Page 573 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

354 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 .. THE ARCTIC HOME

that we begin to search for it in the light thrown upon the sub-
ject by modern scientific researches.
But if the fact of an early Aryan home in the north is
once established by indisputable traditional evidence, it is sure
to revolutionise the existing views regarding the primitive
history or religion of the Aryan races. Comparative philologists
and Sanskritists, who looked for the primeval home " some-
where in Central Asia " have advanced the theory that the
whole progress of the Aryan race, intellectual, social or moral
from primeval savagery to such civilisation a is disclosed by
the Vedic hymns, was effected on the plains of Central Asia.
It wa on these plain , we are told, that our oldest ancestors gazed
upon the wonders of dawn or the rising sun with awe and asto-
nishment, or reverentially watched the torm-clouds hovering
in the sky to be eventualJy broken up by the god of rain and
thunder, thereby giv;ng ri e to the worship of natural elements
and thu laying down the foundations of later Aryan mythology.
It wa on these plains that they learnt the art of weaving, the
products of which superseded the use of hides for clothing,
or constructed their chariots, or trained their horses, or dis-
covered the use of metals like gold and silver. In short, all the
civilisation and culture which Comparative Philology proves
on linguistic grounds to have been common to the different
Aryan races before their separation is regarded to have first
originated or developed on the plains of Central Asia in post-
Glacial times. Dr. Schrader, in his Prehistoric Antiquities of the
Aryan People, gives us an exhaustive summary of facts and
arguments regarding primitive Aryan culture and civilisation
which can be deduced from Linguistic PalaJlogy, or Compa-
rative Philology, and as a repertory of such facts the book stands
unrivalled. But we must remember that the results of Compa-
rative Philology, howsoever interesting and instructive they may
be from the linguistic or the historical point of view, are apt to
mislead us if we know not the site of the original home, or the
time when it was inhabited or abandoned by the ancestors of
our race. Comparative Philology may teach us that cow was
an animal known and domesticated before the Aryan separa-
tion. or that the art of weaving was known in those old days,
because the words ' cow ' and ' weave ' can be traced in all the
Aryan language . But it is now found that equations li ke these