Page 217 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

4 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
to be more cautious in formulating their views and some of them
soon realised the force of the arguments advanced on the strength
of these scientific discoveries. The works of German scholars,
like Posche and Penka, freely challenged the Asiatic theory regard-
ing the original home of the Aryan race and it is now generaLly
recognised that we mu t give up that theory and seek for the original
home of the Aryans omewhere el e in the further north. Canon
Taylor in his Origin of the Aryans has ummed up the work done
during the last few years in this direction. " It was " he says,
" mainly a destructive work, " and concludes his book with the
observation that " the whilom tyranny of the Sanskritists is happily
overpast, and it is seen that hasty philological deductions require
to be systematically checked by the conclusions of prehistoric
archrelogy, craniology, anthropology, geology and common
sense. " Had the remark not been used as a peroration at the
end of the book, it would certainly be open to the objection that
it unnecessarily deprecates the labours of the comparative mytho-
logists and philologists. In every department of human know-
ledge old conclusions have always to be revised in the light of new
discoveries, but for that reason it would never be just to find fault
with those whose lot it was to work earlier in the same field with
scanty and insufficient materials.
But whilst the conclusions of the philologists and mytholo-
gists are thus being revised in the light of new scientific discoveries,
an equally important work yet remains to be done. It has been
stated above that the discovery of the Vedic literature imparted
a fresh impulse to the study of myths and legends. But the Vedas
themselves, which admittedly form the oldest records of the Aryan
race, are as yet imperfectly understood. They had already grown
unintelligible to a certain extent even in the days of the Brdhmanas
several centuries before Christ, and had it not been for the labo~rs
of Indian Etimologists and Grammarians, they would have re-
mained a sealed book upto the present time. The Western Scholars
have indeed developed, to a certain extent, these Native methods
of interpretation with the aid of facts brought to light by compara-
tive philology and mythology. But no etymological or philological
analysis can help us in thoroughly understanding a passage which
contains ideas and sentiments foreign or unfamiliar to us. This
is one of the principal difficulties of Vedic interpretation. The
Storm or the Dawn theory may help us in understanding some of