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

LONG DAY AND LONG NIGHT. 127 it. There are other passages where the . same longing for the. end of darkness or for the appearance of light is expressed, and these cannot be accounted for on the theory that to the old Vedic bards night was as death, since they had no means, which a civilised person in the twentieth century possesses, of dispel- ling the darkness of night by artificial illumination. Even the modern savages are not reported to be in the habit of exhibiting. such impatience for the morning light as we find in the utter- ances of the Vedic bards ; and yet the latter were so much ad- vanced in civilisation as to know the use of metals and carriages. Again not only men, but Gods, are said to have lived in long darkness. Thus, in X, 124, 1, Agni is told that he has stayed “too long in the long darkness,” the phrase used being jyog eva dîrgham tama âshayishṭâḥ. This double phrase jyog (long) and dîrgham is still more inappropriate, if the duration of darkness never exceeded that of the longest winter-night. In II, 2, 2, the same deity, Agni, is said to shinè during “continuous nights,” which, according to Max Muller, is the meaning of the word kshapạḥ in the original.* The translation is no doubt correct, but Prof. Max Muller does not explain to us what he means by the phrase “continuous nights.” Does it signify a succession of nights uninterrupted by sunlight? or, is it only an elegant render- ing, meaning nothing more than a number of nights ? The learn- ed translator seems to have narrowly missed the true import of the phrase employed by him. But we need not depend on stray passages like the above to prove that the long night was known in early days. In the tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛig-Veda we have a hymn (127) addressed to the Goddess of night, and in the 6th verse of this hymn Night is invoked to “ become

• See S. B, E. Series, Vol. XLVI, p. 195.