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Arctic Home in the Vedas : published in 1903 by Lōkamānya Tilak, the first manuscript of which says his preface, was written at the end of 1898. It propounded the theory that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during pre-glacial period which they had to leave due to the ice deluge around 8000 BC, & migrate to northern Europe & Asia. A. Rangaswami Aiyengar, Editor Swadeshamitram, Madras: I well remember the day, when we boarded together the ill-fated Macedonia at Tilbury England on our return voyage home in November 1919 after a Congress deputation [sent to influence the Montague-Chelmsford Report] that brought the country not much good.... It was a wintry day, but the inclemency of the weather was as nothing compared to the cold & truculent attitude which our European fellow passengers...showed at first to our great leader who with precision & self-restraint which extorted admiration on board the ship assumed his seat on the deck every morning & pursued his slow & stately walks in the course of the day.... Among the many expedients that the passengers invented...was a programme of discourses & lectures by some of the European passengers…. Having regard to the very large number of Indian passengers on board, the usefulness of asking some of them to address the goodly company on board the ship…was suggested to the organisers…. [We asked] them to request Lōkamānya & Mr B.C. Pal among others.... Mr Pal first addressed them on one day & the impression he produced induced our European fellow-passengers to ask us again that he may be induced to address them. We eventually persuaded the Lōkamānya but he insisted upon addressing on a non-political subject & we of course asked him to tell his audience something of the epoch making researches he had made regarding the Arctic Home in the Vedas. He readily agreed & his audience full of Europeans of quality were wondering what they were going to pick up from the abstruse discourse that would be made. Nevertheless they gathered in full strength at least to know what the power of speech of this slim man was, that kept so many administrators & authorities in awe & fear as against millions of his fellow countrymen that adored him. Mr Tilak began punctually at the appointed time & in an absolutely unconcerned manner-of-fact way. Without preliminaries & without apologies of any kind, he began to expound to his audience, archaeological, geological, historical & philosophical secrets that lay within the compass of the Vedas. In clear, short & simple sentences he unfolded the tale of the Vedic Man’s Arctic Home to an audience that found the mysteries of research solved with so little effort. There was not a single personal note in the discourse although the Lōkamānya described the logical processes & the lengthy researches by which he had arrived at conclusions that then seemed to his audience so simple & self-evident. He first of all traced the Greek tradition of Orion & also the Hindu tradition as to Mriga-Shirsha. He demonstrated their identity & referred to the mathematical calculation by which the time when a year began with the Sun in the constellation of Orion must be somewhere before 4000 B.C. carrying his researches further, as he did during the days of his captivity in Burma, he showed how this deductive conclusion was confirmed by the latest discovery in geology & archaeology. The theory of the original ancestral home of the Aryan races being in the North Pole, was also, confirmed by the astrological phenomenon which, he said, was recorded in the Vedas & in the Mahabharata & which is distinctly Polar in character. The six months’ day & six months’ night spoken of in the sacred books & the continuance of the dawn for two months as described in the Yajurveda, pointed clearly to this Asiatic Home & he referred to the evidence of geologists & archaeologists on this matter. He also demonstrated by mathematical calculations how the astronomical phenomena thus disclosed should take us to a period at least 4000 years before the birth of Christ. The Lōkamānya went from point to point, from conclusion to conclusion with the precision of a mathematician that he was without notes & without references of any kind; he had not brought any with him at all. The audience by this time became intensely interested & spell-bound. No wonder at the conclusion thereof the ICS Commissioner of U.P. who presided, paid a glowing tribute to the scholar that had enlightened them with such wealth of learning & simplicity of diction. From that day forwards Lōkamānya was the cynosure of all thinking Europeans on board the ship, & it was not unfamiliar sight to see him engaged with one or other of them in earnest conversation about many things, scientific, literary & political.... [Reminiscences & Anecdotes of Lōkamānya Tilak, edited & published by S.V. Bāpat, Poona, 1924]