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

222 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. But a far more striking corroboration of the above view is furnished by certain passages in the Avesta which describe the fight of Tishtrya with the demon of draught called Apaosha or 'the burner' in the Parsi scriptures. In the Ṛig-Veda the fight of Indra with Vṛitra (Vṛitra-tûrya) is often represented as 'a struggle for waters' (ap-tûrya), or as 'the striving for cows' (go- ishṭi), or 'the striving for day' (div-ishṭi), and Indra is said to have released the cows or waters, and brought on the dawn or the sun by killing Vṛitra (I, 51, 4; II, 19, 3). Now Indra, as Vṛitra-han, appears as Verethraghna in the Avesta; but the fight for waters is therein ascribed not to Verethraghna but to Tishtrya, the star of rain. It is he, who knocks down Apaosha and liberates the waters for the benefit of man, "with the assistance of the winds, and the light that dwells in the waters." In short Tishtrya's conquest over Apaosha is an exact parallel of Indra's conquest over Vṛitra as described in the Ṛig-Veda; and as the legends are in- terpreted at present, they are said to refer to the breaking up of the clouds and the bringing on of the rains on the earth, Tish- trya being supposed to be the star of rain. But this theory fails to account for the fact how the recovery of the dawn and the rising of the sun, or the bringing on of light, were included amongst the effects of Indra's victory over Vṛitra. It will be shown in the next chapter that the struggle for waters has very little to do with rain, and that the fight for waters and the fight for light are really synchronous, being two different versions of the same story. In short, both of these legends really represent the victory of the powers of light over darkness. Shushṇa or 'the scorcher' is one of the names given to Indra's enemy in the Ṛig-Veda (I, 51, 11), and the result of the conflict between Indra and Shushṇa is the release of the waters, as well as the finding of the morning cows (VIII, 96, 17), and the winning of the sun (VI, 20, 5). Apaosha is thus Shushṇa under a different garb,