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

THE VEDIC DAWNS. 107 Taittirîya Saṁhitâ describe a long aud continuous dawn divided into thiry dawn-days, or periods of twenty-four hours each, a char- acteristic found only in the Polar dawn. There are a number of other passages where the dawn is spoken of in the plural, especially in the case of matutinal deities, who are said to follow or come after not a single dawn, but dawns in the plural, (I, 6, 3; I, 180, 1; V, 76, 1; VII, 9, 1; VII, 63, 3). These passages have been hitherto understood as describing the ap- pearance of these deities after the consecutive dawns of the year. But now a new light is thrown upon them by the conclusion esta- blished above from the examination of the different passages about the dawn in the Ṛig-Veda, the Taittirîya and the Atharva Veda Saṁhitâ. It may, however, be mentioned that I do not mean to say that in the whole of the Ṛig-Veda not a single reference can be found to the dawn of the tropical or the temperate zone. The Veda which mentions a year of 360 days is sure to mention the evanescent dawn which accompanies these days in regions to the south of the Arctic circle. A greater part of the description of the dawn is again of such a character that we can apply it either to the long Polar dawn, or to the short-lived dawn of the tropics. Thus both may be said to awaken every living being (I, 92, 9), or disclose the treasures concealed by darkness (I, 123, 4). Similarly when dawns of different days are said to depart and come, a new sister succeeding each day to the sister previously vanished (I, 124, 9), we my either suppose that the consecutive dawns of different days are intended, or that a number of day-long dawns, which succeed one another after every 24 hours at the Pole, were in the mind of the poet. These passages do not, therefore, in any way affect the conclusion we have arrived at above, by the consideration of the special characteristics of the dawns mentioned in the hymns. What