Page 600 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION · 381
originate with the Vedic bards, but was derived by them from
their inter-Glacial forefathers and preserved in the. forms of
hymns for the benefit of posterity; and if any one wants to trace
the very beginnings of the Aryan civilisation he must go back
beyond the last-Glacial period, and see how the ancestors of
the Aryan race lived and-worked in their primeval Polar home.
Unfortunately we have very few materials for ascertaining the
degree of this civilisation. But we think we have shewn that
there are grounds to hold that the inter-Glacial Aryan civilisa-
tion and culture must have been of a higher type than what it
is usually supposed to be; and that there is no reason why the
primitive Aryan should not be placed on an equal footing with
the pre-historic inhabitants of Egypt in point of culture and
civilisation. The vitality and superiority of the Aryan races, as
disclosed by their conquest, by extermination or assimilation,
of the non-Aryan races, with whom they came in contact in
their migrations in search of new lands from the North Pole to
the Equator, if not to the farther south, is intelligible only on
the assumption of a high degree of civilisation in their original
Arctic home; and when the Vedas come to be further examined
in the light of the Arctic theory, we may certainly expect to dis-
cover therein many other facts, which will further support this
view, but which are still hidden from us owing to our imperfect
knowledge of the physical and social surroundings amidst which
the ancestors of the Vedic :B.i~his lived near the North Pole in
times before the Glacial epoch. The exploration of the Arctic
Jegions which is being carried on at present, may also help us
hereafter in our investigation of the beginnings of the Aryan
civilisation. But all these things must be left to be done by future
investigators when the theory of the Arctic home of the Aryans
comes to be generally recognised as a scientific fact. Our object
at present is to show that there is enough evidence in the Veda
and the A vesta to establish the existence of an Arctic home in
inter-Glacial times; and the reader, who has followed us in our
arguments, set forth in the preceding pages, will at once perceive
that the theory we have endeavoured to prove, is based on a
solid foundation of express text and passages traditionally pre-
served in the two oldest books of the Aryan race, and that it is
.amply fortified by independent corroboration received from
.the latest results of the correlative sciences, like Geology,