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

41
Pole. The characteristics of the circum-polar region may indeed be
derived from the strictly Polar characteristics; but still they are so
unlike each other that it is absolutely necessary to bear this
distinction in mind in collecting evidence of a circum-polar Aryan
home in ancient times. Men living round about the Pole, or more
accurately speaking, in regions between the North Pole and the Arctic
circle when these regions were habitable were sure to know of a day
and night of 6 months, but living a little southward from the Pole their
own calendar must have been different from the strictly Polar
calendar; and it is, therefore, necessary to examine the Polar and the
circum-polar characteristics separately, in order that the distinction
may be clearly understood.
The terrestrial Poles are the termini of the axis of the earth, and
we have seen that there is no evidence to show that this axis ever
changed its position, relatively to the earth, even in the earliest
geological eras. The terrestrial poles and the circum-polar regions
were, therefore, the same in early cases as they are at present,
though the past and present climatic condition of these places may
be totally different. But the axis of the earth has a small motion round
the pole of the ecliptic, giving rise to what is known as the precession
of the equinoxes, and causing a change only in the celestial, and not
in the terrestrial, poles. Thus the polar star 7,000 years ago was
different from what it is at present but the terristrial pole has always
remained the same. This motion of the earth’s axis, producing the
precession of the equinoxes, is important from an antiquarian point of
view, inasmuch as it causes a change in the times when different
seasons of the year begin; and it was mainly by utilizing this
chronometer that I showed in my Orion or Researches in the Antiquity
of the Vedas that the vernal equinox was in Orion when some of the
Rig-Vedic traditions were formed, and that the Vedic literature
contained enough clear evidence of the successive changes of the
position of the vernal equinox up to the present time. Thus the vernal
equinox was in Kṛittikâs in the time of the Taittirîya Samhitâ and