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

172 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. point at some length in this place. That the word yuga by itself means 'a period of time,' or that, at any rate, it is one of its meanings goes without saying. Even the Petersburg Lexicon assigns this meaning to yuga in the Atharva Veda VIII, 2, 21 ; but so far as the Ṛig-Veda is concerned yuga, according to it, must mean 'descent,' or 'generation,' or some- thing like it, but never 'a period of time.' This is especially the case with the phrase Mânuṣhâ yugâ, or Manuṣhyâ yugâni, which occurs several times in the Ṛig-Veda. Western scho- lars would everywhere translate it to mean 'generations of men,' while native scholars, like Sâyaṇa and Mahîdhara, take it to refer to 'mortal ages' in a majority of places. In some cases (I, 124, 2 ; I, 144, 4) Sayâṇa, however, suggests, as an alternative, that the phrase may be understood to mean 'con- junction' or 'couples (yuga) of men' : and this has probably given rise to the interpretation put upon the phrase by Western scholars. Etymologically the word yuga may mean 'conjunc- tion' or 'a couple,' denoting either (1) 'a couple of day and night,' or (2) 'a couple of months,' i.e. 'a season,' or (3) 'a couple of fortnights,' or 'the time of the conjunction of the moon and the sun,' i. e. 'a month.' Thus at the beginning of the Kali- Yuga the planets and the sun were, it is supposed, in conjunc- tion and hence it is said to be called a yuga. It is also possible that the word may mean 'a conjunction, or a couple, or even a generation of men,' Etymology, therefore, does not help us in determining which of these meanings should be assigned to the word yuga, or the phrase Mânuṣhâ yugâ in the Ṛig- Veda, and we must find out some other means for determining it. The prejudice we have referred to above, appears to be mainly due to the disinclination of the Western scholars to import the later Yuga theory into the Ṛig-Veda. But it seems to me that the caution has been carried too far, so far as almost to amount to a sort of prejudice.