Page 570 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 351

fically, the commencement of the current post-Glacial era was,
according to this tradition, not assigned to a period older than
10,000 years before the Christian era. We have shown that
researches in Vedic chronology do not allow us to carry back
the date of the post-Glacial era beyond this estimate, for tradi-
tions of the Arctic home appear to have been well understood
by the bards of the ~ig-Veda in the Orion period. It is, therefore,
almost certain that the invasion of the Arctic Aryan home by
the last Glacial epoch did not take place at a time older than
10,000 B. C. The American geologists, we have seen, have
arrived at the same conclusion on independent scientific grounds;
and when the Vedic and the Pura11ic chronology indicate nearly
the same time-a difference of one or two thousand years, in
such cases, does not matter much,- we may safely reject the
extravagant estimates of 20,000 or 80,000 years and adopt, for
all practical purposes, the view that the last Glacial epoch
closed and the post-Glacial period commenced at about 8,000,
or, at best, about 10,000 B. C.
We have now to consider how the tradition about the exi-
stence of the original home at the North Pole and its destruction
by snow and ice of the Glacial epoch, and other cognate remi-
niscences were preserved until they were incorporated into
the law-book of the Mazdayasnians and the hymns of the ~ig­
Veda. That a real tradition is preserved in these books is undoubt-
ed, for we have seen that an examination of the traditions pre-
served by the European branches of the Aryan race have led Prof.
Rhys to the same conclusion; and those who know the history
of the preservation of our sacred books will see nothing impr()-
bable herein. In these days of writing and printing, we have no
need to depend upon memory, and consequently we fail to
realise what memory, kept under the strictest discipline, is
capable of achieving. The whole of the ~ig-Veda, nay the Veda
and its nine supplementary books, have been preserved by the
Brahmins of India, letter for letter and accent for accent, for
the last 3000 or 4000 years at least; and priests who have done
so in recent times may well be credited with having faithfully
preserved the traditions of the ancient home, until they were
incorporated into the sacred books. These achievements of
disciplined memory may appear marvellous to us at present; but
as stated above, they were looked upon as ordinary feats when