वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

THE NIGHT OF THE GODS. 75 of the Gods' occurs even in the Parsi scriptures. Thus in the Farvardin Yasht, paras 56, 57, the Fravashis, which correspond with the Pitṛis in the Vedic literature, are said to have shown to the sun and the moon "the path made by Mazda, the way made by the Gods," along which the Fravashis themselves are described as growing. The sun and the moon are, again, said to have "stood for a long time in the same place, without moving forwards through the oppression of the Daevas (Vedic Asuras, or the demons of darkness)," before the Fravashis showed 'the path of Mazda,' to these two luminaries.* This shows that 'the path of Mazda' commenced, like the Devayâna road, when the sun was set free from the clutches of the demons of darkness. In other words, it represented the period of the year when the sun was above the horizon at the place where the ancestors of the Indo-Iranian lived in ancient days. We have seen that the Devayâna, or the path of the Gods, is the way along which Sûrya, Agni and other matutinal deities are said to travel in the Ṛig-Veda; and the Parsi scriptures supple- ment this information by telling us that the sun stood still before the Fravashis showed to him 'the path of Mazda', evidently meaning that the Devayâna, or 'the path of Mazda', was the portion of the year when the sun was above the horizon after being confined for some time by the powers of darkness. But the correspondence between the Indian and the Parsi scriptures does not stop here. There is a strong pre- judice, connected with the Pitṛiyâna, found in the later Indian literature, and even this has its parallel in the Parsi scriptures. The Hindus consider it inauspicious for a man to die during the Pitṛiyâna, and the great Mahâbhârata warrior, Bhîshma, is said to have waited on his death-bed until the sun passed through the winter solstice, as the

• See Sacred Books of the East Series, Vol, XXIII, pp. 193-194.