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

MONTHS AND SEASONS. 175 "The people have placed Agni (as described) in front for their welfare, with praises, during human ages." But Griffith takes yugâ to mean 'generations,' and supplying a verb of his own, translates the last part of the verse thus: "Men's generations magnify (Agni) with praise-songs (girâ)." This shows what straits we are reduced to if we once make up our mind not to interpret mânushâ yugâ to mean 'a period of time'; for the word 'magnify' does not exist in the original. This verse also occurs in the Vâjasaneyî Saṁhitâ (XII, 111) and Mahîdhara there explains mânushâ yugâ to mean 'human ages' or 'periods of time' such as fortnights. We have, therefore, at least two passages, where mânushâ yugâ, must, according to the recognised rules of inter- pretation, be taken to mean 'periods of time,' and not 'genera- tions of men,' unless we are prepared to give up the natural con- struction of the sentence. There are no more passages in the Ṛig-Veda where mânushâ yugâ occurs in juxtapposition with words like janâḥ or martyân, so as to leave no option as regards the meaning to be assigned to yuga. But if the meaning of a phrase is once definitely determined even from a single passage, we can safely understand the phrase in the same sense in other passages, provided the meaning does not conflict there with the context. That is how the meaning of many a Vedic word has been determined by scholars like Yâska, and we are not ventur- ing on a new path in adopting the same process of reasoning in the present case. But if mânushâ yugâ means 'human ages' and not 'human generations,' we have still to determine the exact duration of these ages. In the Atharva-Veda VIII, 2, 21, which says, "We allot to thee, a hundred, ten thousand years, two, three or four yugas," the word yuga obviously stands for a period of time, not shorter than ten thousand years. But there are grounds to hold that in the early days of the Ṛig- Veda yuga must have denoted a shorter period of time,