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

214 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. libations were offered in order to help him in his fight with the Asuras, who had taken shelter with the darkness of the night. That the Ati-râtra is an ancient sacrifice is further proved by the occurrence of a similar ceremony in the Parsi scriptures. The word Ati-râtra does not occur in the Avesta, but in the Vendîdad, XVIII, 18 (43)–22 (48), we are told that there are three parts of the night, and that in the first of these parts (thrishvai), Fire, the son of Ahura Mazda, calls upon the master of the house to arise and put on his girdle and to fetch clean wood in order that he may burn bright ; for, says the Fire, “Here comes Azi (Sans. Ahi), made by the Daêvas (Vedic Asuras), who is about to strive against me, and wants to put out my life.” And the same request is made during the second and the third part of the night. The close resemblance between this and the three paryâyas of the Ati-râtra sacrifice does not seem to have been yet noticed : but whether noticed or not, it shows that the Ati-râtra is an ancient rite performed during the night for the purpose of helping Indra, or the deity that fought with the powers of darkness, and that such sacrificial acts as putting on the girdle (kosti) or squeezing the Soma, were performed during this period of dark- ness. Now what applies to the sacrifice of a single night may well be extended to cases where sacrifices had to be performed for two, three or more continuous nights. I have already shown before that the ancient sacrificers completed their sacri- ficial sessions in ten months, and a long night followed the com- pletion of these sacrifices. What did the sacrificers do during this long night ? They could not have slept all the time ; and as a matter of fact we know that the people in the extreme north of Europe and Asia do not, even at present, sleep during the whole of the long night which occurs in their part of the globe. Paul Du Chaillu, who has recently (1900) published an account of his travels in The Land of the