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

76 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Dakshiṇâyana, which is synonymous with the Pitṛiyâna, was then understood to mean the time required by the sun to travel from the summer to the winter solstice.* A number of passages scattered over the whole Upanishad literature support the same view, by describing the course of the soul of a man according as he dies during the Devayâna or the Pitṛiyâna, and exhibiting a marked preference for the fate of the soul of a man dying during the path of the Gods, or the Devayâna. All these passages will be found collected in Shankarâchârya's Bhâṣhya on Brahma-Sûtras, IV, 2, 18-21, wherein Bâdarâyaṇa,† anxious to reconcile all these passages with the practical difficulty sure to be experienced if death during the night of the Gods were held to be absolutely unmeritorious from a religious point of view, has recorded his opinion that we must not interpret these texts as predicating an uncomfortable future life for every man dying during the Dakshiṇâyana or the night of the Gods. As an alter- native Bâdarâyaṇa, therefore, adds that these passages may be taken to refer to the Yogins who desire to attain to a particular kind of heaven after death. Whatever we may think of this view, we can, in this attempt of Bâdarâyaṇa, clearly see a distinct consciousness of the existence of a tradition, which, if it did not put an absolute ban on death during the night of the Gods, did, at any rate, clearly disapprove of such occur- rences from a religious point of view. If the Pitṛiyâna ori- ginally represented, as stated above, a period of continuous darkness the tradition can be easily and rationally explain- ed; for as the Pitṛiyâna then meant an uninterrupted night, the funeral ceremonies of any ‘one dying during the period

• For the text and discussion thereon, see Orion, p. 39. † The Sûtras are,— रश्म्यनुसारी । १८ । निशि नेति चेन्न, संबंधस्य यावद्देहभावित्वाद्दर्शयति च । १९ । अतश्चायनेऽपि दक्षिणे । २० । योगिनः प्रति च •स्मर्यते स्मार्ते चैते । २१ । See also Orion, pp. 23-25.