Artic Home of the Aryans by Lokamanya Bal ... - Mandhata Global

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Aryan languages, and it has, therefore, been suggested by some
comparative mythologians that the conquest of waters, which was
originally the exploit of some other Aryan deity, was probably
ascribed to Indra in the Vedic mythology, when Indra became the
principal deity in the Vedic pantheon. The fact that Tishtrya, and not
Verethraghna, is said to be the releaser of waters and light in the
Avesta, lends some support to this theory. But whichever view we
adopt, it does not affect the conclusion we have come to above
regarding the true explanation of the Vṛitra legend. Clouds and rain
cannot constitute the physical basis of the legend, which is evidently
based on the simple phenomenon of bringing light to the people who
had anxiously waited for it during the darkness of the long night in the
Arctic regions; and it is a pity that any misconception regarding Vedic
cosmography, or the nature of waters and their cosmic movements
should have, for sometime at least, stood in the way of the true
interpretation of this important legend. Indra may have become a
storm-god afterwards; or the conquest over Vṛitra, originally achieved
by some other deity, may have come to be ascribed to Indra, the raingod
in later times. But whether the exploits of Vritra-han were
subsequently ascribed to Indra, or whether Indra, as the releaser of
captive waters, was afterwards mistaken for the god of rain, like
Tishtrya in the Avesta, one fact stands out boldly amidst all details,
viz., that captive waters were the aerial waters in the nether world,
and that their captivity represented the annual struggle between light
and darkness in the original home of the Aryans in the Arctic region;
and if this fact was not hitherto discovered, it was because our
knowledge of the ancient man was too meager to enable us to
perceive it properly.
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