Page 206 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PREFACE 5

are not treated better than ordinary convicts, and had it not
been for the sympathy and interest taken by Prof. Max Miiller,
who knew me only as the author of Orion, and other friends, I
should have been deprived of the pleasure,-then the only pleasure,
-of following up my studies in these days. Prof. M~ Muller
was kind enough to send me a copy of his edition of the
~ig-Veda, and the Government was pleased to allow me the use
of these and other books, and also of light to read for a few hours
at night. Some of the passages from the ~ig-Veda, quoted in
support of the Arctic theory in the following pages, were collect-
ed during such leisure as I could get in these times. It was
mainly through the efforts of Prof. Max Muller, backed by
the whole Indian press, that I was released after twelve months;
and in the very first letter I wrote to Prof. Max Muller after
my release, I thanked him sincerely for his disinterested kindness,
and also gave him a brief summary of my new theory regarding
the primitive Aryan home as disclosed by Vedic evidence. It was,
of course, not. to be expected that a scholar, who had worked all
his life on a different line, would accept the new view at once, and
that too on reading a bare outline of the evidence in its support.
Still it was encouraging to hear from him that though the inter-
pretations of Vedic passages proposed by me were probable,
yet my theory appeared to be in conflict with the established
geological facts. I wrote in reply that I bad already examined
the question from that stand-point, and expected soon to place
before him the whole evidence in support of my view. But utlfor-
tunately, I have been deprived of this pleasure by hiJ deeply
mourned death which occurred soon after.
The first manuscript of the book was written at the end of
l898, _and since then I have had the advantage of discussing the
question with many scholars in Madras, Calcutta, Lahore, Benares
and other places during my travels in the different parts 0f India.
But I hesitated to publish the book for a long time, - a part of
the delay is due to other causes,-because the lines of investi·
gation had ramified into many allied sciences such as geology,
-archeology, comparative mythology and so on; and, as I was
a mere layman in these, I felt some diffidence as to whether I had
correctly grasped , the bearing of the latest researches in these
sciences. The difficulty is well described by Prof. Max Muller
in his review of the Prehistoric Antiquities of Indo-Europeans,