Page 514 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE A VESTIC EVIDENCE 295
The old Persian and Greek names in the above table are
taken from the inscriptions of the Achremenian kings and the
works of Greek writers after the overthrow of the Achremenian
dynasty by Alexander the Great. They show that at least 10
out of 16 lands can be still indentified with certainty; and if so
we can safely say that the account in the first Fargard is real
and not mythical. But with regard to the land mentioned first
in the list, there has been a difference of opinion amongst Zend
scholars. The Airyana Va~jo is the first created happy land,
and the name signifies that it was the birthland ( Va~jo =seed,
Sans. bija ) of the Aryans ( Iranians ), or the Paradise of the
Iranian race. Was this a mythical region or a real country
representing the original home of the Aryans, and if it was a
real country where was it situated ? This is the first question
which we have to answer from the evidence contained in the
first two Fargards of the Vendidad; and secondly, we have to
decide whether the sixteen lands mentioned above were the
successive countries occupied by the ancestors of the Iranian
race in their migrations from the original home in the north.
The Fargard says nothing about migration. It simply mentions
that so many lands were created by Ahura Mazda and that in
opposition thereto Angra Mainyu, the evil Spirit of the Avesta,
created so many different evils and plagues which rendered the
lands unfit for human residence. It is inferred from this that
the Fargard does not contain an account of successive migra·
tions but merely gives us a description of the countries known
to the ancestors of the Iranians at the time when the Fargards
were composed. In other words, the chapter is· geographical
and not historical, containing nothing but a specification of
the countries known to the Iranians at a particular time; and
ij is argued that it would be converting geography into history
to take the different countries to represent the successive stages
of migrations from the primeval home, when not a word about
migration is found in the original text. Professor Darmesteter
further observes that as the enumeration of the sixteen lands
begins with Airyana Va~jo by the river Vanguhi Daitya and
ends with Rangha, which corresponds with the Vedic Rasa, a
mythical river that divides the gods from the fiends, and that
as the Vanguhi and the Rangha were originally the celestial
rivers that came down from heaven ( like the two heavenly