Arctic Home in the Vedas

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The Arctic Home in the Vedas
cover
Cover of the Arktos Edition
Author(s) Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Cover artist Andreas Nilsson
Country London
Language English
Genre(s) Alternative Archaeology
Publisher Arktos
Publication year 2011
Pages 340
ISBN 978-1-907166-34-1

The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a book by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (who was given the honorary title "Lokmanya," or "chosen leader of the people," by the Indian people during his lifetime). Completed in 1898, It was originally published in India in 1903. Although Tilak is primarily remembered as one of the founders of India's independence movement from the British, the prison terms to which he was sentenced by the colonial authorities gave him ample time for research and writing. This book draws evidence from the oldest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, and the Zoroastrian Avestan scriptures in an effort to show that the origin of Aryan civilization took place in the Arctic. The book was reissued in 2011 by Arktos.

Summary

Prior to this book, other authors had begun postulating that the North Pole might have been the primordial cradle of the human race, such as Dr. William Warren in his book Paradise Found, although previous texts had primarily relied upon the Bible for evidence. Tilak instead utilized the much older Hindu, and to a lesser extent the Zoroastrian scriptures in his book. He also cited some of the geological evidence that was available at the time. He shows how events and numbers contained in these texts suggest, in symbolic form, that they were originally composed in a place in which the length of days and nights, as well as the positions of the stars, are only consistent with conditions that exist in the Arctic region and nowhere else. He further finds evidence that these texts contain references to a sudden climate change in this region in ancient times, which forced the ancient Aryan peoples to move southwards, eventually ending up in present-day Europe, Iran and India and establishing the various branches of the Aryan race as it exists today. Tilak primarily focuses on the idea of the Arctic as a home for the Aryans, although he also suggests the possibility that it may have been home to the ancestors of all of the world's present-day races.

Legacy

Tilak's thesis has never been accepted by mainstream scholars. Today, few scholars are likely to support Tilak's conclusions, not only because it is at variance with the narrative of the development of civilization which prevails today, but also because his work is closely tied to the Aryan Invasion Theory, which itself has fallen out of fashion since its endorsement by the National Socialists in Germany to justify their racial ideas. However, in many ways this book could be seen as a forerunner of many of the works of alternative archaeology which have been popular in recent years, such as Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, which postulate a lost, unified ancient civilization as the forefather of all those which came after it. Tilak's theory has been accepted and referenced by proponents of esoteric Hitlerism, including both Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano. Joscelyn Godwin has also dedicated an entire book to the various permutations of the Arctic theory, including Tilak: Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and National Socialist Survival.


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