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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE CAPTIVE WATERS. 261 interterranean ground. When we meet with two such phrases as the heaven "above the three earths," and the region "below the three earths," in the Ṛig-Veda, phrases, which cannot be mistaken or misunderstood, the hypothesis that the Vedic bards were not acquainted with the nether world at once falls to the ground. Mr. Wallis seems to think that since rajas is said to be divided three-fold, like the earth, and since the highest rajas is mentioned as the seat of waters, there is no scope in the Vedic division of rajas for a region beneath the earth; for the three rajas are exhausted by taking them as the rajas of the earth (pârthivam), the rajas of the sky (divo rajaḥ) and the highest (paramam) rajas, the seat of waters. But this objection is quite untenable, inasmuch as six different rajas are also mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda (I, 164, 6). We can, therefore, suppose that there were three rajas above the earth and three below it, and so meet the apparent difficulty pointed out by Wallis. The three rajas can in some places be also interpreted to mean the earthly rajas, the one above the earth and the one below it, (X, 82, 4,). In I, 35, 2, the Savitṛi is described as moving through the dark rajas (kṛiṣhṇena rajasâ), and in the next verse we are told that he comes from the distant (parâvat) region, which shows that the dark rajas and the parâvat region are synonymous, and that the sun ascends the sky after passing through the dark rajas. Again the use of the word 'ascend' (ud-yan or ud-âcharat, I, 163, 1; VII, 55, 7), to describe the rising of the sun in the morning from the ocean, shows, by contrast, that the ocean which the sun is said to enter at the time of setting (X, 114, 4) is really an ocean underneath the earth. In I, 117, 5, the sun is described as sleeping in "the lap of Nir-ṛiti," and "dwelling in darkness"; while in I, 164, 32 and 33, the sun is said to have travelled in the interior of heaven and earth and finally gone into Nir-ṛiti, or as Prof. Max Muller renders it, 'the exodus in the west.' Now, in X,