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

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is naturally understood, in that case, to mark the successive stages of
migration of the Indo-Iranian people. It is not contended that every
word in these two Fargards may be historically correct. No one would
expect such a rigid accuracy in the reminiscences of old times
traditionally preserved. It is also true that the Airyana Vaêjo has
grown into a sort of mythical land in the later Parsi literature,
somewhat like Mount Meru, the seat of Hindu gods, in the Purânas.
But for all that we cannot deny that in the account of the Airyana
Vaêjo in the first two Fargards of the Vendidad we have a real
historical reminiscence of the Arctic cradle of the Iranian or the Aryan
races, and that the Fargard gives us a description of the countries
through which the Indo-Iranians had to pass before they settled in the
Hapta Hendu or on the floods of Rangha, at the beginning of the
post-Glacial period.
This story of the destruction of the original home by ice may
well be compared with the story of deluge found in the Indian
literature. The oldest of these accounts is contained in the
Shatapatha Brâhmana (I, 8, 1, 1-10), and the same story is found,
with modifications and additions, in the Mahâbhârata (Vana-Parvan,
Ch. 187), arid in the Mâtsya, the Bhâgavata and other Purânas. All
these passages are collected and discussed by Muir in the first
Volume of his Original Sanskrit Texts (3rd Ed. pp. 181-220); and it is
unnecessary to examine them at any length in this place. We are
concerned only with the Vedic version of the story and this appears in
the above-mentioned passage in the Shatapatha Brâhmana. A fish is
there represented as having fallen into the hands of Manu along with
water brought for washing in the morning. The fish asked Manu to
save him, and in return promised to rescue Manu from a flood
(aughah) that would sweep away (nirvodhâ) all creatures. The
Brâhmana does not say when and where this conversation took
place, nor describes the nature of the calamity more fully than that it
was a flood. Manu preserved the fish first in a jar, then in a trench,
and lastly, by carrying him to the ocean. The fish then warns Manu
that in such and such a year (not definitely specified)