Page 537 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

318 SAMAGRA 1'ILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

2500 B. C., from the fact that it expressly assigns to the KrittikAs,
or the Pleiades, a position in the due east. It is evident therefore,
that the story of the deluge is Aryan in origin, and in that case
the A vestic and the Vedic account of the deluge must be traced
to the same source. It may also be remarked that Yima, who
I
is said to have constructed the Vara in the Avesta, is there
described as the son of Vivanghat; and Manu, the hero in the
Indian story, though he receives no epithet in the account of the
deluge in the Shatapatha Br;ihmaJ?.a, is very often described in
the Vedic literature as the son of Vivasvat ( Vaivasvata ), the
Iranian Vivanghat, ( Shat. Brah. XIII, 4, 3, 3; ~ig. VIII, 52, 1 ).
Yama is also expressly called Vaivasvata in the ~g-Veda (X,
14, 1 ). This shows that in spite of the fact that Yima is the hero
in one account and Manu in the other, and that one is said to
be the deluge of ice and the other of water, we may regard the
two accounts as referring to the same geological phenomenon.*
The Avestic account is, however, more specific than that in the
Shatapatha Bdhma~a, and as it is corroborated, almost in every
detail, by the scientific evidence regarding the advent of the
Glacial epoch in early times, it follows that the tradition
preserved in the two Fargards of the Vendidad is older than that
in the Shatapatha Br;1hmal]a. Dr. Haug has arrived at a similar
conclusion on linguistic grounds. Speaking about the passage
in the Vendidad he says " the original document is certainly
of high antiquity and is undoubtedly one of the oldest of the pieces
which compose the existing Vendidad. " The mention of Hapta
• The story of the deluge is found al~o m other Aryan Mytho-
logies. The following extract from Grote's History of Greece (Vol. r,
Chap. 5) gives the Greek version of the story and some of the inci-
dents therein bear striking resemblance to the incidents in the story
of Manu:-
" The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated-as
Apollod6rus says, by the then existing brazen race, or as others say,
by the fifty monstrous sons of Lyka6n-provoked Zeus to send a
general deluge. An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of
Greece under water, except the highest mounain-tops, whereon a few
stragglers found refuge. Deukalion was saved in a chest or ark, which
he had been forewarned by his father Prometheus to construct. After
floating for nine days on the water he at length landed on the summit
of Mount Parnasses, Zeus having sent Hermes to him, promising to