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

THE COWS' WALK. 223 and the only difference between the two legends is that while Indra is the chief actor in the one, Tishtrya is the chief hero in the other. But this difference is immaterial inasmuch as the attributes of one deity are often transferred, even in Ṛig-Veda, to another. The Avestic legend of Tishtrya is, therefore, rightly understood by Zend scholars to be a reproduction of the Vedic legend of Indra and Vṛitra.* Now, in the Tîr Yasht, Tishtrya is repre- sented as eventually overcoming Apaosha with the help of the Haoma sacrifice offered to Tishtrya by Ahura Mazda (Yt. VIII, 15-25). The fight is carried on in the region of the waters, the sea Vouru-Kasha, from which Tishtrya is described as rising up victorious after defeating Apaosha (Yt. VIII, 32). Daêva Apao- sha is again said to have assumed the form of a dark horse, while Tishtrya is represented as opposing him in the form of a bright horse, hoof against hoof (Yt. VIII, 28), and eventually com- ing up victorious from out of the sea Vouru-Kasha, like the sacri- ficial horse rising from the waters in the Ṛig-Veda (I, 163, 1). But the passage most important for our purpose is the one in which Tishtrya informs Ahura Mazda as to what should be done in order to enable Tishtrya to overcome his enemy and to appear before the faithful at the appointed time. "If men would wor- ship me," says Tishtrya to Ahura Mazda, "with a sacrifice in which I were invoked by my own name, as they worship the other Yazatas with sacrifices in which they are invoked by their own names, then I should have come to the faithful at the appoin- ted time; I should have come in the appointed time of my beauti- ful immortal life, should it be one night, or two nights, or fifty, or a hundred nights," (Yt. VIII, 11). As Tishtrya appears before man after his battle with Apaosha, the phrase "appointed

• See Darmesteter's Trans. of Zend-Avesta Part II, (Vol. XXIII S. B. E. Series), p. 92. He remarks that Tishtrya's legend is 'a refacimento of the old storm-myths.'