Page 539 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

320 SAMAGRA TlLAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
a people and a city called Ottorocorra is mentioned by
Ptolemy, and Lassen thinks that Megasthenes had the Uttara
Kurus in view when he referred to the Hyperboreans. Muir
concludes this section with a passage from the Saf!khyayana
or the Kau~hitaki Brahmaf!a ( VII, 6 ) where Pathya Svasti, or
the goddess of speech, is said to know the northern region
( udich£m disham ), and we are told that " Hence in the northern
region speech is better known and better spoken, and it is to
the north that men go to learn speech. " Muir thinks that some
faint reminiscence of an early connection with the north may
be traced in these passages. But none of them are conclusive,
nor have we any indication therein of the original home being
in the Arctic regions, as we have in the case of the Vedic passages
discussed previously which speak of the long, continuous dawn
and night, or a year of ten months. We may, however, take the
passages cited by Muir as corroborative evidence and they have
been referred to here in the same light. It is upon the Vedic
passages and legends examined in the previous chapters and the
Avestic evidence discussed above that we mainly rely for esta-
blishing the existence of the primeval Aryan home in the Arctic
regions; and when both these are taken together we get direct
traditional testimony for holding that the original home of the
Aryan races was situated near the North Pole and not in Central
Asia, that it was destroyed by the advent of the Glacial epoch,
and that the Indo-Iranians, who were compelled to leave the
country, migrated southwards, and passing through several
provinces of Central Asia eventually settled in the valleys of
the Oxus, the Indus, the Kubha, and the Rasa, from which
region we see them again migrating, the Indians to the east a11d
the Persians to the west at the early dawn of the later traditional
history.