Page 584 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION 365

human races, or how and where the Aryan speech was developed,
are important questions from the anthropological point of view,
but we have, at present, no means to answer the same satisfactorily.
It is quite possible that other human races might have lived with
the Aryans in their home at this time; but the Vedic evidence
is silent on this point. The existence of the human race is traced by
geologists to the Tertiary era; and it is now geologically certain
that the gigantic changes wrought on this globe by glacial epochs
were witnessed by man. But anthropology does not supply us with
any data from which we can ascertain when, where, or how the
human race came to be differentiated according to colour or
language. On the contrary, it is now proved that at the earliest
date at which human remains have been found, the race was
already divided into several sharply distinguished types; and this,
as observed by Laing, leaves the question of man's ultimate origin
completely open to speculation, and enables both monogenists
and polygenists to contend for their respective views with plausible
arguments and without fear of being refuted by facts.* The evi-
dence, set forth in the foregoing pages, does not enable us to
solve any of these questions regarding the ultimate origin of the
human race or even of the Aryan people or their language and
religion. We have nothing in this evidence for ascertaining how
far the existence of the Aryan race can be traced back to pre-
Glacial, as distinguished from inter-Glacial times; or whether
the race was descended from a single pair ( monogeny ) or plurality
of pairs ( polygeny ) in the remotest ages. The traditional evidence
collected by us only warrants us in taking back the Aryan people
and their civilisation from the Temperate zone in post-Glacial
to the Arctic regions in inter-Glacial times. It is true that Aryans
and their culture or religion cannot be supposed to have developed
all of a sudden at the close of the last inter-Glacial period, and
the ultimate origin of both must, therefore, be placed in remote
geological times. But it is useless to speculate on this question
without further evidence, and in the present state of our
knowledge we must rest content with the result that though
Aryan race or religion can be traced to the last inter-Glacial
period yet the ultimate origin of both is still lost in geological
antiquity.
" Laing's Human Origins, pp; 404- s.