Page 228 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PREHISTORIC TIMES 15
remammg stationary is represented by the agglutinative Basque,
and that much later, at the beginning of the pastoral age, when
the of bad been tamed, a taller and more powerful Finno-Ugric
people developed in Central Europe the inflexive Aryan speech.*
But this is merely a conjecture, and it does not answer the ques-
tion bow the Indo-lranians with their civilisation are found settled
in Asia at a time when Europe was in the Neolithic age. The
Finnic language again discloses a number of culture words
borrowed from the Aryans, and it is unlikely that the language
of the latter could have got its inflection from the Finnic lan-
guage. A mere similarity of inflectional structure is no evidence
whatsoever for deciding who borrowed from whom, and it is
surprising that the above suggestion should come from scholars,
who have assailed the theory of successive Aryan migrations
from a common Asiatic home, a theory which, amongst others
was based on linguistic grounds. Why did the Finns twice
migrate from their home is also left unexplained. For reasons
like these it seems to me more probable that the Finns might
have borrowed the culture words from the Aryans when they
came in contact with them, and that the Aryans were autoch-
thonous neither in Europe nor in Central Asia, but had their
original home somewhere near the North Pole in the Palreoli-
thic times, and that, they migrated from this place southwards
in Asia and Europe, not by any ' irresistible impulse ', but by
unwelcome changes in the climatic conditions of their original
home. The Avesta preserves traditions which fully support
this view. But these have been treated as valueless by scholars,
who worked up their theories at a time when man was regarded
as post-Glacial, and the Avestic traditions were, it was believed
not supported by any Vedic authority. But with the time-tele-
scope of a wider range supplied to us by recent scientific discoveries
it has become possible to demonstrate that the A vestic traditions
represent a real historical fact and that they are fully supported
by the testimony of the Vedas. The North Pole is already con-
sidered by several eminent scientific men as the most likely place
where plant and animal life first originated; and I believe it can
be satisfactorily shown that there is enough positive evidence
in the most ancient books of the Aryan race, the Vedas and the;

• The Origin of the Aryans, p. 2 96.