VEDAS & HUMAN DNA I - MAHABHARATA: ARYANS & ARYAN GODS - 3

MAHABHARATA: THE CRADLE OF HUMAN RACE IS AT THE NORTH POLE. In order to understand this series, it is imperative to read the following work of Lokamanya Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS @ http://www.vaidilute.com/books/tilak/... -That human races have preserved their ancient traditions is undoubted, though some or many of them may have become distorted in course of time, and it is for us to see if they do or do not accord with what we know of the ancient man from latest scientific researches. In the case of the Vedic traditions and beliefs, we have the further advantage that they were collected thousands of years ago, and handed down unchanged from that remote time. It is, therefore, not unlikely that we may find traces of the primeval Polar home in these oldest books. If the Aryan man did live within the Arctic circle in early times, especially as a portion of the Ṛig-Veda & Mahabharata is still admittedly unintelligible on any of the existing methods of interpretation, although the words and expressions are plain and simple in many places. The authority for the statement is Manu, I, 67. While describing the divisions of time it says, A year (human) is a day and a night of the Gods; thus are the two divided, the northern passage of the sun is the day and the southern the night.* The day and the night of the Gods are then taken as a unit for measuring longer periods of time as the Kalpas and so on, and Yâskas Nirukta, XIV, 4, probably contains the same reference. Muir, in the first Volume of his Original Sanskrit Texts, gives some of these passages so far as they bear on the yuga-system found in the Purâṇas. But we are not concerned with the later development of the idea that the day and the night of the Gods each lasted for six months. What is important, from our point of view, is the persistent prevalence of this tradition in the Vedic and the Post-Vedic literature, which can only be explained on the hypothesis that originally it must have been the result of actual observation. Mahâbhârata gives a clear description of Mount Meru, the lord of the mountains, as to leave no doubt its being the North Pole, or possessing the Polar characteristics. In chapters 163 and 164 of the Vanaparvan, Arjunas visit to the Mount is described in detail and we are therein told, at Meru the sun and the moon go round from left to right (Pradakṣhiṇam) every day and so do all the stars. Later on the writer informs us: — The mountain, by its lustre, so overcomes the darkness of night, that the night can hardly be distinguished from the day. A few verses further, and we find, The day and the night are together equal to a year to the residents of the place.* These quotations are quite sufficient to convince anyone that at the time when the great epic was composed Indian writers had a tolerably accurate knowledge of the meteorological and astronomical characteristics of the North Pole, and this knowledge cannot be supposed to have been acquired by mere mathematical calculations. The reference to the luster of the mountain is specially interesting, inasmuch as, in all probability, it is a description of the splendors of the Aurora Borealis visible at the North Pole. So far as the Post-Vedic literature is concerned, we have, therefore, not only the tradition of the half-year-long night and day of the Gods persistently mentioned, but the Mount Meru, or the North Pole, is, described with such accuracy as to lead. us to believe that it is an ancient tradition, whose origin must be traced to a time when these phenomena were daily observed by the people; and this is confirmed, by the fact that the tradition is not confined only to the Post-Vedic literature. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with a statement of such facts as plainly indicate the reminiscence of an ancient Arctic home in the traditional literature of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic and Slavonic branches of the Aryan race. We must examine the ancient traditions and beliefs of the race, incorporated in such admittedly oldest Aryan books, as the Vedas (RIG-VEDA, MAHABHARATA, etc.) and the Avesta, and see if they justify us in predicating the inter-glacial existence of the Aryan people.
Lokamanya Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS @ http://www.vaidilute.com/books/tilak/...

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