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The Arctic Home in the Vedas
The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a seminal work on the origin of Aryans presented by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a mathematician turned astronomer, historian, journalist, philosopher and political leader of India during 1880 to 1920. It propounded the theory that North Pole was the original home of Aryans during pre-glacial period which they had to leave due to the ice deluge around 8000 B.C. and had to migrate to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands for new settlements. In support to his theory Tilak has presented certain Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic chronology and Vedic calendars with interpretations of the contents in detail. The book was written at the end of 1898 but was first published in March 1903 in Pune.
The book has about 500 pages containing a Preface by the Author and thirteen chapters viz 1. ‘Prehistoric Times’ 2. The Glacial Period 3. The Arctic Regions 4. The Night of the Gods 5.The Vedic Dawns 6. Long Day and Long Night 7. Months and Seasons 8. The Cow’s Walk 9. Vedic Myths – The Captive Waters 10. Vedic Myths – The Matutinal Deities 11. The Avestic Evidence 12. Comparative Mythology. 13. The Bearing of our Results on the History of Primitive Aryan Culture and Religion. At the end, a General Index and Index of Vedic and Avestic Passages are given.
The book has about 500 pages containing a Preface by the Author and thirteen chapters viz 1. ‘Prehistoric Times’ 2. The Glacial Period 3. The Arctic Regions 4. The Night of the Gods 5.The Vedic Dawns 6. Long Day and Long Night 7. Months and Seasons 8. The Cow’s Walk 9. Vedic Myths – The Captive Waters 10. Vedic Myths – The Matutinal Deities 11. The Avestic Evidence 12. Comparative Mythology. 13. The Bearing of our Results on the History of Primitive Aryan Culture and Religion. At the end, a General Index and Index of Vedic and Avestic Passages are given.
282 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1903
About the author
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
31 books43 followersBal Gangadhar Tilak (Marathi: बाळ गंगाधर टिळक 23 July 1856 - 1 August 1920), was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer and independence fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called the great leader as "Father of the Indian unrest". He was also conferred with the honorary title of Lokmanya, which literally means "Accepted by the people (as their leader)". Tilak was one of the first and strongest advocates of "Swaraj" (self-rule) in Indian consciousness. His famous quote, "Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!" is well-remembered in India even today.
Tilak was among one of the first generation of Indians to receive a college education. Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890. He opposed its moderate attitude, especially towards the fight for self government. He was one of the most eminent radicals at the time.
In 1891 Tilak opposed the Age of Consent bill. The act raised the age at which a girl could get married from 10 to 12. The Congress and other liberals supported it, but Tilak was set against it, terming it an interference with Hinduism.
His most famous book is The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903) in which Tilak claimed that Vedic hymns and Avestan texts might reveal that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during the pre-glacial period, which they left due to climate changes around 8000 B.C., migrating to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia. The book had great influence on Hindu nationalists as on European far-right groups.
Tilak was among one of the first generation of Indians to receive a college education. Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890. He opposed its moderate attitude, especially towards the fight for self government. He was one of the most eminent radicals at the time.
In 1891 Tilak opposed the Age of Consent bill. The act raised the age at which a girl could get married from 10 to 12. The Congress and other liberals supported it, but Tilak was set against it, terming it an interference with Hinduism.
His most famous book is The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903) in which Tilak claimed that Vedic hymns and Avestan texts might reveal that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during the pre-glacial period, which they left due to climate changes around 8000 B.C., migrating to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia. The book had great influence on Hindu nationalists as on European far-right groups.
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April 23, 2012
In this book written more than 100 years ago, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, discusses the antiquity of the Rk Vedas, of the Aryans and of the possible original home of the Aryans as being somewhere near the Arctic (North Pole) region. By Aryans are meant those people who inhabited India since ancient times and also authored the ancient Vedic texts like the Rk Vedas.
He has used two texts to support his thesis:
a. The Vedas contain many obscure passages whose meaning become clear when seen from the point of view of an ancient Arctic home
b. The Avesta talks about the "happy land of Airyana Vaêjo" which was "located in a region where the sun shone but once a year, and that it was destroyed by the invasion of snow and ice" which necessitated the southward migration of the Aryans from the Arctic region.
As a read, this book is very engrossing. It is an interesting, well-researched, rational and scientific re-look and re-interpretation of the Vedic and Avestic passages which seem to convincingly demonstrate both direct and indirect memories of an ancient Arctic homeland going back 10,000 years or more.
Overall, a brilliant book and a must read for people looking for a different take on Vedic Aryans in India.
He has used two texts to support his thesis:
a. The Vedas contain many obscure passages whose meaning become clear when seen from the point of view of an ancient Arctic home
b. The Avesta talks about the "happy land of Airyana Vaêjo" which was "located in a region where the sun shone but once a year, and that it was destroyed by the invasion of snow and ice" which necessitated the southward migration of the Aryans from the Arctic region.
As a read, this book is very engrossing. It is an interesting, well-researched, rational and scientific re-look and re-interpretation of the Vedic and Avestic passages which seem to convincingly demonstrate both direct and indirect memories of an ancient Arctic homeland going back 10,000 years or more.
Overall, a brilliant book and a must read for people looking for a different take on Vedic Aryans in India.
September 23, 2020
One can’t top Subhodeep’s review (below) and it was so many years ago I read this book I now just recall faent’s of it.
But I would like in honor and commemoration to Tilak, and in order to inspire people to read more on such works like his, to add some matters here that strongly confirm the validity of Tilak’s demonstrations and which take his theory even deeper to back it up, not just back to 8K BC as he does - which one could write a whole book on the history of if one knows how to look - but to 100 times that, to even 800K BC, when all cultures speak of the early 3rd House of Man going through something momentous (the 864K Cycle) - which we may go through again soon here in the 6th beginning - and then them coming down into Eurasia from the North.
First the cycle: today it seems scientists don’t yet realize they are on the verge of discovering one of the most important, key, rhythms to earth’s recurring cataclysmic cycles (the 864K). They may not though - they could just barely miss it to the detriment of future generations.
They know the last inversal of the magnetic poles was around 867K-778K BC when occured
1. the Great Siberian Explosion
2. the Brunhes-Matuyama Cataclysmic Ice Age and
3. the Australasian Strewnfield
(Brunhes being the strongest Ice Age after “the big 5” extinction events - the more recent ice ages back around 11K and even 111K from present being paltry by comparison to this one around 1.1M; to roughly estimate using the sacred 1,111 calendar).
As well, they also know we are, 777K odd years later, now exponentially headed toward a magnetic pole inversal again today soon with the amount “gravitational true North” is shifting it’s position from Canada to Siberia having picked up in speed 4 times quicker than it’s rate of movement before the 1990’s.
https://youtu.be/sPVr45IchX0
What they don’t somehow tie together though is that it seems, more likely than not, devastational pole slippage jumps when magnetic poles reverse and that this occurs on a cycle. This jump happens oddly whenever magnetic pole reversal happens in earth’s 777 + pralaya period (864K) cycle all ancient lore speaks on (especially Hinduism on the 864K cycle - see below how all cultures’ mention this cycle in their greater chronologies).
As Hapgood and Graham Hancock show though in their alternative but sometimes cutting edge field of scientific enquiry, it is essential for mankind’s preservation to understand this occurs. These two, alongside Robert Schock and Lady Hahn all go to great lengths showing the factuality of it and quickened continental drift at such times (though only Hahn was aware of this 777-864-930K range cycle, even if it be just one among many cycles of recurring cataclysm the ancient lore’s all reveal).
Very basically going back to these times - to touch on their Geography and Anthropology and leave the chronology of the devastation cycle that happened during it aside for a minute - North China was it’s own separate continent then as Plate Tectonics shows from 4.5DM to 867K range and even before. Science also knows this North China got pushed into the mainland in the (Trans) Siberian Explosion so that now it is the Shamo desert - where per lore “Shambhalla” is said to be located (aye, more before it was pushed, for it was a heavenly city but also for awhile after too there was a center called Shambhalla that was key in the Shamo, see Lady Hahn especially on this, though there are other sources). But what science does not know is that Pliny the Elder had a name for such separated North China island: “Ossericte Isle, land where all kingship of Man descended from.”
Rudbeck, being too anachronistically patriotic showed in his Atlantica that Norway was this Ossericte. But that is sloppy: Norway is the lower leftover of a center of a massive Northern land in mid to early Atlantean times called Belus Zeus land by the Greeks (hence Bel-gium below it), “Broceliand” in British and French Lore (Boreas and Celleria were once one) and “Boars Land” in Irish (see Vallancey), Yorke and Vishnu Purana accounting (India once being Boar Land’s “dragging Southeast hind part” in the North Pacific and part and parcel with it connecting beyond Japan, then all the way down to a Southern massive landmass in the Atlantean period called Atalas).
Now Ossiriand, I mean Ossericte, was a part of Boar or Borea or Hyborea Land variously called (see Guenon’s excellent article on such) on it’s mid-east before the hilly Hind(us) land. But the two, Norway and Ossericte, were distinct parts of it. So Rudbeck was only half right.
Ossericte split off as this land that Gurdjieff calls Iranan above Maralpleicie (which connected to Atalas and was part of the ring of fire and a vestige crest of Mu). From Iranan came the first King of Man of the second house of man after the fall of Atlantis Major; and T. calls Hind in his clever similitude’s Hildorien above Sunland then morphing into Utter Rhune in the furthest Northeast where man-form first more formally arose also per he (no T. and Gurdjieff weren’t working together or passing notes). On T.’s chapter in the Silmarillion on Maeglin he literally takes a chapter out of Norse lore and mentions him going up over Asgard unto Ossiriand in the time of the first arising of man-form.
Now, panning through this period’s ages, Ossericte lasted from 4.5DM to 867K till it sank in the 867K Cataclysm (T. probably going back not to 4.5DM but 11DM rather like Cremo in his calculations though for man first arising in the 1st House - at a later time I will show what DM means and how it coincides all archaic chronologies with modern calculations of mainstream science). Before this time were more beings like those mentioned in my review of Otherkin.
After the 867K sink the new hub for humanity was not in the North Pacific but the North Atlantic, the new hub became Daitya, Kasyapa’s isle (Cirdan) from 867K till it sank in 640K there off Northern France as somehow Solinus makes inference of the people of.
The real out of Africa event was from this Isle onto the Saharra via Hesperides; not vice versa. And then when this Daitya Isle, called Poseidon Isle by the Greeks and by Plato, sank in 640K then Hesiod’s Herculeid period really followed strong, yet beginning around 700K, till fading now. It is the same as India’s Indra period (their Hercules) when he arose shortly after Kasyapa.
The Hindu scriptures say Indra’s period of robust beings was destroyed by hanuman the ape man (around 280K when Neanderthals arise. Before them Heidelbergensis around from 700K to 300K were just some minor aberration species spun off in the West Atlantic from a very high robust form of unknown skeleton and being not yet found, or repressed whenever it is there is some evidence)...Also in egyptian religion they show Hapi the ape man coming in at the next period and the Greek’s have a similar ape character as well and also speak of the fleet footed harpies, half creature half human, ending the Herculeid period.
Muhammed mentions this degradation period in a mysterious poem of his regarding an isle called something similar to the isle G. calls Balioudos in the Atlantic where women ceased to be able to have humans anymore at a certain phase, and T.’s Balar in the Atlantic where Cirdan (Kasyapa) last rested after his own isle sank (Daitya in 640K).
So much for a sweeping geographic overview of the periods before and after the last cataclysm hit on this cycle and a bit of esoteric anthropology.
Returning to the important continent in question itself that transmorphed and sank then in part: North China separated as Ossericte from 4.5-867K. In such time more formally there I argue man form first arose as does Lady Hahn show this and Ibn El Arabi (and see the Subashi witch mummies in Shamo for the last vestiges of them though they are but a paltry 6 thousand years old at most).
Many more traditions mention this land or isle in the Arctic North. It is in the Brenton edition of the Septuagint, where is retained more clearly than any other schachermachery translation, the three different Prophets speaking of all this. One speaks of a Mount Seir situated to the furthest reaches of the Northeast (Siberia) and then he says beyond it there being once a so noble island chain “like a grapevine going over the great sea and connecting the two lands” called “Aiseroom where the mighty tall reknown Ashers came out from” and they say they “went down into the sea, sunk and were of great might” (Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah).
Gurdjieff confirms a good deal of detail on this land which first arose as Iranan atop Maralpleicie as I already mentioned; he says it went under with (one of) the sinkings of “Atlantis.”
Now such land was called also Ruta per Lady Hahn, for she says after Atlantis Majora fell in the North and South in 4.5DM then arose Ruta and Adaitya in the utter North and Mid Pacific respectively until they sank in 867K. This she got from the timeless Thibetan Book of Dyzan and it is confirmed by Rutulius Namatianus from 500’s AD when he says all true noble Roman Kingline’s are most pure that come from the Rutulians in the uttermost Northeast (3rd House). Probably Russia far to the West of such got it’s name from this Rhuta (Aiser-room/rhune/rhuta). Ridgeway the historian confirms Namatianus’ claims as does Evola concerning the Kingship lines.
Hindu’s later called this land of the Asura’s Uttaru Kuru (literally land of the Northern Lord Kings) and located it to their Northwest for then it “was” to Hind’s Northwest though today we would describe it as being Northeast of presently situated India.
But does native China lore itself, so part and parcel to such, not mention this land? They do, as does Buddhist lore, calling Aiseroom of the Ashers: Agartha of the Apsaras and Asuras; where in or nearby Shambhalla was and which sunk and was transformed in the Flood of Peirun.
Also Norse lore speaks of it as Asgard of the Asa’s where nearby or upon it within the removable (“alien/angelic”) isle Valhalla (Shambhalla) in a sense was (though I know there is a more metaphysical understanding to such as well as this historio-geo-sacral key). From there came out the Asa’s - a transitional “man” between beings before us and present scruffolous man - they whom they called Asher’s in the Old Testament and described as “the people before the people.” They were called Asana by the Japanese, Aisors by the Greek Ashoks, Asura’s (“not gods” who came after the “Suras/gods”) by the Hindu’s and for the Dorian Greek’s: Acheans and Aeschines (most ancient seer race, born seers, per Arran, biographer of Alexander the Great) and they being of the lesser cycle Achilles Bronze era (now everywhere lost in records of per Photius).
I have come across old Japanese texts translated by the first European Sinologists in France running in the circles of Klaproth and Remussat where it even gives the date of 830 or 860 thousand years ago for the great cataclysm (and these french scholars didn’t know of such figures to have a desire to imaginatively extrapolate such into their translations).
The emminent Princeton graduate and Mayan scholar David Stuart
https://youtu.be/H2CK_HFsg7g
(See 13 minutes in)
has found the king cycles on the Mayan temples. They coincide to my different time cycles or gears largely I am mentioning besides present and future (6 others I show; an upper and lower eso, meso and exo time gears of different repeating size overlapping), and he gives some translations of dates of some of them and their events going back in particular to this period in years also.
But most of all this dating for Osericte and the Brunhes Cataclysm is implied by Lady Hahn, the Arya Samaj’s calculations among the Hindu’s and the illustrious scientist of evolution (devolution) Michael Cremo; they all state the Iron age of man is supposed to last 432K years and began in 3,102 BC and the Bronze Age (Dvapara Yuga) is said to last 864K years before that one: hence 867K BC for it’s beginning.
So a new era began per Hinduism in 867K. Al Biruni was only half right in saying a most ancient Northern Hindic city retained record the last age of man ended 432K years ago in his Chronology of Ancient Nations.
By the way, there are 86,400 seconds in a day and any Nasa scientist will tell you seconds are not an arbitrary unit but based on very precise solar and planetary timing. A month or 30 of these 864K periods make Gurdjieff’s Sacred Objective Year that all time in the cosmos is fractionalized by per him on his chapter on Time. It appears a month or 28 or so of Great Years (31,108 years) makes this 864K Cycle, and there is a reason there are 28 days to the moon cycle and 28 years to Chronos/Chronologia’s (Saturn’s) cycle. These are how the months on the different time levels on the lateral gears interlock as a hint. Daniel’s 864 yr mini cycle is clearly totalled to such figure when reading the Brenton edition of the Septuagint. And Gurdjieff told Bennett (whom my Spiritual Godfather’s teacher trained under) that there are two 12,800 year half periods in a great year (probably minus their mini-extinction pralaya periods added that would total them to more 31,108 not 25,692 years) and that man is presently approaching the end of the first one or two of the two halves of the great year we are now in.
This means then that the last one would have been around the younger dryas great devastation mentioned by all cultures not just Plato and that was in 9,654 BC as Gurdjieff shows too when combining what he said with precise Hebrew tradition dating on the so called Noahic (Samothracian) flood being in 3,254 BC. For he says the real great flood was 70 one hundred year generations before the Noahic per the Ashoks: 7K years before 3,254 is about 10,254. That is when the first ice age shock hit as Robert Schock reminds us all science shows happened: about 1K years before the great flood finalized and ended in 9,654 BC. This also coincides with Lady Hahn’s dating the great flood to 9,654 BC and ties into the Dardanic Dogerland flood she dates at 6,122 BC (“just after the true and greater Trojan War, history now has forgotten”) and the Noahic she calls Samothracian of around 3,250 BC per her lunar calculations but in 3,102 it finalized when Kali Yuga began and Krishna sunk in his isle.
Tony in the Mallorn publication did well in revealing T’s similitude’s that indicate the same three dates for the “exoteric” understanding of his “ages” and which T. says exoterically are 3 thousand some years each; and the extensive chronological figures he gives out for when these fall being the same.
See we do know science shows a small but very considerable level ice age occurs on earth every 28K years. And they note such occurring 28K, 56K, 84K, 111K (a larger one) and so on back.
So it may be it will be a little before 12,800 years from the 9,654 BC cataclysm (four 3,200 yr cycles) when the next ice age or lava cataclysm will be around 3,146 AD; just about 1,111 years from 2036 AD (another important date).
James Earl Jones narrated a really excellent documentary on the Great Year available on Youtube. If we basically have a great year established of about 25,692 to 31,108 years and it last began around 10K or 9K BC then we only have a thousand or two thousand years before another world flood as Nostradamus predicted coming soon at the end of his book recent documentaries have been made on (Lady Hahn mentions it too in SDII).
Recent man colonization will begin again then, so now is a seed time of packing up and preparing for this. When one day we discover the uniformitarian cataclysms which occur to earth it will be important to remember Gurdjieff’s law he republished of the ancients that all happens astrologically with suns and planets right before and right after they are crossing paths with each other. For those are the maximum tension points on the octave just after the beginning and just before the end; even as two people passing each other on a tight sidewalk feel the maximum tension right before they pass each other and as they are parting. I think we will discover double cataclysms occur on either end of the half and whole mark’s of the Great Year (even as we had the ice age in 11K BC but the main devastation in 9,564 BC on the last markation point; so 4 total a cycle).
Also, if there is an even greater cataclysm cycle falling at the end of some 864K cycle not fully finished out yet (for the earth, like women, gives birth to cycles on the 9.3 mark as Hesiod and Rodney Collin mention) then this could be massive soon; maybe around 55K years from now that will happen (930K from the last really great cataclysm in 867K).
Lady Hahn says Hinduism intimate’s a pralaya occured from 867K-730K where creation reverses itself; appearantly much like the very interesting recent movie Annihilation with Jennifer Jason Leigh where all creation minimizes and melds (and shrinks per Hinduism!) species at a quickened rate in a sort of re-generating re-versal.
On such land and times then I could speak long on the Indians “Aztlan” the earliest conquistadors record the Indians claimed was above the sawtooth mountains; and on the Hopi’s forbidden back door Bear Pass they claimed they did not come into America by; but I end with Morrison trained by a great Indian Shaman.
He sings of the wonderful golden early summer age of man up in the Northeast and the woe of loosing that time into now, as if those people were singing such to us softly from their own voice into our ear mourning, warning us of our time now at it’s end phase that was theirs:
“Summer’s almost gone
Where will we be
when the summer’s gone?
Morning found us calmly unaware
Milled/Membered gold into our hair
At night we swim the *Lapinth Sea*
When Summer’s gone
Where will we be?...
We had some good times,
but they’re gone
The winter’s coming on
Summer’s almost gone”
And from the same album “My Wild Love” he takes us esoterically through the history of all beinghood on earth as a star woman, from it’s devilish inception to now...this era we are speaking of he speaks of in particular in the second verse:
“My Wild Love went riding, she rode to the Sea, she gathered together some *shells* for her heir/ayre, she rode and she wrote on, she Rowed/Rhu’d for awhile, and stopped for an evening (pralaya) and layed her head down, she rode on to Christmas (Ice Age), she rode through the fall (pole reversal happens in Pralaya per Ovid and Lady Hahn - fall coming after Christmas?), she rode to Japan and re-entered a town (ever returning Sky City: Vallhalla, Hindu’s Hiran Yapura, New Jerusalem in Revelations, the floating Ben Ben Temple of the Egyptians, Nabiru of the Sumerians, Floating city the Dogiku came out of per Japan, the Dogon’s heavenly city their descendants came out from per the Dogon in Africa, Valinor in T’s similitude etc. etc. all traditions say it returns in the Pralayas at end ages to collect and finish like Revelations says of it - the lands Northeast of Japan are still called Sakhallin today after such sacred place such once alighted for a long period), by this time the river (of life, and earth’s rotations) had changed one degree, she asked for the people to let her go free (for she is the astral effluvium of the higher world in man; buried now).”
I could write a book on the third house of man then but this is enough geography, anthropology, chronology and catastrophism in all their gleanings from around the world to show something truly remarkable happened in the Arctic North and will again soon and that man originated in his 1st and 3rd from out of there. But some other time.
Hopefully this shows enough though how great books like Tilak’s might be valued which shed light on these matters further, albeit in the more exoteric recent scale, they are just the tip of an iceberg.
But I would like in honor and commemoration to Tilak, and in order to inspire people to read more on such works like his, to add some matters here that strongly confirm the validity of Tilak’s demonstrations and which take his theory even deeper to back it up, not just back to 8K BC as he does - which one could write a whole book on the history of if one knows how to look - but to 100 times that, to even 800K BC, when all cultures speak of the early 3rd House of Man going through something momentous (the 864K Cycle) - which we may go through again soon here in the 6th beginning - and then them coming down into Eurasia from the North.
First the cycle: today it seems scientists don’t yet realize they are on the verge of discovering one of the most important, key, rhythms to earth’s recurring cataclysmic cycles (the 864K). They may not though - they could just barely miss it to the detriment of future generations.
They know the last inversal of the magnetic poles was around 867K-778K BC when occured
1. the Great Siberian Explosion
2. the Brunhes-Matuyama Cataclysmic Ice Age and
3. the Australasian Strewnfield
(Brunhes being the strongest Ice Age after “the big 5” extinction events - the more recent ice ages back around 11K and even 111K from present being paltry by comparison to this one around 1.1M; to roughly estimate using the sacred 1,111 calendar).
As well, they also know we are, 777K odd years later, now exponentially headed toward a magnetic pole inversal again today soon with the amount “gravitational true North” is shifting it’s position from Canada to Siberia having picked up in speed 4 times quicker than it’s rate of movement before the 1990’s.
https://youtu.be/sPVr45IchX0
What they don’t somehow tie together though is that it seems, more likely than not, devastational pole slippage jumps when magnetic poles reverse and that this occurs on a cycle. This jump happens oddly whenever magnetic pole reversal happens in earth’s 777 + pralaya period (864K) cycle all ancient lore speaks on (especially Hinduism on the 864K cycle - see below how all cultures’ mention this cycle in their greater chronologies).
As Hapgood and Graham Hancock show though in their alternative but sometimes cutting edge field of scientific enquiry, it is essential for mankind’s preservation to understand this occurs. These two, alongside Robert Schock and Lady Hahn all go to great lengths showing the factuality of it and quickened continental drift at such times (though only Hahn was aware of this 777-864-930K range cycle, even if it be just one among many cycles of recurring cataclysm the ancient lore’s all reveal).
Very basically going back to these times - to touch on their Geography and Anthropology and leave the chronology of the devastation cycle that happened during it aside for a minute - North China was it’s own separate continent then as Plate Tectonics shows from 4.5DM to 867K range and even before. Science also knows this North China got pushed into the mainland in the (Trans) Siberian Explosion so that now it is the Shamo desert - where per lore “Shambhalla” is said to be located (aye, more before it was pushed, for it was a heavenly city but also for awhile after too there was a center called Shambhalla that was key in the Shamo, see Lady Hahn especially on this, though there are other sources). But what science does not know is that Pliny the Elder had a name for such separated North China island: “Ossericte Isle, land where all kingship of Man descended from.”
Rudbeck, being too anachronistically patriotic showed in his Atlantica that Norway was this Ossericte. But that is sloppy: Norway is the lower leftover of a center of a massive Northern land in mid to early Atlantean times called Belus Zeus land by the Greeks (hence Bel-gium below it), “Broceliand” in British and French Lore (Boreas and Celleria were once one) and “Boars Land” in Irish (see Vallancey), Yorke and Vishnu Purana accounting (India once being Boar Land’s “dragging Southeast hind part” in the North Pacific and part and parcel with it connecting beyond Japan, then all the way down to a Southern massive landmass in the Atlantean period called Atalas).
Now Ossiriand, I mean Ossericte, was a part of Boar or Borea or Hyborea Land variously called (see Guenon’s excellent article on such) on it’s mid-east before the hilly Hind(us) land. But the two, Norway and Ossericte, were distinct parts of it. So Rudbeck was only half right.
Ossericte split off as this land that Gurdjieff calls Iranan above Maralpleicie (which connected to Atalas and was part of the ring of fire and a vestige crest of Mu). From Iranan came the first King of Man of the second house of man after the fall of Atlantis Major; and T. calls Hind in his clever similitude’s Hildorien above Sunland then morphing into Utter Rhune in the furthest Northeast where man-form first more formally arose also per he (no T. and Gurdjieff weren’t working together or passing notes). On T.’s chapter in the Silmarillion on Maeglin he literally takes a chapter out of Norse lore and mentions him going up over Asgard unto Ossiriand in the time of the first arising of man-form.
Now, panning through this period’s ages, Ossericte lasted from 4.5DM to 867K till it sank in the 867K Cataclysm (T. probably going back not to 4.5DM but 11DM rather like Cremo in his calculations though for man first arising in the 1st House - at a later time I will show what DM means and how it coincides all archaic chronologies with modern calculations of mainstream science). Before this time were more beings like those mentioned in my review of Otherkin.
After the 867K sink the new hub for humanity was not in the North Pacific but the North Atlantic, the new hub became Daitya, Kasyapa’s isle (Cirdan) from 867K till it sank in 640K there off Northern France as somehow Solinus makes inference of the people of.
The real out of Africa event was from this Isle onto the Saharra via Hesperides; not vice versa. And then when this Daitya Isle, called Poseidon Isle by the Greeks and by Plato, sank in 640K then Hesiod’s Herculeid period really followed strong, yet beginning around 700K, till fading now. It is the same as India’s Indra period (their Hercules) when he arose shortly after Kasyapa.
The Hindu scriptures say Indra’s period of robust beings was destroyed by hanuman the ape man (around 280K when Neanderthals arise. Before them Heidelbergensis around from 700K to 300K were just some minor aberration species spun off in the West Atlantic from a very high robust form of unknown skeleton and being not yet found, or repressed whenever it is there is some evidence)...Also in egyptian religion they show Hapi the ape man coming in at the next period and the Greek’s have a similar ape character as well and also speak of the fleet footed harpies, half creature half human, ending the Herculeid period.
Muhammed mentions this degradation period in a mysterious poem of his regarding an isle called something similar to the isle G. calls Balioudos in the Atlantic where women ceased to be able to have humans anymore at a certain phase, and T.’s Balar in the Atlantic where Cirdan (Kasyapa) last rested after his own isle sank (Daitya in 640K).
So much for a sweeping geographic overview of the periods before and after the last cataclysm hit on this cycle and a bit of esoteric anthropology.
Returning to the important continent in question itself that transmorphed and sank then in part: North China separated as Ossericte from 4.5-867K. In such time more formally there I argue man form first arose as does Lady Hahn show this and Ibn El Arabi (and see the Subashi witch mummies in Shamo for the last vestiges of them though they are but a paltry 6 thousand years old at most).
Many more traditions mention this land or isle in the Arctic North. It is in the Brenton edition of the Septuagint, where is retained more clearly than any other schachermachery translation, the three different Prophets speaking of all this. One speaks of a Mount Seir situated to the furthest reaches of the Northeast (Siberia) and then he says beyond it there being once a so noble island chain “like a grapevine going over the great sea and connecting the two lands” called “Aiseroom where the mighty tall reknown Ashers came out from” and they say they “went down into the sea, sunk and were of great might” (Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah).
Gurdjieff confirms a good deal of detail on this land which first arose as Iranan atop Maralpleicie as I already mentioned; he says it went under with (one of) the sinkings of “Atlantis.”
Now such land was called also Ruta per Lady Hahn, for she says after Atlantis Majora fell in the North and South in 4.5DM then arose Ruta and Adaitya in the utter North and Mid Pacific respectively until they sank in 867K. This she got from the timeless Thibetan Book of Dyzan and it is confirmed by Rutulius Namatianus from 500’s AD when he says all true noble Roman Kingline’s are most pure that come from the Rutulians in the uttermost Northeast (3rd House). Probably Russia far to the West of such got it’s name from this Rhuta (Aiser-room/rhune/rhuta). Ridgeway the historian confirms Namatianus’ claims as does Evola concerning the Kingship lines.
Hindu’s later called this land of the Asura’s Uttaru Kuru (literally land of the Northern Lord Kings) and located it to their Northwest for then it “was” to Hind’s Northwest though today we would describe it as being Northeast of presently situated India.
But does native China lore itself, so part and parcel to such, not mention this land? They do, as does Buddhist lore, calling Aiseroom of the Ashers: Agartha of the Apsaras and Asuras; where in or nearby Shambhalla was and which sunk and was transformed in the Flood of Peirun.
Also Norse lore speaks of it as Asgard of the Asa’s where nearby or upon it within the removable (“alien/angelic”) isle Valhalla (Shambhalla) in a sense was (though I know there is a more metaphysical understanding to such as well as this historio-geo-sacral key). From there came out the Asa’s - a transitional “man” between beings before us and present scruffolous man - they whom they called Asher’s in the Old Testament and described as “the people before the people.” They were called Asana by the Japanese, Aisors by the Greek Ashoks, Asura’s (“not gods” who came after the “Suras/gods”) by the Hindu’s and for the Dorian Greek’s: Acheans and Aeschines (most ancient seer race, born seers, per Arran, biographer of Alexander the Great) and they being of the lesser cycle Achilles Bronze era (now everywhere lost in records of per Photius).
I have come across old Japanese texts translated by the first European Sinologists in France running in the circles of Klaproth and Remussat where it even gives the date of 830 or 860 thousand years ago for the great cataclysm (and these french scholars didn’t know of such figures to have a desire to imaginatively extrapolate such into their translations).
The emminent Princeton graduate and Mayan scholar David Stuart
https://youtu.be/H2CK_HFsg7g
(See 13 minutes in)
has found the king cycles on the Mayan temples. They coincide to my different time cycles or gears largely I am mentioning besides present and future (6 others I show; an upper and lower eso, meso and exo time gears of different repeating size overlapping), and he gives some translations of dates of some of them and their events going back in particular to this period in years also.
But most of all this dating for Osericte and the Brunhes Cataclysm is implied by Lady Hahn, the Arya Samaj’s calculations among the Hindu’s and the illustrious scientist of evolution (devolution) Michael Cremo; they all state the Iron age of man is supposed to last 432K years and began in 3,102 BC and the Bronze Age (Dvapara Yuga) is said to last 864K years before that one: hence 867K BC for it’s beginning.
So a new era began per Hinduism in 867K. Al Biruni was only half right in saying a most ancient Northern Hindic city retained record the last age of man ended 432K years ago in his Chronology of Ancient Nations.
By the way, there are 86,400 seconds in a day and any Nasa scientist will tell you seconds are not an arbitrary unit but based on very precise solar and planetary timing. A month or 30 of these 864K periods make Gurdjieff’s Sacred Objective Year that all time in the cosmos is fractionalized by per him on his chapter on Time. It appears a month or 28 or so of Great Years (31,108 years) makes this 864K Cycle, and there is a reason there are 28 days to the moon cycle and 28 years to Chronos/Chronologia’s (Saturn’s) cycle. These are how the months on the different time levels on the lateral gears interlock as a hint. Daniel’s 864 yr mini cycle is clearly totalled to such figure when reading the Brenton edition of the Septuagint. And Gurdjieff told Bennett (whom my Spiritual Godfather’s teacher trained under) that there are two 12,800 year half periods in a great year (probably minus their mini-extinction pralaya periods added that would total them to more 31,108 not 25,692 years) and that man is presently approaching the end of the first one or two of the two halves of the great year we are now in.
This means then that the last one would have been around the younger dryas great devastation mentioned by all cultures not just Plato and that was in 9,654 BC as Gurdjieff shows too when combining what he said with precise Hebrew tradition dating on the so called Noahic (Samothracian) flood being in 3,254 BC. For he says the real great flood was 70 one hundred year generations before the Noahic per the Ashoks: 7K years before 3,254 is about 10,254. That is when the first ice age shock hit as Robert Schock reminds us all science shows happened: about 1K years before the great flood finalized and ended in 9,654 BC. This also coincides with Lady Hahn’s dating the great flood to 9,654 BC and ties into the Dardanic Dogerland flood she dates at 6,122 BC (“just after the true and greater Trojan War, history now has forgotten”) and the Noahic she calls Samothracian of around 3,250 BC per her lunar calculations but in 3,102 it finalized when Kali Yuga began and Krishna sunk in his isle.
Tony in the Mallorn publication did well in revealing T’s similitude’s that indicate the same three dates for the “exoteric” understanding of his “ages” and which T. says exoterically are 3 thousand some years each; and the extensive chronological figures he gives out for when these fall being the same.
See we do know science shows a small but very considerable level ice age occurs on earth every 28K years. And they note such occurring 28K, 56K, 84K, 111K (a larger one) and so on back.
So it may be it will be a little before 12,800 years from the 9,654 BC cataclysm (four 3,200 yr cycles) when the next ice age or lava cataclysm will be around 3,146 AD; just about 1,111 years from 2036 AD (another important date).
James Earl Jones narrated a really excellent documentary on the Great Year available on Youtube. If we basically have a great year established of about 25,692 to 31,108 years and it last began around 10K or 9K BC then we only have a thousand or two thousand years before another world flood as Nostradamus predicted coming soon at the end of his book recent documentaries have been made on (Lady Hahn mentions it too in SDII).
Recent man colonization will begin again then, so now is a seed time of packing up and preparing for this. When one day we discover the uniformitarian cataclysms which occur to earth it will be important to remember Gurdjieff’s law he republished of the ancients that all happens astrologically with suns and planets right before and right after they are crossing paths with each other. For those are the maximum tension points on the octave just after the beginning and just before the end; even as two people passing each other on a tight sidewalk feel the maximum tension right before they pass each other and as they are parting. I think we will discover double cataclysms occur on either end of the half and whole mark’s of the Great Year (even as we had the ice age in 11K BC but the main devastation in 9,564 BC on the last markation point; so 4 total a cycle).
Also, if there is an even greater cataclysm cycle falling at the end of some 864K cycle not fully finished out yet (for the earth, like women, gives birth to cycles on the 9.3 mark as Hesiod and Rodney Collin mention) then this could be massive soon; maybe around 55K years from now that will happen (930K from the last really great cataclysm in 867K).
Lady Hahn says Hinduism intimate’s a pralaya occured from 867K-730K where creation reverses itself; appearantly much like the very interesting recent movie Annihilation with Jennifer Jason Leigh where all creation minimizes and melds (and shrinks per Hinduism!) species at a quickened rate in a sort of re-generating re-versal.
On such land and times then I could speak long on the Indians “Aztlan” the earliest conquistadors record the Indians claimed was above the sawtooth mountains; and on the Hopi’s forbidden back door Bear Pass they claimed they did not come into America by; but I end with Morrison trained by a great Indian Shaman.
He sings of the wonderful golden early summer age of man up in the Northeast and the woe of loosing that time into now, as if those people were singing such to us softly from their own voice into our ear mourning, warning us of our time now at it’s end phase that was theirs:
“Summer’s almost gone
Where will we be
when the summer’s gone?
Morning found us calmly unaware
Milled/Membered gold into our hair
At night we swim the *Lapinth Sea*
When Summer’s gone
Where will we be?...
We had some good times,
but they’re gone
The winter’s coming on
Summer’s almost gone”
And from the same album “My Wild Love” he takes us esoterically through the history of all beinghood on earth as a star woman, from it’s devilish inception to now...this era we are speaking of he speaks of in particular in the second verse:
“My Wild Love went riding, she rode to the Sea, she gathered together some *shells* for her heir/ayre, she rode and she wrote on, she Rowed/Rhu’d for awhile, and stopped for an evening (pralaya) and layed her head down, she rode on to Christmas (Ice Age), she rode through the fall (pole reversal happens in Pralaya per Ovid and Lady Hahn - fall coming after Christmas?), she rode to Japan and re-entered a town (ever returning Sky City: Vallhalla, Hindu’s Hiran Yapura, New Jerusalem in Revelations, the floating Ben Ben Temple of the Egyptians, Nabiru of the Sumerians, Floating city the Dogiku came out of per Japan, the Dogon’s heavenly city their descendants came out from per the Dogon in Africa, Valinor in T’s similitude etc. etc. all traditions say it returns in the Pralayas at end ages to collect and finish like Revelations says of it - the lands Northeast of Japan are still called Sakhallin today after such sacred place such once alighted for a long period), by this time the river (of life, and earth’s rotations) had changed one degree, she asked for the people to let her go free (for she is the astral effluvium of the higher world in man; buried now).”
I could write a book on the third house of man then but this is enough geography, anthropology, chronology and catastrophism in all their gleanings from around the world to show something truly remarkable happened in the Arctic North and will again soon and that man originated in his 1st and 3rd from out of there. But some other time.
Hopefully this shows enough though how great books like Tilak’s might be valued which shed light on these matters further, albeit in the more exoteric recent scale, they are just the tip of an iceberg.
March 12, 2017
I am rating it with 5 stars because that's the maximum here....
The mythological interpretations and analogies with other cultures in this book are out of the world!!!
Way to rediscover and re-study the myths and history in a whole new perspective. When the perspective is shifted from tropical Indian to polar Arctic, all the myths referred in the book perfectly fit with each other... All the signs mentioned in the book are unmistakable and explained with proper scientific,mythological and historical evidences in a plausible way.
PS: This book is available in the market(India) with ~200 pages..That's not the actual one written by Tilak...The original version is~500 pages and I couldn't find it anywhere in the market in print version..So got to confine myself with an e-book.... I wish the actual 500 page manuscript be available in the market...
The same is true for another book, Orion:An antiquity of Vedas(it's somewhere around 220 pages in original manuscript and just 130 in the print versions available in the market)..Hope the unabridged manuscripts are published(print versions) are released into the market.
The mythological interpretations and analogies with other cultures in this book are out of the world!!!
Way to rediscover and re-study the myths and history in a whole new perspective. When the perspective is shifted from tropical Indian to polar Arctic, all the myths referred in the book perfectly fit with each other... All the signs mentioned in the book are unmistakable and explained with proper scientific,mythological and historical evidences in a plausible way.
PS: This book is available in the market(India) with ~200 pages..That's not the actual one written by Tilak...The original version is~500 pages and I couldn't find it anywhere in the market in print version..So got to confine myself with an e-book.... I wish the actual 500 page manuscript be available in the market...
The same is true for another book, Orion:An antiquity of Vedas(it's somewhere around 220 pages in original manuscript and just 130 in the print versions available in the market)..Hope the unabridged manuscripts are published(print versions) are released into the market.
August 24, 2017
With all due respect, Tilak chose to build a theory on Aryans based on European scholars, for reasons best known to the historians of that era. It is very imaginative with very little evidence to the theory and therefore highly questionable. Plenty of interpretation and extrapolation makes the Aryan invasion theory feeble at best.
January 21, 2022
Although thre is some good stuff in this book given the later research in the topic, many of the hypotheses discussed here are at best read because of historical intesrest of how Indology evolved.
July 24, 2021
The Arctic Home in the Vedas was published in 1903. In ‘The Orion’ Tilak had shadowed the ‘astronomical method’. In The Arctic Home in the Vedas, he based his theory on the latest researches in geology and archaeology bearing on the primitive history of man.
Tilak in the preface to The Arctic Home remarks that after pursuing this line of research for a long time, “the conclusion that the ancestors of the Vedic Rishis lived in an Arctic home in inter-glacial times was forced on me by the slowly accumulating mass of Vedic and Avestic evidence.”
Tilak uses astronomical figures within hymns to compute the age of Vedas. Not only does he date their composition prior to 4000 BC, Tilak’s investigation places Aryan antiquity in the Arctic region. Pushed from the Northern tundras by an Ice Age, Tilak suggests, they migrated down to Central Asia and then eastward, to their present tropical latitudes.
The Arctic Home commences with the statement: “If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.”
Tilak then refers to the endeavours made by mythologists in order to illumine the pre-historic period and points out that they assumed that the physical and geographical surroundings of prehistoric man were not different from those of present day. He points out how, owing to this erroneous hypothesis, attempts were made to elucidate every Vedic legend in the light of the ‘storm’ or the ‘dawn’ theory, and it was found that the Vedas could only be defectively understood.
Tilak next points out how as a result of fresh discoveries in archaeology, geology and palaentology, the conclusions of the philologists and mythologists had to be revised and the theory of succeeding migrations into Europe from a common home of the Aryan race in Central Asia had to be given up.
After stating that the question of the primeval home of the Aryan race still remains unsolved, Tilak concludes the first chapter with the remarks: “The North Pole is already considered by several eminent scientific men as the most likely place where plant and animal life first originated; and I believe it can be satisfactorily shown that there is enough positive evidence in the most ancient books of the Aryan race, the Vedas and Avesta to prove that the oldest home of the Aryan people was somewhere in regions roundabout the North Pole,”
In the concluding chapter, ‘Primitive Aryan Culture and Religion,’ the attestations of the theory of the Arctic Home are summed up, the ancient Vedic chronology and calendar are examined and the current views regarding primitive Aryan culture and religion are discussed.
The theological views regarding the origin and character of the Vedas are further summarised.
Tilak then reiterates his claim that many points in Vedic interpretation and Vedic mythology were rationally explained by the theory of the Arctic home in inter-glacial times.
In conclusion, Tilak remarks: “In these days of progress when the question of the primitive human culture and civilisation is approached and investigated from so many different sides, the science of Vedic interpretation cannot stand isolated or depend exclusively on linguistic or grammatical analysis; and we have simply followed the spirit of the time in seeking to bring about the co-ordination of the latest scientific results with the traditions contained in the oldest books of the Aryan racebooks which have been deservedly held in the highest esteem and preserved by our ancestors, amidst insurmountable difficulties, with religious enthusiasm ever since the beginning of the present age.”
Today many of the Sanskrit academics construe the Vedic hymns in an approach different from that to Tilak.
In this respect, Dr. R. N. Dandekar, for instance, observes:
“Linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and cultural-historical evidence entitles us to assume that the North Kirghis Steppes between the Urals and the Altai, was the home of the Indo-European.... This was the primary Urheimat. From this region the first major migration started in south-eastern direction — the immigrants ultimately settling in the Balkh region, before their further migrations.... We know that Aryan speech and religion had already been assuming noble forms, ever since the Proto-Aryans migrated to and settled in the region around Balkh. After the stray secondary migrations of some of the Proto-Aryan tribes... the remaining stock of the Proto-Aryans continued to live in that region for some centuries, and developed their unique culture and civilisation. This was the Proto-Indo-Iranian period. The Vedic ‘Mantras’ in their primary form, came to be composed, and the distinctive Soma-ritual was evolved.... Indians gradually moved eastward into the land of seven rivers, conquering... the tribes of the Dasas. Ultimately by about 1900 B.C. these Vedic Aryans advanced where they came across what was perhaps the last phase of Harappa civilisation.”
Among the critics of The Arctic Home was Narayanrao Bhavanrao Pavgi, a close friend of Tilak. In the ‘Reminiscences of Tilak’ he writes: “Lokmanya showed to me the important part of his manuscript of The Arctic Home, but I was left unconvinced.” Pavgi also delivered, on 19th May 1906, a lecture, over which Tilak presided. In the course of his speech, he unequivocally stated his points of difference with Tilak. In 1915 he wrote the book Aryawartic Home and its Arctic Colony in which he tried to refute Tilak’s thesis.
Tilak, who possessed a researcher’s ethics, always wanted to perk up on his work. Dr. S. K. Belvalkar, the renowned Sanskrit scholar, in the Reminiscences wrote: “While discussing the Arctic theory Tilak said: ‘I very much want to publish the second edition of The Arctic Home in the Vedas but before that, it is necessary to study some recently published works on Scandinavian mythology. ... If you come to Sinhgad for a month, we shall discuss the subject and make the necessary modifications in the second edition....’ Tilak had also ‘agreed to give in the second edition a chronological history of Vedic and post-Vedic literature.”
The quandary of fixing the period of Vedic civilisatìon had aroused the interest of a number of oriental scholars. It was acknowledged that the Veda ‘took us to the beginning of the Aryan civilisation’ and as Max Müller put it, “that for a study of man, or if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with it.��� Max Müller followed the literary or linguistic method for ascertaining the age of the Vedas, divided the Vedic literature into four periods the Chhandas, Mantra, Brahmana and Sutra, each presupposing the preceding period. He maintained that the last, i.e., Sutra, was prior “if not to the origin, at least to the spreading and political ascendancy of Buddhism,” i.e., 4th century B.C. and by assigning two hundred years for each period, he arrived at the conclusion that the Vedic hymns were composed at the latest at about 1200 B.C.
Tilak’s imprisonment in 1898 came as a blessing in disguise as it enabled him to dive deep in to the subject of his choice. Max Müller, sent him a copy of the Rigveda he had edited. While Tilak was deeply absorbed in the study of it, the idea about the original home of the Aryans, dawned on his mind as in a flash.
The event can best be described in the words of Poincare: “Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination a manifest sign of long, unconscious prior work.” The hymn (Many days passed before the Sun-rise) strengthened his belief in his theory. V. G. Ketkar in the ‘Reminiscences of Tilak’ writes: “After his release from prison, as he was once talking to a learned friend, he remarked: ‘I was very happy on the night when I could explain correctly the hymn. The friend naturally said, ‘How can there be any happiness in prison?’ At this Tilak said, ‘You won’t understand it unless you go to prison.”
This was, however, only the beginning of a brilliant idea. Tilak had the scientific attitude necessary for carrying on research and would have discarded his theory if he had not come across the corroborative evidence. After his release he devoted his spare time to the pursuit of this inquiry and in particular studied geology.
Tilak wrote The Arctic Home in the Vedas in the summer of 1902. During this period he was staying at his bungalow on. Singhad Gopal Raoji Gogte, who was Tilak’s writer during the period, in the Reminiscences stated: “Tilak dictated to me hectically for fourteen to fifteen hours a day. Sometimes he was so much absorbed in some new idea that I had to wait for hours before he resumed the work of dictation.... He hardly spoke to anyone in the house.... The work continued almost to the last moment of our leaving Sinhgad.... He was happy when the book was completed.”
To be impartial in our analysis, with due reverence to the intellect of Balwantrao Gangadhar Tilak, we can track down the following points:
1) Tilak enlarged and reinterpreted the work of European Indologists, invalidating disagreements that European culture developed earlier and more swiftly than Indian culture, asserting the sophistication of Vedic culture.
2) The Arctic Home of the Vedas opened with a dialogue of his obligations to Max Müller. Max Müller’s work on the Rig Veda and the history of Sanskrit literature, was not only a prime reference point for Tilak, but the former also provided him with material and personal backing. Tilak made good use of the latest Orientalist research, supplementing Max Müller with Rhys and Taylor’s works on Aryan foundations and Warren’s study on ancient languages. Most prominently, Tilak extended the image of a Vedic Golden Age created by Jones, Colebrooke and Max Müller, using it to emphasize the predominance, dynamism and supremacy of Indo-Aryan culture.
3) Tilak’s findings of Arctic pole are based on inferences he drew from some conjectures rooted in Avesta, Vedas and the Glacial period. Tilak associated the mention of Aryan homeland ‘Airyanem vaejo’ in Avesta that was destroyed by snow and cold climate to a livable, warm North pole that got habitable by the end of the glacial period.
4) He takes the statement from Avesta and Brahmana that God’s one day is our year, and tends to correspond it to a polar day, “the ancient home of gods.”
5) Tilak cites mantras that talk of extended nights and dawn that doesn’t arrive as indicated by expectations of the poet and takes them to entail extended nights of pole for granted. He connects the uneasiness in the dying at ‘Pitryaana’ with the conviction of uneasiness in dying at night, and thus tells that the customs came up because of an Arctic past where it was hard to carry corpse in night (the stretched six month period, pitryaana).
I choose to bring to a close with the remarks of two dons of Indian historical academia:
Dr. Dandekar had observed in a personal interview: “In spite of certain limitations, The Arctic Home of Lokmanya Tilak contains many brilliant hints and suggestions and could certainly be called an inspired piece of research. It is to be appreciated for its rich possibilities rather than for its actual conclusions.”
Aurobindo Ghose noted that: “Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in the Vedas has accepted the general conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows and the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended originally from the Arctic regions in the glacial period.”
Judging by the contemporary promoted consciousness of the ‘Aryan-invasion theory construct’, we tend to consider Tilak’s work as a simple exercise of academics. Nevertheless, one would do well to remember that it was a book began to be written under rigorous circumstances of incarceration.
An interesting book, which offers a fairly attention-grabbing theory about such an extensively-debated topic!
Grab a copy if you choose.
Tilak in the preface to The Arctic Home remarks that after pursuing this line of research for a long time, “the conclusion that the ancestors of the Vedic Rishis lived in an Arctic home in inter-glacial times was forced on me by the slowly accumulating mass of Vedic and Avestic evidence.”
Tilak uses astronomical figures within hymns to compute the age of Vedas. Not only does he date their composition prior to 4000 BC, Tilak’s investigation places Aryan antiquity in the Arctic region. Pushed from the Northern tundras by an Ice Age, Tilak suggests, they migrated down to Central Asia and then eastward, to their present tropical latitudes.
The Arctic Home commences with the statement: “If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.”
Tilak then refers to the endeavours made by mythologists in order to illumine the pre-historic period and points out that they assumed that the physical and geographical surroundings of prehistoric man were not different from those of present day. He points out how, owing to this erroneous hypothesis, attempts were made to elucidate every Vedic legend in the light of the ‘storm’ or the ‘dawn’ theory, and it was found that the Vedas could only be defectively understood.
Tilak next points out how as a result of fresh discoveries in archaeology, geology and palaentology, the conclusions of the philologists and mythologists had to be revised and the theory of succeeding migrations into Europe from a common home of the Aryan race in Central Asia had to be given up.
After stating that the question of the primeval home of the Aryan race still remains unsolved, Tilak concludes the first chapter with the remarks: “The North Pole is already considered by several eminent scientific men as the most likely place where plant and animal life first originated; and I believe it can be satisfactorily shown that there is enough positive evidence in the most ancient books of the Aryan race, the Vedas and Avesta to prove that the oldest home of the Aryan people was somewhere in regions roundabout the North Pole,”
In the concluding chapter, ‘Primitive Aryan Culture and Religion,’ the attestations of the theory of the Arctic Home are summed up, the ancient Vedic chronology and calendar are examined and the current views regarding primitive Aryan culture and religion are discussed.
The theological views regarding the origin and character of the Vedas are further summarised.
Tilak then reiterates his claim that many points in Vedic interpretation and Vedic mythology were rationally explained by the theory of the Arctic home in inter-glacial times.
In conclusion, Tilak remarks: “In these days of progress when the question of the primitive human culture and civilisation is approached and investigated from so many different sides, the science of Vedic interpretation cannot stand isolated or depend exclusively on linguistic or grammatical analysis; and we have simply followed the spirit of the time in seeking to bring about the co-ordination of the latest scientific results with the traditions contained in the oldest books of the Aryan racebooks which have been deservedly held in the highest esteem and preserved by our ancestors, amidst insurmountable difficulties, with religious enthusiasm ever since the beginning of the present age.”
Today many of the Sanskrit academics construe the Vedic hymns in an approach different from that to Tilak.
In this respect, Dr. R. N. Dandekar, for instance, observes:
“Linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and cultural-historical evidence entitles us to assume that the North Kirghis Steppes between the Urals and the Altai, was the home of the Indo-European.... This was the primary Urheimat. From this region the first major migration started in south-eastern direction — the immigrants ultimately settling in the Balkh region, before their further migrations.... We know that Aryan speech and religion had already been assuming noble forms, ever since the Proto-Aryans migrated to and settled in the region around Balkh. After the stray secondary migrations of some of the Proto-Aryan tribes... the remaining stock of the Proto-Aryans continued to live in that region for some centuries, and developed their unique culture and civilisation. This was the Proto-Indo-Iranian period. The Vedic ‘Mantras’ in their primary form, came to be composed, and the distinctive Soma-ritual was evolved.... Indians gradually moved eastward into the land of seven rivers, conquering... the tribes of the Dasas. Ultimately by about 1900 B.C. these Vedic Aryans advanced where they came across what was perhaps the last phase of Harappa civilisation.”
Among the critics of The Arctic Home was Narayanrao Bhavanrao Pavgi, a close friend of Tilak. In the ‘Reminiscences of Tilak’ he writes: “Lokmanya showed to me the important part of his manuscript of The Arctic Home, but I was left unconvinced.” Pavgi also delivered, on 19th May 1906, a lecture, over which Tilak presided. In the course of his speech, he unequivocally stated his points of difference with Tilak. In 1915 he wrote the book Aryawartic Home and its Arctic Colony in which he tried to refute Tilak’s thesis.
Tilak, who possessed a researcher’s ethics, always wanted to perk up on his work. Dr. S. K. Belvalkar, the renowned Sanskrit scholar, in the Reminiscences wrote: “While discussing the Arctic theory Tilak said: ‘I very much want to publish the second edition of The Arctic Home in the Vedas but before that, it is necessary to study some recently published works on Scandinavian mythology. ... If you come to Sinhgad for a month, we shall discuss the subject and make the necessary modifications in the second edition....’ Tilak had also ‘agreed to give in the second edition a chronological history of Vedic and post-Vedic literature.”
The quandary of fixing the period of Vedic civilisatìon had aroused the interest of a number of oriental scholars. It was acknowledged that the Veda ‘took us to the beginning of the Aryan civilisation’ and as Max Müller put it, “that for a study of man, or if you like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in the world equal in importance with it.��� Max Müller followed the literary or linguistic method for ascertaining the age of the Vedas, divided the Vedic literature into four periods the Chhandas, Mantra, Brahmana and Sutra, each presupposing the preceding period. He maintained that the last, i.e., Sutra, was prior “if not to the origin, at least to the spreading and political ascendancy of Buddhism,” i.e., 4th century B.C. and by assigning two hundred years for each period, he arrived at the conclusion that the Vedic hymns were composed at the latest at about 1200 B.C.
Tilak’s imprisonment in 1898 came as a blessing in disguise as it enabled him to dive deep in to the subject of his choice. Max Müller, sent him a copy of the Rigveda he had edited. While Tilak was deeply absorbed in the study of it, the idea about the original home of the Aryans, dawned on his mind as in a flash.
The event can best be described in the words of Poincare: “Most striking at first is this appearance of sudden illumination a manifest sign of long, unconscious prior work.” The hymn (Many days passed before the Sun-rise) strengthened his belief in his theory. V. G. Ketkar in the ‘Reminiscences of Tilak’ writes: “After his release from prison, as he was once talking to a learned friend, he remarked: ‘I was very happy on the night when I could explain correctly the hymn. The friend naturally said, ‘How can there be any happiness in prison?’ At this Tilak said, ‘You won’t understand it unless you go to prison.”
This was, however, only the beginning of a brilliant idea. Tilak had the scientific attitude necessary for carrying on research and would have discarded his theory if he had not come across the corroborative evidence. After his release he devoted his spare time to the pursuit of this inquiry and in particular studied geology.
Tilak wrote The Arctic Home in the Vedas in the summer of 1902. During this period he was staying at his bungalow on. Singhad Gopal Raoji Gogte, who was Tilak’s writer during the period, in the Reminiscences stated: “Tilak dictated to me hectically for fourteen to fifteen hours a day. Sometimes he was so much absorbed in some new idea that I had to wait for hours before he resumed the work of dictation.... He hardly spoke to anyone in the house.... The work continued almost to the last moment of our leaving Sinhgad.... He was happy when the book was completed.”
To be impartial in our analysis, with due reverence to the intellect of Balwantrao Gangadhar Tilak, we can track down the following points:
1) Tilak enlarged and reinterpreted the work of European Indologists, invalidating disagreements that European culture developed earlier and more swiftly than Indian culture, asserting the sophistication of Vedic culture.
2) The Arctic Home of the Vedas opened with a dialogue of his obligations to Max Müller. Max Müller’s work on the Rig Veda and the history of Sanskrit literature, was not only a prime reference point for Tilak, but the former also provided him with material and personal backing. Tilak made good use of the latest Orientalist research, supplementing Max Müller with Rhys and Taylor’s works on Aryan foundations and Warren’s study on ancient languages. Most prominently, Tilak extended the image of a Vedic Golden Age created by Jones, Colebrooke and Max Müller, using it to emphasize the predominance, dynamism and supremacy of Indo-Aryan culture.
3) Tilak’s findings of Arctic pole are based on inferences he drew from some conjectures rooted in Avesta, Vedas and the Glacial period. Tilak associated the mention of Aryan homeland ‘Airyanem vaejo’ in Avesta that was destroyed by snow and cold climate to a livable, warm North pole that got habitable by the end of the glacial period.
4) He takes the statement from Avesta and Brahmana that God’s one day is our year, and tends to correspond it to a polar day, “the ancient home of gods.”
5) Tilak cites mantras that talk of extended nights and dawn that doesn’t arrive as indicated by expectations of the poet and takes them to entail extended nights of pole for granted. He connects the uneasiness in the dying at ‘Pitryaana’ with the conviction of uneasiness in dying at night, and thus tells that the customs came up because of an Arctic past where it was hard to carry corpse in night (the stretched six month period, pitryaana).
I choose to bring to a close with the remarks of two dons of Indian historical academia:
Dr. Dandekar had observed in a personal interview: “In spite of certain limitations, The Arctic Home of Lokmanya Tilak contains many brilliant hints and suggestions and could certainly be called an inspired piece of research. It is to be appreciated for its rich possibilities rather than for its actual conclusions.”
Aurobindo Ghose noted that: “Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in the Vedas has accepted the general conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows and the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended originally from the Arctic regions in the glacial period.”
Judging by the contemporary promoted consciousness of the ‘Aryan-invasion theory construct’, we tend to consider Tilak’s work as a simple exercise of academics. Nevertheless, one would do well to remember that it was a book began to be written under rigorous circumstances of incarceration.
An interesting book, which offers a fairly attention-grabbing theory about such an extensively-debated topic!
Grab a copy if you choose.
February 9, 2017
One of the best books on the Vedic civilization. There have been many efforts by many scholars to demystify the roots and legends of Vedas and Vedic people but few are based on scientific temperament.
The beauty of this book could be listed as follows;
1. The author Lokmanya Tilak (Bal Gangadhar Tilak), sticks to the facts and figures of scientific finding of his time. He did not rely on only one source or one branch of science, which shows that he understood the great value of interdisciplinary studies in this particular research. Most importantly, it shows he kept his mind open and was not dogmatic to put forward any conjecture or hypothesis. It is a solid work of research. May today's researcher find the same spirit.
2. He clearly understood the spirit of Vedas and Avesta. He tried to correlate both whenever it was necessary. To interpret the scriptures he took a pragmatic way and didn't give in to unnecessary mysticism or mystery mongering, which in many cases has been done by other researchers to complicate the situation unnecessarily.
In nutshell this book is outstanding. To understand the complex evolution of human race and particularly the continuous and complex civilization of Vedic people, among many other excellent research this book is a must read.
The beauty of this book could be listed as follows;
1. The author Lokmanya Tilak (Bal Gangadhar Tilak), sticks to the facts and figures of scientific finding of his time. He did not rely on only one source or one branch of science, which shows that he understood the great value of interdisciplinary studies in this particular research. Most importantly, it shows he kept his mind open and was not dogmatic to put forward any conjecture or hypothesis. It is a solid work of research. May today's researcher find the same spirit.
2. He clearly understood the spirit of Vedas and Avesta. He tried to correlate both whenever it was necessary. To interpret the scriptures he took a pragmatic way and didn't give in to unnecessary mysticism or mystery mongering, which in many cases has been done by other researchers to complicate the situation unnecessarily.
In nutshell this book is outstanding. To understand the complex evolution of human race and particularly the continuous and complex civilization of Vedic people, among many other excellent research this book is a must read.
June 3, 2014
best book
December 15, 2017
Can’t believe this book was written in an era with minimal electricity in the country when the man was in prison or outside fighting for independence of the country.
August 26, 2023
Well at least the interesting part of the Hyperborea theory is how the counting of years has changed over the years.
Shelved as 'not-finished'
February 22, 2017Non riesco a finirlo. E' molto difficile ed eccessivamente dettagliato; inoltre, non è ciò che stavo cercando. Volevo leggere un'introduzione ai Veda, il loro contenuto e significato. Questo libro, invece, parla delle origini dei Veda sostenendo che i rishi ariani che li composero abitavano nel polo artico prima della glaciazione. Successivamente si spostarono verso il subcontinente indiano e verso l'Europa del nord. C'è, infatti, anche una parte dedicata alla comparazione delle diverse mitologie. Ci sono troppi dettagli sulla geologia e sull'astronomia (ripetuti svariate volte) per sostenere questa tesi e vengono analizzati alcuni versi in sanscrito facendo un paragone tra le diverse traduzioni. Il tutto è indubbiamente interessante e forse questo libro può essere apprezzato da chi vuole approfondire la questione delle origini dei Veda. Forse lo riprenderò in futuro.
September 25, 2021
If you wonder why this book never got cited by any scholarly references here is why - Written in the late 1800s it relies on flawed analysis and misinterpretations by our colonial master funded so-called Indologists. Studies done in this era by scholars like R G Bhandarkar and Swami Vivekananda; and later by S Radhakrishnan, completely evade the ‘white Aryan’ myth and provide reasonable justifications against it.
This book grossly misinterprets verses from Rg Veda, cherry picked to justify the feeble Arctic case.Sadly it’s written by one of the founding fathers of modern India.
This book grossly misinterprets verses from Rg Veda, cherry picked to justify the feeble Arctic case.Sadly it’s written by one of the founding fathers of modern India.
July 26, 2014
The author, an orthodox Hindu, points out that certain passages and symbols in the Vedas and the Iranian Zend Avesta correspond to meteorological conditions peculiar to the north pole, which he thinks was once much more habitable and the original seat of Aryan civilization. People seem to have strong feelings one way or the other about this hypothesis, but considering the cited passages, the signs seem to be unmistakable.
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