Page 555 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

336 SAMAGRA Tn.AK- 2 • THB ARCTIC HOME
Rhys' remarks and quote the concluding paragraph which runs
·as follows :-
" Thus the voice of recent research is raised very decidedly
in favour of Europe, though there is no complete unanimity as
·to the exact portion of Europe, to regard as the early home
of the Aryans; but the competition tends to lie between North
Germany and Scandinavia, especially the south of Sweden.
This last would probably do well enough as the country in which
the Aryans may have consolidated and organized themselves
before beginning to send forth their excess of population to
conquer the other lands now possessed by nations speaking
Aryan languages. Nor can one forget that all the great states
of modem Europe, except that of the sick man, trace their
history back to the conquest of the Norsemen who set out from
the Scandinavian land, which Jordanis proudly calls officina
gentium and vagina natiomum. But I doubt whether the teachings,
of evolution may not force us to trace them still further towards
the North : in any case, the mythological indications to which
your attention has been called, point, if I am not mistaken, to
some spot within the Arctic Circle, such, for example, as the
region where Norse legend placed the Land of Immortality,
somewhere in the north of Finland and the neighbourhood of
~he White Sea. There would, perhaps, be no difficulty in the
way of supposing them to have thence in due time descended
into Scandinavia, settling, among other places, at Upsala,
which has all the appearance of being a most ancient site, lying
as it does on a plain dotted with innumerable burial mounds
of unknown antiquity. This, you will bear in mind, has to do
only with the origin of the early Aryans, and not with that of
the human race generally; but it would be no fatal objection
to the view here suggested, if it should be urged that the mytho-
logy of nations beside the Aryans, such as that of the Papblago-
nians, in case of their not being Aryan, point likewise to the
north; for it is not contended that the Aryans may be the only
people of northern origin. Indeed, I may add that a theory was
not long ago, propounded by a distinguished French savant,
to the effect that the entire human race originated on the shores
of the Polar Sea at a time when the rest of the northern hemis-
phere was too hot to be inhabited by man. M. de Saporta, for
that is the learned writer's name, explains himself in clear and