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

242 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. his researches were concerned they had led him again and again to the Dawn and the Sun as the chief burden of the myths of the Aryan race. The dawn here referred to is the daily dawn as we see it in the tropical or the temperate zone, or, in other words, it is the daily conquest of light over dark- ness that is here represented as filling the minds of the ancient bards with such awe and fear as to give rise to a variety of myths. It may be easily perceived how this theory will be affected by the discovery that Uṣhas, or the goddess of the dawn in the Ṛig-Veda, does not represent the evanescent dawn of the tropics, but is really the long continuous dawn of the Polar or the Circum-Polar regions. If the Arctic theory is once established, many of these mythological explanations will have to be entirely re-written. But the task cannot be under- taken in a work which is devoted solely to the examination of the evidence in support of that theory. The Storm theory was originally put forward by the Indian Nairuktas as a supplement to the Dawn theory, in order to ac- count for myths to which the latter was obviously inapplicable. The chief legend explained on this theory is that of Indra and Vṛitra, and the explanation has been accepted almost without reserve by all Western scholars. The word Indra is said to be derived from the same root which yielded indu, that is, the rain drop; and Vṛitra is one, who covers or encompasses (vṛi, to cover) the waters of the rain-cloud. The two names being thus explained, everything else was made to harmonise with the Storm theory by distorting the phrases, if the same could not be naturally interpreted in conformity therewith. Thus when Indra strikes parvata (i. e., a mountain) and delivers the rivers therefrom, the Nairuktas understood parvata to be a storm-cloud and the rivers to be the streams of rain. Indra's wielding the thunderbolt has been similarly interpreted to mean that he was the god of the thunderstorm, and thunder- storm implied rain as a matter of course. If the Maruts