sages created when performing sacrifices.”* The notion about the perception of the subject-matter of the Vedic hymns is here referred to almost in the same terms in which it is expressed by Vyâsa in the Mahâbhârata verse quoted above; and with such express texts before us, the only way to reconcile the conflicting statements about the human and the superhuman origin of the hymns is to refer them to the form and the matter of the hymns respectively, as suggested by Patanjali and other scholars. Dr. Muir notices a passage (VIII, 95, 4-5) where the poet is said to have “generated (ajîjanat) for Indra the newest exhilarating hymn (navîyasîm mandrâm giram), springing from an intelligent mind, an ancient mental product (dhiyam pratnâm), full of sacred truth.”† Here one and the same hymn is said to be both new and old at the same time; and Dr. Muir quotes Aufrecht to show that gir, that is, expression or wording, is here contrasted with dhî or thought, obviously showing that an old thought (pratnâ dhîḥ) has been couched in new language (navîyasî gîḥ), by the bard to whom the hymn is ascribed. In other words, the hymn is ancient in substance though new in expression, — a conclusion to which we have been already led on different grounds. We may also cite in this connection the fact that amongst the different heads into which the contents of the Brâhmaṇas have been classified by Indian divines, we find one which is termed Purâ-kalpa or the rites or traditions of a by-gone age, showing that even the Brâhmaṇas are believed to contain ante-diluvian stories or traditions. The statement * Ṛig. VIII, 59, 6, — इन्द्रावरुणा यद रषिभ्यो मनीषां वाचो मतिं शरुतमदत्तमग्रे । यानि सथानान्यस्र्जन्त धीरा यज्ञं तन्वानास्तपसाभ्यपश्यम ॥ † See Muir O. S. T., Vol. III, p. 239.

430 in the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ that “The priests, in old times, were afraid that the dawn would not terminate or ripen into sunshine,” is quoted by Sâyaṇa as an example of Purâ-kalpa, and we have seen before that this can be explained only by supposing it to refer to the Arctic dawn, — an incident witnessible by man only in the inter-Glacial times. If the Brâhmaṇas can be thus shown to contain or refer to the facts of a by-gone age, a fortiori the Vedas may, very well, be said to do the same. Thus from whatever side we approach the question, we are irresistibly led, by internal as well as external evidence, to the conclusion that the subject-matter of the Vedic hymns is ancient and inter-Glacial, and that it was incorporated into the Vedic hymns in post-Glacial times by Ṛiṣhis who inherited the same in the shape of continuous traditions from their inter-Glacial forefathers. There are many other points in Vedic interpretation, or in Vedic and Purâṇic mythology, which are elucidated, or we may even say, intelligently and rationally explained for the first time, by the theory of the Arctic home in inter-Glacial times. For instance, we can now easily account for the disappointment of those Western scholars, who, when the Vedas became first known to them, expected to find therein the very beginnings of the Aryan civilization or the outpourings of the Aryan mind as it first became impressed with awe and wonder by the physical phenomena or the workings of natural elements and looked upon them as divine manifestations. Our theory now shows very clearly that though the Vedas are the oldest records of the Aryan race, yet the civilization, or the characteristics and the worship of the deities mention ed therein did not originate with the Vedic bards, but was derived by them from their inter-Glacial forefathers and preserved in the forms of hymns for the benefit of posterity; and if any one wants to trace the very beginnings of the Aryan civilization he must go back beyond the last-Glacial period, and see how the ancestors of the Aryan race lived and work ed in their primeval Polar home. Unfortunately we have very few materials for ascertaining the degree of this civilization.

431 But we think we have shown that there are grounds to hold that the inter-Glacial Aryan civilization and culture must have been of a higher type than what it is usually supposed to be: and that there is no reason why the primitive Aryan should not be placed on an equal footing with the pre-historic inhabitants of Egypt in point of culture and civilization. The vitality and superiority of the Aryan races, as disclosed by their conquest, by extermination or assimilation, of the non-Aryan races with whom they came in contact in their migrations in search of new lands from the North Pole to the Equator, if not to the farther south, is intelligible only on the assumption of a high degree of civilization in their original Arctic home; and when the Vedas come to be further examined in the light of the Arctic theory, we many certainly expect to discover therein many other facts, which will further support this view, but which are still hidden from us owing to our imperfect knowledge of the physical and social surroundings amidst which the ancestors of the Vedic Ṛiṣhis lived near the North Pole in times before the Glacial epoch. The exploration of the Arctic regions which is being carried on at present, may also help us hereafter in our investigation of the beginnings of the Aryan civilization. But all these things must be left to be done by future investigators when the theory of the Arctic home of the Aryans comes to be generally recognized as a scientific fact. Our object at present is to show that there is enough evidence in the Veda and the Avesta to establish the existence of an Arctic home in inter-Glacial times; and the reader, who has followed us in our arguments, set forth in the preceding pages, will at once perceive that the theory we have endeavored to prove, is based on a solid foundation of express text and passages traditionally preserved in the two oldest books of the Aryan race, and that it is amply fortified by independent corroboration received from the latest results of the correlative sciences, like Geology, Archaeology Linguistic Palæology, Comparative Mythology and Astronomy. In fact, the idea of searching for the evidence of an Arctic home in the Vedas may be said to have been stimulated, if not

432 suggested, by the recent advances made in these sciences, and it will be seen that the method, adopted by us in working it up, is as rigid as it ought to be. It is now several centuries since the science of Vedic exegetics was founded by Indian Nairuktas; and it may seem surprising that traces of an Arctic home in the Vedas should remain undiscovered so long. But surprises like these are out of place in investigations of this kind, where one must be prepared to accept the results proved, in the light of advancing knowledge, by the strictest rules of logic and guide, and if the validity of our conclusions be tested by this standard, we hope it will be found that we have succeeded in discovering the true key to the interpretation of a number of Vedic texts and legends hitherto given up as hopeless, ignored or misunderstood. In these days of progress, when the question of the primitive human culture and civilization is approached and investigated from so many different sides, the science of Vedic interpretation cannot stand isolated or depend exclusively on linguistic or grammatical analysis; and we have simply followed the spirit of the time in seeking to bring about the co-ordination of the latest scientific results with the traditions contained in the oldest books of the Aryan race, — books which have been deservedly held in the highest esteem and preserved by our ancestors, amidst insurmountable difficulties, with religious enthusiasm ever since the beginning of the present age. FINIS