Arctic Home of the Vedas Revisited
In
his famous book, The Arctic Home in the Vedas, Bal Gangahar Tilak begins by
bringing up two points for the consideration of the reader: That the Arctic area
had a tropical climate at one point, and that the sea level was lower, exposing
more land mass.
The
typical argument justifying a tropical climate for the Arctic area is that of a
pole shift, that the Arctic might have enjoyed a different latitude in the past.
This is possible. It is also possible that a cloud mantle, as Venus enjoys,
could have brought about both effects- a warmer climate as well as a lower sea
level.
First
of all, let us consider the model of the planet Venus which mainstream astronomy
has given us. Supposedly, the cloud mantle around Venus has caused a greenhouse
effect such that the temperatures are reported to be around 900* F. Even so, the
Venera Nine probe sent a smaller probe to the surface of Venus by parachute.
This is unlikely as the material of any parachute would not have survived such
temperatures. ( Or maybe the temperatures are unlikely ) Also, the atmosphere of
Venus is reported to be permeated with sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid at those
temperatures would leave the surface of Venus looking like a “ blob ” (Joseph H. Cater) due to chemical erosion, rather than exhibiting the sharp
features which radar-mapping probes have sent back to us.
The
idea that such a cloud mantle around the Earth or any planet would have the
effect of distributing the heat evenly in terms of latitude has been espoused by
Joseph H. Cater in his book The Ultimate Reality. Mr. Cater goes outside of the
parameters of mainstream science in order to explain the effects of such a
mantle. He tells us that the photons from the Sun, passing through such a mantle
miles thick, would transform by
sticking together and forming photon aggragates, a.k.a. soft particles, or prana.
The
higher content of photon aggregates in the atmosphere would have many effects,
one of them being the absorption of heat. Thus a cloud canopy miles thick would
not only diminish the sea levels below by transferring a significant amount of
the water held in the oceans to the atmosphere, but a canopy would regulate and
distribute the heat as well.
And
not only would a cloud mantle with an interior atmosphere with a high content of
photon aggregates distribute the heat in terms of latitude, but in terms of altitude as
well. If we considered that gravity effects are due to an electromagnetic
radiation, then an atmosphere ionized by soft particles would exhibit a more
uniformly distributed density. This explains the Puranic descriptions of
heavenly climates in the Himalayan regions, such as Kashmir. Again, the surface
conditions on each planet are dependent on the atmospheric shell, and a thick
cloud mantle suspended in the middle of the atmosphere would create different
conditions from those which we now experience.
The
falling of the cloud mantle might explain the Biblic account of a forty-days and
forty-nights rain. It might also explain how the effects of Kali Yuga were
brought about; with no cloud canopy, the soft particle, “prana“ atmosphere
would no longer be generated below, and the surface of the planet would be
exposed to the unrefined rays of the Sun, thereby degrading the condition of
life on the surface.
Such
an explanation is necessary to establish that the descriptions which Tilak
attributed to the Arctic Home of the Vedas could easily have been spoken from
the Arctic areas to which he attributed them.
And
what were those descriptions? Let us begin by looking at chapter four, page 57,
of Tilak's book:
“
We shall therefore, next quote the Mahabharat, which gives such a clear
description of Mount Meru, the lord of the mountains, as to leave no doubt its
being the North Pole, or possessing the Polar characteristics. In chapters 163
and 164 of Vanaparvan, Arjuna’s visit to the mount is described in detail and
we are therein told, ‘ at Meru the Sun and the Moon go ‘round from left to
right ( Pradadakshinam ) every day and so do all the stars.’ From the normal,
inhabited longitudes on the surface of the earth, the Sun and Moon don't rise
and travel left and right, only above one's head. According to how one turns,
the rising could be left or right, frontal or from the back. Only from the
Arctic could the rising of the Sun be from left to right, and it can ONLY be
from left to right. So what region is being referred to in this description of
Meru's placement?
The explorer Admiral Mac Millan reported seeing a mountain range as clearly as
could be from a point not far from the opening to the hollow earth, as we shall
soon see.
Later on, the
Mahabharat informs us: ‘ the mountain, by its luster, so overcomes the darkness of
night, that the night can hardly be distinguished from the day.’”
This
is a wonderful description, the only problem being that there is no land mass
–what to speak of Mount Meru- near the North Pole to justify this explanation.
( That is, even if the area were warm enough to support life.) More correctly,
there is no land mass that we commonly know of. But there were reports from the
Arctic explorers earlier on -before the time of censorship began in
earnest- of sightings of land.
Admiral
Mac Millan’s book Four Years in the White North contains testimony, not only of the
admiral himself; but from others, testimony which he compiled in an appendix to
his book. We shall attach the entire appendix to the end of this chapter.*
But this collection of varied
testimony is just the tip of the iceberg when compared with the testimony of Admiral Peary, a discoverer of the North Pole, the
testimony of
Admiral MacMillan himself, and Doctor Frederick A Cook, another discoverer of
the North Pole. These three were all active around the Northern tip of Ellesmere
Island, which is also the Northernmost tip of Canada, and which lies right next
to the tip of Greenland. The area is only about 6* from the Pole. From various
points of elevation, as well as from across the ice, as much as ten years apart,
these three men observed a mountainous land mass which they described as filling
up a third of the horizon, about 120* around them. Admiral Peary mentioned white
summits distinctly on June 28th, 1906. Admiral Macmillan organized an
expedition which traveled across the ice 130 miles after seeing this continent
from the heights of Ellesmere Island and wrote that his observations resembled
in every particular an immense land while observing in clear weather with
powerful binoculars. He went on to describe hills, valleys and snow-capped peaks,
all this in April of 1914.
Which
brings the reader to the testimony of Dr. Frederick A Cook. Dr. Cook also
observed this land mass while traveling across the ice. He made a round trip to
the Pole and choose a much more Western route, bringing him closer to the
sighting. Dr. Cook also made entries in his log book just as the other explorers
did. Additionally, however, he took some photographs. The significance of this
is that, first of all, we have some visual evidence to consider, and that second,
we actually have a picture of a land mass which is not exactly on the surface of
the Earth, but rather, which fingers its way up to the rim from within. It is
amazing that evidence such as this could exist. The photographic plates formed a
part of the Cook collection in the U.S. Library of Congress, but by an ironic
coincidence, they are missing. Even so, one single picture remains with us
because it is in the book by Doctor Cook. It was scanned with good resolution by
Jan Lamprecht and included in his book Hollow Planets as Plate 31. The points to
be made with reference to the picture are that it cannot be confused with sea
ice on the horizon, nor with ice islands that typically have ice mounds atop
them, ( such do exist ). It is a picture of a land mass, confirmed by Eskimo
testimony, and its profile answers to some specific descriptions in the doctor's
log book.
The sighting seems to have been a mirage, but this is not to say that it was
false. A mirage is actually a reflection which is carried over long distances
through thermal layers of air, and over-the-horizon mirages are practically
common in the Arctic. This effect would become very exaggerated if the
mirage were to originate from a curved, funnel-like opening; this would play
havoc with our ability to estimate distances. Therefore, it seems reasonable to
hypothesize that the observations seen by Cook, Peary and Mac Millan could have
had their origin as much as a few hundred miles away, near the neck of the
opening to the hollow portion of the Earth.
The
description from Mahabharat mentions a mountain which: “ by its luster, so
overcomes the darkness of night, that the night can hardly be distinguished from
the day.” Tilak ascribes this quality to the aurora, but the aurora as we
commonly understand it hardly overcomes the darkness of night. Consider the
words of an Arctic
explorer, as quoted by Marshall B. Gardner: “ H.D. Northrop, though, notes that the light of the aurora is
continuous during the Arctic night, and he says that the arch which is ... such
a prominent feature of the aurora is only part of a ring of light which is
elevated considerably above the surface of our globe, and whose center is
situated in the vicinity of the pole.” The mountainous land mass sighted by
Admiral Mac Millan and then Lt. Commander Green had to have been quite inside
the downward-sloping portion of the opening to the hollow earth, maybe near the
neck of the opening. From this inward location, the mountains could experience
constant illumination from within, as described by Northrop and apparently by
the Mahabharat. Thus we have justified the existence of some type of illuminated
mountain at the top of the Earth, which, " by its luster, so overcomes the darkness of
night, that the night can hardly be distinguished from the day."
In
relation to the Rig Veda, Tilak quotes the following on page 102:
“
Thus in I.32.10, Vritra, the traditional enemy of Indra, is said to be engulfed
in long darkness … and in V.32.5, Indra is described as having placed Shushna,
who was anxious to fight, in ‘ the darkness of the pit ’”
We
don’t usually think of the Arctic basin as having any pits, nor of being
pit-like. But if there is an opening to the hollow portion, then the curvature
is going to slope inwards towards the opening and form a doughnut-like funnel
towards the neck, until it flares out on the other side. Actually, the whole
Arctic basin is itself a depression. This fact goes along way towards accounting
for the long Arctic night. Were the Earth only to flatten its curvature around
the polar extremes, this effect would not nearly be the same. The Arctic night
and the midnight Sun effect is due to the fact that the Arctic basin is a
depression.
In order to understand this situation, the reader can look at pictures taken of
the horizon as seen from Texas or Oklahoma or some place like those. Pictures
from those places show a horizon that just stretches on and on. At the North
Pole, where the curvature is supposed to flatten out a bit, the horizon should
stretch out even further. Instead of that, the opposite can be seen in pictures
taken from the polar area. Such pictures show that the horizon drops off shortly.
The
documented experiences of the Arctic explorers Peary and also Cook bear out the
fact that the Arctic basin is a depression. As they approached the North Pole,
they both reported exaggerated sledding speeds ( Siberian husky dogs ). Why?
Because the terrain not only flattened, but was curving inwards rather sharply.
So a little distance covered made for more-than-normal lateral progress, cutting
straight across, so to speak, rather than up the normal curvature of the Earth.
This is something that affected their celestial latitude calculations, and something
which was symptomatic of travel along an inward slope. The abnormal
sledding speeds increased as Peary approached and departed from the immediate
proximity of the Pole. Right as he left, he covered 153 miles in 48 hours,
over Arctic ice, on a sled, running over rough ice terrain and such. This is
hardly believable- one could hardly imagine dogs covering such distances even on
nature trails in a warm climate.
He did tell the truth, though. It is just that the sharp curvature played havoc
with his latitude calculations, exaggerating his reports of latitude progress.
The opening is somewhere between the Pole and the New Siberian Islands. That
means that the more that you approach the Pole from Greenland and Northern
Canada, the sharper that the inward curvature gets. This is what Peary and Cook
experienced without realizing it. And there were other explorers who experienced
the same without being able to interpret the effect.
At the risk of repetition, here is what is gathered together on this point subject
matter from the page entitled Seven Days North of Tibet. You will notice that
curvature anomaly has been documented from northwards above the New Siberian
Islands, as well as northwards from Northern Canada. If the inward curvature
continues from opposite sides of the Arctic circle, what happens in the middle?
The curvature funnels downward until it opens up into the hollow world, that's
what. From Seven Days North of Tibet:
" At this time, their position was just a little above 78* 15 North, only a
few degrees from the polar opening. (They felt that they had temporarily back
drifted from where they had originally reached the ice) The fact that the Sun
had disappeared below the horizon, introducing the long Artic night, at that
time and from that latitude, indicates that the grade of the Earth's curvature
diminishes at the poles, which is something that science certainly accepts- such
flattening can even be seen in astronomical photographs of other planets. But
what is not understood by most is that such flattening is indicative of a
curvature which continues to round gradually inwards."
...
" On page 126 of Nansen´s book, disappointment is described as the
navigator all of the sudden determines the ships position to be various degrees
South of where they had calculated. Now, it is not reasonable to assume that an
error had existed all this time, which was not caught until that moment. Their
navigator was Sugurd Scott Hansen, an officer of the Norwegian Navy and an
academy graduate: Could it be that the current had the ship straddling the rim
of the funnel-like opening, North and back South, falsely indicating exaggerated
movements in terms of latitude? It seems that the curvature of the polar opening
was playing havoc with the angle of their sextant, and the indications derived
from the readings."
...
" Now we touch on the anomaly of curvature again-
Page 288: [ April 6th ] It became more and more of a riddle to me that we did
not make greater progress Northward. I kept on calculating and adding up our
marches later on, but always with the same result ... we must be far above the
86th parallel. It was becoming only too clear to me that the ice was moving
southward.
" Page 291: [ April 14th ] I find that we should yesterday have come
farther South than 86* 53 North; ... I cannot explain it in any other manner
than by the surmise that we have been drifting rapidly northward, which is very
good for the Fram, but less so for us [on foot].
" It was between these two log entries that Dr. Nansen and Johansen had
turned back. Here we find that within the space of a few days, Nansen blames his
navegational anomalies on the ice drifting southward then northward. More likely,
they were very close to the rim of the doughnut-like opening into the hollow
portion, and the curvature changes were confusing Dr. Nansen, indicating
paucious lateral movements, and rendering his sextant unreliable. There was a
Northward current at the time because the ship Fram, which was still in the
vicinity, had drifted Northwards also. This current would account for the
retarded Southward progress of Dr. Nansen and Johansen. But their scant
Northward/lateral progress prior to the turn-back had to have been due to travel
over the curved rim of doughnut-like opening.
" Lt. Greely ( Later General ) also indicated curvature anomalies, from hundreds
of miles away, and to the other side of the basin from Nansen;
Nansen was now on the Russian side above Franz Josef Land, and Greely had been
over towards the tip of Greenland and Canada. Lt. Greely's description, since he
had landmarks at his disposition, specifically smacks of foreshortening of the
horizon, such that spurs of land at the horizon seemed high out of proportion,
and cut off the view beyond. In our " curving, doughnut-like polar opening
" scheme of things, this blocking-of-the-view would simply be due to an
exaggerated bulging and pinching of the horizon as it angles into the opening.
At this point, Greely was near the tip of Greenland, near the Pole (a few
hundred miles) and near the opening. Let us consider his comments:
Culled from The Hollow Earth, page 104:
" The deep interest with which we had hitherto pursued our journey was now
greatly intensified. The eye of civilized man had never seen, or his feet
trodden, the ground over which we were traveling. A strong, earnest desire to
press forward at our best speed seized us all. As we neared each projecting spur
of the land ahead, our eagerness to see what was beyond became so intense at
times as to be painful. Each point we reached brought a new landscape in sight,
and always in advance was a point which cut off a portion of the horizon and
caused a certain disappointment."
If Greely and his companions were advancing towards the interior of the Earth,
they would certainly find that the Earth has a greater curve the further North
they got; ... Foreshortening of the horizon can also be seen in photographs of
the North Pole area; the horizon seems to come up closer than it should.
Admiral Peary made a similar observation: " The black cliffs peer up over
the ice caps." This indicates an exaggerated curvature, sloping inward
towards the North, that in the near distance, only the peaks of the hills popped
up into view above the horizon.
"Due to polar anomalies in terms of compass ( longitude ) and curvature (
latitude ), Dr. Nansen and crew had been unable to precisely calculate their
position since the first moment that they had lodged their ship into the ice. At
this point, trekking on foot down from the Pole, he and Johansen were still
quite unsure of their position thanks to the curvature anomalies just described,
and to the drunken compass readings along the rim of the opening. They remained
unsure for a long time as they headed straight down South on the Russian side of
the Pole. As they descended from near the Pole, however, the nature of their
navigational difficulties took on a different nature. They became problems in
terms of longitude because they had let their watches run down- not latitude.
Their difficulties in determining their longitude at this point were not
anomalous. ( As an example, by June 14th, Nansen recorded his position to be 57*
40 of longitude but, later on, once he got back to civilization, he felt that it
had been more like 6* further East of that. ) As he and Johansen headed South
towards Franz Josef Land, Dr. Nansen wasn´t even sure on which side of the
archipelago they would come down on!"
Thus
we can see that the whole Arctic basin on the Siberian/Alaskan side is a
depression, and maybe it is the description of this phenomenon that is being
translated by Indologists as being a “ pit.”
Back
to B.G. Tilak, in the fourth chapter of his book, on page 55:
“ The idea that the day and night of the gods are each of six months duration
is so widespread in the Indian literature, that we examine it here at some
length, and, for that purpose, commence with the post Vedic literature and trace
it back to the most ancient books. It is found not only in the Puranas, but also
in astronomical works, and as the latter state it in a more definite form, we
shall begin with the later siddhantas. Mount Meru is the terrestrial North Pole
of our astronomers, and the Surya Siddhanta, XII, 67, says: ‘ At Meru gods
behold the Sun after but a single rising during the half of his
revolution beginning with Aries. Now, according to the Puranas, Meru is the home
or seat of all the gods, and the statement about their half-year long night is
thus easily and naturally explained …. “
The
only problem with this interpretation by Tilak is that, even though there is
mountainous terrain near the top of the world, it doesn’t answer to the
description of Meru, and there don’t seem to be any demigods there.
Maybe
part of the problem lies with the concept that we have of the Rig Veda, that
every word is the complete absolute truth. When we think of Vedic scholars debating over
the meaning of the Vedic hymns, the image gets conjured up of pundits invoking
rules of grammar and focusing on the suffices of words and exact meanings and such.
The Vedic literature, however, has been passed down to us for 5,000 years
through the hands of imperfect human beings. There are definite indications of
some concepts having gotten mixed up.
For
example, scholars agree that a revision of the Puranas took place in the
neighborhood of 2,000 years ago. There are parts of the Puranic literature
written in the older, Vedic style, and parts written in the Sanskrit of the
post-Vedic era. Dr. Richard L. Thompson, in his book Mysteries of the Sacred
Universe, quotes Dr. Howard Resnick (Harvard), Hridayananda Das Goswami, as
agreeing with this idea. Dr.
Thompson goes on to show how astronomical descriptions in the Puranas have some
degree of disagreement with each other.
It
is very possible that the mountain referred to at the top of the Earth where,
due to the midnight Sun effect, one day is equal to six months, the mountainous
terrain at the opening to the hollow earth is referred to as Meru. Not that it
is the actual Meru which is the abode of the gods such as Brahma. The situation
would be more like York and New York, Brunswick and New Brunswick, et cetera.
Five thousand years from now, researchers and scholars of the future may not be
able to distinguish between which was which, or if they were really one in the
same. In other words, the real Meru and a mountain named after it, which is
located at the top of the world, seem to have gotten confused in the Vedic literature as
it exists today.
And
what about the gods? According to the verse quoted above, the abode of the gods
is a world where one day is equal to six months, and where the Sun rises once
per day. These conditions exist in the higher, Arctic latitudes. It is this term
” gods “ in the Vedic literature which seems to be surrounded by a great
amount of confusion.
For
example, the Moon is supposed to be a heavenly planet. But consider this
definition of the residents of the Moon by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada.
In the purport to Canto 4, Chapter 22, Text 54, he writes: " The Vedic
literature, however, repeatedly informs us that the Moon is full of highly
elevated inhabitants who are counted amongst the demigods. We are therefore
always in doubt about what kind of moon adventure the modern scientists of this
Earth have undertaken." He doesn’t outright define the residents of the
Moon as demigods, he says that they are “ highly elevated inhabitants who are
counted amongst the demigods.” The inhabitants of the Moon are supposed to
have a duration of life of 10,000 years. Although it is a long duration of life
by our Sun-bred measurement of time, it is paltry compared to the longevity of
millions of years which is assigned to demigods such as Brahma and Shiva. In the
Bhagavat Purana, Canto 4, Chapter 20, Text 35 - 36, a reference is made to the
way in which Maharaj Prithu, a king of the Earth, paid his respects to visitors
from various celestial planets, and then a reference is made to the inhabitants
of the earthly planets- “earthly planets“ in the plural. The term Bhu
Mandala refers to the orbital plane of the planets in the solar system. If the
Moon –and Venus, too- have been referred to as celestial planets, then how can
they be grouped together as “earthly” planets of the Bhu Mandala circle,
too, in the same body of literature? How could it be that an earthly king such
as Maharaj Prithu received the leaders of those planets if they were heavenly?
It is obvious that there are different gradations of demigods, which is a
general, catch-all term, and it is also obvious that there has been hodge-podging in the Puranic descriptions. After all,
we are 5,000 years into the Kali Yuga, and we shouldn’t be surprised.
Where
does this leave us in regards to the descriptions of gods in the Arctic regions?
It leaves us right on the mark- it
is just that the residents of the hollow portion of the earth have also been
perceived as gods. And why wouldn’t they be? Olaf Jansen was a Norwegian youth
when, in 1829, his father Jens dragged him off in their family-fishing sloop to
the warm lands of the gods, to the North, of Scandinavian folklore. ( The
Scandinavian folklore regards the hollow earthers as gods, too ) They passed
through the icebergs, and through the opening which lies above the New Siberian
Islands into the hollow portion. They were received well by the inhabitants
there, and Olaf reported that the inhabitants spoke a language similar to
Sanskrit, were a good 12 – 14 feet in height, and that they had a longevity of
800 years or so. He reported of their world that an apple was the size of a man’s
head and that flowers were extremely fragrant. Would not people such as these be
perceived as god-like by surface dwellers living close to the opening in the
Arctic circle, maybe back when the sea level was lower, more land exposed and
the temperatures milder and better distributed?
Thus,
the seeming contradictions in the Rig-Veda
which were first addressed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in The Arctic Home in
the Vedas, in other words: the location of a Mount Meru at the top of the world;
the fact that the mountain is engulfed in luster; the location of the abode of
“ gods “ being there – where one day equals six months and the Sun rises
only once per day; and where there is a “ pit “- have all been given a
congruent explanation thanks to the Hollow Earth in the Puranas Theory, along
with some understandings of Joseph H. Cater, which can help to justify Puranic
statements regarding previous climates and atmospheric conditions of the Earth
and other planets.
” Captain
Richardson, in his work The Polar Regions; says: The Eskimos of Point Barrow
have a tradition, reported by Dr. Simpson, surgeon of the Plover ( in the year
1832 ), of some of their tribe having been carried to the North on ice broken up
in a southerly gale, and arriving, after many nights at a hilly country
inhabited by people like themselves, speaking the Eskimo language, and by whom
they were well received. After a long stay, one spring in which the ice remained
without movement they returned without mishap to their own country and reported
their adventures. An obscure indication of land to the north was actually
perceived from the masthead of the Plover when off Point Barrow.[ This could
easily have been a mirage of land which really existed even further to the North.
Such superior mirages are common in the Artic and can be perceived over long
distances, as we shall see ]
‘’ In 1850, Captain Mc Lure,
when off the Northern coast of Alaska, wrote in his journal that judging from
the character of the ice and a light, shady tint in the sky, there must be land
to the north of him.
” ' Marcus Taker, writing in the National Geographic Magazine, 1894, under a
title of An Undiscovered Land off the Coast of Alaska, says: It is often told
that natives wintering between Harrison and Camden Bays have seen land to the
North in the bright clear days of spring. In the winter of 1886 1887 Uxharen, an
enterprising Eskimo of Ootkearie was very anxious for me to get some captain to
take him the following summer, with his family canoe and outfit, to the
North-east as far as the ship went, and then he would try to find this
mysterious land of which he had heard so much; but no one cared to bother with
this venturesome Eskimo explorer.
” ' The only report of land having been seen in this vicinity by civilized man
was made by Capt. John Keenan, of Troy, New York, in the Seventies ( 1870s ), at
that time in command of the whaling-bark Stamboul, of New Bedford. Captain
Keenan said that after taking several whales the weather became thick, and he
stood to the North under easy sail and was busily engaged in trying out and
stowing down the oil taken. When the fog cleared off, land was distinctly seen
to the North by him and all the men of his crew, but as he was not on a voyage
of discovery, and there were no whales in sight, he was obliged to give the
order to keep away to the South in search of them.
” In June, 1904,' Dr. R. A Harris, of the United States Coast and Geodetic
survey, published in the National Geographic Magazine his reasons for believing
that there must he a large body of undiscovered land or shallow water in the
polar regions. He based his theory upon the report that Siberian driftwood had
been picked up in South Greenland, upon the observations of drifting polar ice,
upon the drift of the ship Jeannette, and upon numerous tidal observations made
along the Northern coast of Alaska and Eastward.'
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