Page 209 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

8 SAMAGP.A TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

il.Ot until I was convinced that the discovery was due solely to the
recent progress in our knowledge regarding the primitive history
of the human race and the planet it inhabits that I ventured to
publish the present volume. Some Zend scholars have narrowly
missed the truth, simply because 40 or 50 years ago they were
unable to understand how a happy home could be located in the
ice-bound regions near the North Pole. The progress of geological
science in the latter half of the last century has, however, now
solved the difficulty by proving that the climate at the Pole
during the inter-Glacial times was mild, and consequently not
unsuited for human habitation. There is, therefore, nothing
extraordinary, if it be left to us to find out the real import of these
passages in the Veda and Avesta. It is true that if the theory
of an Arctic and inter-Glacial primitive Aryan home is proved,
many a chapter in Vedic exegetics, comparative mythology, or
primitive Aryan history, win have to be revised or rewritten,
and in the last chapter of this book I have myself discussed an
important point which will be affeCted by the ~ theory. But
as remarked by me at the end of the book, considerations like
these, howsoever useful they may be in inducing caution in
our investigations, ought not to deter us from accepting the
results of an inquiry conducted on strictly scientific lines. It is
very hard, I know, to give up theories upon which one has
worked all his life. But, as Mr. Andrew Lang has put it, it should
always be borne in mind that " Our little systems have, their
day, or their hour : as knowledge advances they pass into the
:'listory of the efforts of pioneers. " Nor is the theory of the
Arctic horne so new and startling as it appears to· be at the first
sight. Several scientific men have already declared their belief
that the original home of man must be sought for in the Arctic
regions; and Dr. Warren, the President of the Boston Univer-
sity, has anticipated me, to a certain extent, in his learned and
suggestive work, the Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human
Rae..,e at the North Pole, the tenth edition of which was published
in J\merica in 1893. Even on strict philological grounds the
theory of a primitive Aryan home in Central Asia has been now
almost abandoned in favour of North· Germany or Scandi-
navia; while Prof. Rhys, in his Hibbert Lectures on Celtic
Heathendom, is' led to suggest, " some spot within the Arctic
circle " on pure~ mythological considerations. I go only a step