Page 250 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE ARCTIC REGIONS 37

at present, tho'.lgh the past and present climatic condition of
these places may be totally different. But the axis of the earth
has a small motion round the pole of the ecliptic, giving rise
to what is known as the precession of the equinoxes, and caus-
ing a change only in the celestial, and not in the terrestrial,
poles. Thus the polar star 7,000 years ago was different from what
it is at present but the terrestrial pole has always remained
the same. This motion of the earth's axis, producing the precession
of the equinoxes, is important from an antiquarian point of view,
inasmuch as it causes a change in the times when different sea-
sons of the year begin; and it was mainly by utilising this chro-
nometer that I showed in my Orion or Researches in the Anti-
quity of the Vedas that the vernal equinox was in Orion when
some of the ~ig-Vedic traditions were formed, and that the Vedic
literature contained enough clear evidence of the successive
changes of the position of the vernal equinox upto the present
time. Thus the vernal equinox was in Krittikas in the time of the
Taittirtya Samhita and Brahma9a and the express text stating
that " The Krittikas never swerve from the due east; all other
Nak~hatras do, " ( Shat. Bra. II. 1, 2, 3 ), recently published by
the late Mr. S. B. Dixit, serves to remove whatever doubts there
might be regarding the interpretation of other passages.* This
record of the early position of the Kritikas, or the Pleiades, is as
important for the determination of the Vedic chronology as the
orientation of pyramids and temples has been shown to be in
the case of Egyptian, by Sir Norman Lockyer in his Dawn of
Ancient Astronomy. But the chronometer, which I now mean
to employ, is a different one. The North Pole and the Arctic
regions possess certain astronomical characteristics which are
peculiar to them and if a reference to these can be discovered
in the Vedas, it follows, in the light of modern researches, that the
ancestors of the Vedic ~ishis must have become acquainted with
these characteristics, when they lived in those regions, which
was possible only in the Inter-Glacial times. We shall, therefore,
now examine these characteristics, dividing them in the two-
fold way stated above.

• See The Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXIV, (August, 1895 ), p. 245.
The text is :- ~r ( 'i!iRronf: ) { lt 311~ f~ if ~9~ \'fcfTM { Cff ar~
ifa;ffiiVJ ~ ~~9~ I W. i!T. I