Page 733 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

CHALDEAN

AND

INDIAN VEDAS

ODe of the most important events of the latter half of the
aio.eteenth century is the discovery of the Chaldean literature u
embodied in the cuneiform inscriptions excavated in Mesopota~
mia and deciphered with great skill, ingenuity and peNCverance by
European icholars. These ancient records conclUiively ihow that
the country at the mouth of the Euphrates was, so far back as
5000 B. C., colonised by a people of the Turanian race who went
there by sea from some distant province, presumably situated in
Northern Asia. These people not only developed a civilization
of their own in Mesopotamia, but what is to the point have left
there a record of their religious beliefs and culture in the form of
brick-inscriptions, which M. Lenormant has aptly described a~;
the Chaldean Veda.
This ancient civilization at the mouth of the Tigris and
Euphrates gradually spread northwards and was the parent of the
Assyrian civilization which flourished about 2000 years before
Christ. It is believed that the Hindus came in contact with Assyrians
after this date, and as a natural result of this intercourse Hindu
culture was largely influenced by the Assyrians. Thus Rudolph
von Ihering, starting with the theory that the original Aryan
home was in an uncultivated mountain district in Central Asia,
"
has, in his work on the Evolution of the Aryans ( Eng. trans. by
Drucker, 1897, pp. 11, 223-4 ), come to the conclusion that the
Aryans were originally a nomadic race unacquainted with agri-
culture, canals, navigation, stone-houses, working in metals,.

• A lecture on this subject was delivered by the late Lok . B. G.
Tilak in the hall of the Bombay Presidency Association Rooms at the
Appollo Bunder, Bombay, on 6 December 1904, in connectiOn with the
Graduates' Association Lecture Series, under the Presidentship of Mr.
K. R. Kama; while this article was contributed .by him to the Blta1Jdal-
kal· Cummemoration Volume with some additions up to date nearly 13 years
later i.e. in July 1917.