72 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Even the Ossetes, whose language alone is possibly inflectional, have not had their claims to the honour of Aryan made positively clear as yet. And even if Ossetian be Aryan, there is every reason to regard the people as immigrants from the direction of Iran, not indigenous Caucasians at all. Their head form, together with their occupation of territory along the only highway—the Pass of Darriel—across the chain from the South, give tenability to the hypothesis. At all events, whether the Ossetes be Aryan or not, they little deserve pre-eminence among the other peoples about them. They are lacking both in the physical beauty for which this region is justly famous, and in courage as well, if we may judge by their reputation in yielding abjectly and without shadow of resistance to the Russians.
It is not true that any of these Caucasians are even ‘somewhat typical’. As a matter of fact they could never be typical of anything. The name covers nearly every physical type and family of language of the Eur-Asian continent except, as we have said, that blond, tall, ‘Aryan’ speaking one to which the name has been specifically applied. It is all false; not only improbable but absurd. The Caucasus is not a cradle—it is rather a grave— of peoples, of languages, of customs and of physical types. Let us be assured of that point at the outset. Nowhere else in the world probably is so heterogeneous a lot of people, languages and religions gathered together in one place as along the chain of the Caucasus mountains.”
Mr. Tilak has suggested that the original home of the Aryan race was in the Arctic region. His theory may be summarized in his own words. He begins by taking note of the astronomical and climatic phenomenon in the region round about the North Pole. He finds [1] that there are :
“Two sets of characteristics, or differentia; one for an observer stationed
exactly at the terrestrial North Pole, and the other for an observer located in the Circum-Polar regions, or tracts of land between the North Pole and
the Arctic circle.”
Mr. Tilak calls these two sets of differentia; as Polar and CircumPolar, and sums them up as follows :
I. The Polar Characteristics
(1) The sun rises in the south.
(2) The stars do not rise and set; but revolve or spin round and round, in horizontal planes, completing one round in 24 hours. The northern celestia hemisphere is alone overhead and visible during the whole year; and the souther or lower celestial world is always invisible.
(3) The year consists only of one long day and one long night of six months each.
(4) There is only one morning and one evening, or the sun rises and sets only once a year. But the twilight, whether of the morning or of the evening, lasts continuously for about two months, or 60 periods of 24 hours each. The ruddy light
1 Tilak B. G., The Arctic Home in the Vedas, 58-60.