The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a 1903 book by Indian nationalist, teacher and independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak on the origin of the Aryans. Based on his analysis of Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic chronology and Vedic calendars, Tilak argued 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.

Publication

The book was written at the end of 1898, but was first published in March 1903 in Pune. Tilak cited a book by first Boston University president William F. Warren, Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, as having anticipated his ideas.

Tilak's Arctic homeland hypothesis

According to Tilak, writing at the end of the 19th century, the Neolithic Aryan race in Europe cannot be regarded as autochthonous, nor did the European Aryans descend from the Paleolithic man. Hence, the question of the original Aryan home is regarded as unsettled by Tilak. According to Tilak, the close of the Pliocene and the whole of the Pleistocene period were marked by violent changes of climate bringing on what is called the Glacial and Inter-Glacial epochs: The Arctic was inhabited by the Aryans. The ending of the Glacial age changed the climate there, and set the Aryan people on a migration to new habitats: Characteristics of an Arctic home, characterised by a climate different from today's, are clearly recorded in several Vedic hymns and Avestic passages. There are descriptions of the prevailing conditions and of the day-to-day experience, but also recordings of stories told by the earlier generation, sometimes presented as myths. Tilak gives the following chronology of the post-glacial period:

Influence

Translation

In 1979, The Arctic Home in the Veda was translated and published in French :

Sources