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

88 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. of, some past and some yet to come; and the two groups are said to occupy a very long interval. That seems to be the real meaning of the verse. But without laying much stress on any particular meaning for the present, it is enough for our purpose to show that, even adopting Aufrecht's rendering, we cannot escape from the necessity of making the description refer to the Polar conditions. The verse in question is the tenth in the hymn, and it may be noticed that in the 13th verse of the same hymn we are told that "in former days, perpetually (shashvat) did the Goddess Uṣhas shine," clearly indicating that the Dawn, in early days, lasted for a long time. The following verse is, however, still more explicit, and decisive on the point. The seventh Maṇḍala of the Ṛig-Veda contains a number of dawn-hymns. In one of these (VII, 76), the poet, after stating in the first two verses that the Dawns have raised their banner on the horizon with their usual splendour, expressly tells us, (verse 3), that a period of several days elapsed between the first appearance of the dawn on the horizon and the actual rising of the sun that followed it. As the verse* is very important for our purpose, I give below the Pada text with an interlineal word for word translation:— Tâni it ahâni bahulâni âsan Those verily days many were yâ prâchînam ud-itâ sûryasya । which aforetime on the uprising of the sun Yataḥ pari jâre-iva â-charantî from which after towards a lover, like moving on Ushaḥ dadṛikshe na punaḥ yatî-iva ॥ O Dawn! wast seen not again forsaking (woman), like I have followed Sâyaṇa in splitting jâra-iva of Saṁhitâ text into jâre+iva, and not jâraḥ+iva as Shâkala —* Ṛig. VII, 76, 3,—तानीदहानि बहुलान्यसन् य्रा प्राचीनमुदिता सू- र्यस्य । यतः परि जार इवाचरत्युषो ददृक्षे न पुनर्यतीव ॥