Page 534 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE A VESTIC EVIDENCB 315
memory, of the great catastrophe which overtook the northern
portion of Eur9pe and Asia in ancient times, and obliged the
Aryan inhabitants of the Arctic regions to migrate southwards.
It has been preserved during thousands of years simply as an
ancient record or tradition, though its meaning was not intelli-
gible, until at last we now see that the accuracy of the account
is fully and unexpectedly borne out by the latest scientific rese-
arches. There are very few instances where science bas proved
the accuracy of the ancient semi-religious records in this way.
When the position of the Airyana Va€ljo and the cause of its
ruin are thus definitely settled both by traditional and scientific
evidence, it naturally follows that the sixteen lands mentioned
in the first Fargard of the Vendidad must be taken to mark the
gradual diffusion of the Iranians from their ancient home to
the country of the Rasa and the seven rivers; or, in other words,
the Fargard must be regarded as historical and not geographical
as maintained by Spiegel and Darmesteter. It is true that the first
Fargard does not say anything about migration. But when the
site of the Airyana Va~jo is placed in the extreme north, and
when we are told in the second Fargard that the land was ruined
by ice, no specific mention of migration is needed, and the fact
that the sixteen lands are mentioned in a certain specific order
is naturally understood, in that case, to mark the successive
stages of migration of the Indo-Iranian people. It is not con-
tended that every word in these two Fargards may be histori-
cally correct. No one would expect such a rigid accuracy in the
reminiscences of old times traditionally preserved. It is also
true that the Airyana Va~jo bas grown into a sort of mythical
land in the later Parsi literature, somewhat like Mount Meru,
the seat of Hindu gods, in the Purat~as. But for all that we
cannot deny that in the account of the Airyana Va€ljo in the
first two Fargards of the Vendidad we have a real historical
reminiscence of the Arctic cradle of the Iranian or the Aryan
races, and that the Fargard gives us a description of the coun-
tries through which the lndo-lranians bad to pass before they
settled in the Hapta Hepdu or on the floods of Rangha, at the
beginning of the post-Glacial period.
This story of the destruction of the original home by ice
may well be compared with the story of deluge found in the
Indian literature. The oldest of these accounts is contained in