Page 562 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 343
the oldest Roman year ending in December or the tenth month,
are the principal instances on the point; and they have been
fully discussed in the foregoing chapters. I have also shown
that the knowledge of the half-year-long day or night is not
confined to the traditions of the eastern Aryas, but is common
also to the European branches of the Aryan race. The tradition
preserved in the Vendidad about the ancient Iranian Paradise
in the far north, so that a year was equal to a day to the inhabi-
tants thereof, and its destruction by snow and ice burying the
land under a thick ice-cap, again affords the most striking and
cogent proof of the theory we have endeavoured to prove in
these pages. Thus if the traditions of the western Aryas point
out, according to Prof. Rhys, to Finland or the White Sea as
the original home of the Aryan people, the Vedic and the
Avestic traditions carry us still farther to the north; for a con-
tinuous dawn of thirty days is possible only within a few degrees
of the North Pole. But though the latitude of the original home
can be thus ascertained more or less definitely, yet there is unfor-
tunately nothing in these traditions which will enable us to
determine the longitude of the place, or, in other words,
whether the original home of the Aryan race was to the north
of Europe or Asia. But considering the fact that the traditions
of the original Polar home are better preserved in the sacred
books of the Brahmins and the Parsis, it is not unlikely that the
primeval home was located to the north of Siberia rather than to the
north of Russia or Scandinavia. It is, however, useless to speculate
on the point without further proof. The Vedic and the A vestic
evidence clearly establish the existence of a primeval Polar home,
the climate of which was mild and temperate in ancient times,
before it was invaded by the Glacial epoch; and with this result we
must rest content, until we get sufficient new materials to ascertain
the exact position of the Aryan home within the Arctic regions.
We commenced the book with a summary of the results of the
latest geological and archreological researches regarding the history
of primitive humanity and the invasion of northern Europe and
Asia by a series of glacial epochs in the Quarternary era. This
discussion was prefixed to the book with the object of clearing up
certain misapprehensions regarding the early history of our planet
based on knowledge derived from older geological works, when
man was believed to be post-glacial and it will now be seen that our