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

MONTHS AND SEASONS. 165 no reason for the Dashagvas to curtail their sacrifices and com- plete them in ten months. Consequently the only inference we can draw from the story of the Navagvas and the Dashagvas is that they carried on their sacrifices during ten months of sun- shine and after that period, the sun went to dwell in darkness or sank below the horizon, and Indra, invigorated by the Soma libations of the Dashagvas, then entered into the cave of Vala, rent it open, released the cows of the morning and brought out the sun at the end of the old and the beginning of the new year, when the Dashagvas again commenced their sacrifices after the long dawn or dawns. In short, the Dashagvas and the Navagvas, and with them all the ancient sacrificers of the race, lived in a region where the sun was above the horizon for ten months, and then went down, producing a long yearly night of two months' duration. These ten months, therefore, formed the annual sacrificial session, or the calendar year, of the oldest sacrificers of the Aryan race, and we shall see in the next chapter that independently of the legend of the Dashagvas this view is fully supported by direct references to such a session in the Vedic sacrificial literature. The etymology of the words Navagva and Dashagva leads us to the same conclusion. The words are formed by prefixing nava and dasha to gva. So far there is no dif- ference of opinion. But Yâska (XI, 19) takes nava in na- vagva to mean either 'new' or 'charming,' interpreting the word to mean 'those, who have charming or new career (gva, from gam to go)'. This explanation of Yâska is, however, un- satisfactory, inasmuch as the Navagvas and the Dashagvas are usually mentioned together in the Ṛig-Veda, and this close and frequent association of their names makes it necessary for us to find out such an etymological explanation of the words as would make Navagva bear the same relation to nava as