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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE CAPTIVE WATERS. 241 abyss, which every morning seemed instinct with light and life.” And again “a new life flashed up every morning before their eyes, and the fresh breezes of the dawn reached them like greetings wafted across the golden threshold of the sky from the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds, be- yond the dawn, beyond ‘the immortal sea which brought us hither.’ The dawn seemed to them to open golden gates for the sun to pass in triumph, and while those gates were open their eyes and their minds strove in their childish way to pierce be- yond the finite world. That silent aspect awakened in the human mind the conception of the Infinite, the Immortal, the Divine, and the names of dawn became naturally the names of higher powers.” This is manifestly more poetic than real. But the learned Professor explains many Vedic myths on the theory that they are all Dawn-stories in different garbs. Thus if Saraṇyu, who had twins from Vivasvat, ran off from him in the form of a mare, and he followed her in the form of a horse, it is nothing but a story of the Dawn disappearing at the approach of the Sun and producing the pair of day and night. The legend of Suryâ’s marriage with Soma, and of Vṛishâkapâyî, whose oxen (the morning vapours) were swallow- ed by Indra, or of Aditi giving birth to the Âdityas are again said to be the stories of the Dawn under different aspects. Saramâ, crossing the waters to find out the cows stolen by Paṇis, is similarly the Dawn bringing with her the rays of the morn- ing, and when Urvashî says that she is gone away and Purûravas calls himself Vasiṣhṭha or the brightest, it is the same Dawn flying away from the embrace of the rising Sun. In short, the Dawn is supposed to have been everything to the ancient people, and a number of legends are explained in this way, until at last the monotonous character of these stories led the learned professor to ask to himself the ques- tion, “Is everything the Dawn? Is everything the Sun?”— a question, which he answers by informing us that so far as 16