Page 517 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

298 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
does not say anything about the situation of Rangha. It smiply
states that the fifteenth land created by Ahura Mazda was Hapta
He~du and the sixteenth was on the floods of Rangha. Now if
Hapta Hepdu, is identified with Sapta Sindhu, or the Panjaub,
why take a big and a sudden jump from the Panjaub to the
Caspian Sea, to find out the Rangha river. Rangha is Sanskrit
RasA, and in the Rig-Veda (X, 75, 6) a terrestrial river, by name
RasA, is mentioned along with the Kubha, the Krumu and the
Gomati, which are all known to be the affiuents of the Indus.
Is it not, therefore, more likely that Rangha may be the Vedic
Rasa, a tributary of the Indus ? If the context is any guide to the
determination of the sense of ambiguous words, the mention of
Hapta Hepdu, as the fifteenth land, shows that Rasa the six-
teenth must be sought for somewhere near it, and the point is
pretty well settled when we find Rasa actually mentioned in the
~ig-Veda along with some other tributaries of the Indus. The
identification of Rangha with the westernmost river is, therefore
at best doubtful, and the same may be said of Vanguhi, which
by-the-by is not mentioned in the Fargard at all. But Darmesteter's
, reasoning does not stop here. On the strength of this doubtful
identification he would have us believe that the ancient land
of the Airyana Vaejo was situated in the same region where
the river named Vanguhi, or Veh, in later times was said
to flow. But the reasoning is obviously erroneous. The names of
the two rivers Vanguhi and Rangha in the primeval home may
have been subsequently transferred to the real rivers in the new
settlement; but we cannot infer therefrom that the country
through which these new rivers flowed was the original site of
the Airyana Vaejo. It is a wellknown fact that persons migrating
from their motherland to new countries often name the places
they come across after the names of places familiar to them in
their motherland. But on that account no one has ventured to
place England in America or Australia; and it is strange how such
a mistake should have been committed by Zend scholars in the
present case. For even if a province or country in Central Asia
had been named Airyana Vaejo, we could not have located the
original home in that Province; just as the abode of Varupa
cannot be placed in the land named Varena, which is the Zend
equivalent of VaruQ.a. The whole of Darmesteter's reasoning
must, therefore, be rejected as unsound and illogical, and but