Page 572 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 353
the orth Pole, where alone a long dawn of thirty days is pos i-
ble. Whether other human races, beside the Aryan, lived with
them in the circum-polar country i a que tion which does not
fall within the purview of this book. Dr. Warren, in hi Paradise
Found, ha cited Egyptian, Akkadian Assyrian, Babylonian,
Chinese and even J a pane e tradition indicating the existence
of an Arctic home of these races in ancient time ; and from a
con ideration of all these he arrives at the conclusion that the
cradle of the -.rhole human race must be placed in the circum-
polar region , a conclu ion in which he i al o supported by
other cholars. But, as bserved by Prof. Rhy , it is no fatal
objection to the view we have endeavoured to prove in these
pages that the mythologies of nations, be ide the Aryan, also
point to the North Pole a their original home; for it is not con-
tended that the Aryans may be the only people of northern
origin. On the contrary, there are grounds to believe that the
five races of men ( pancha janul; ) often mentioned in the ~ig­
Veda may have been the race which Jived with the Aryans in
their original home, for we cannot suppose that the Vedic Aryans
after their dispersion from the original home met only with five
races in their migrations, or were divided only into five branches.
But the que tion i one which can be finally decided only after
a good deal of further re earch; and as it is not necessary to mix
it up with the questi n of the original home of the Aryans, we
may leave it out for the pre ent. If the orth Pole is conclusively
hown to be the cradle of the human race hereafter it would
not affect in the least the conclusion we have drawn in these
pages from a number of definite Vedic and Avestic traditions,
but if the existence of the Aryan home near the North Pole is
proved, as we have endeavoured to do in the ~ regoing pages,
by independent testimony, it is sure to strengthen the probabi-
lity of the northern home of the whole human race; and as
the traditions of the Aryan people are admittedly better preserv-
ed in the eda and the A vesta than those of any other race, it
is safer and even desir blc to tr at the question of the primeval
Aryan home independently of the general problem taken up
by Dr. Warren and other scholars. That the Veda and the
Avesta are the oldest books of the Aryan race is now conceded
by all, and we have seen that it is not difficult to ascertain. from
traditions contained therein, the site of the Aryan Paradise, now
A. 23