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

286 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. different rewards which a Mazdayasnian receives in the next life for what he gives as present in this to the Ratu (re- ligious head); and we have therein such expressions as "On the 45th (day) of Maidhyô-Zaremya, i. e., on (the day) Dae of (the month) Ardibehest;" or "On the 60th (day) of Maidhyôshma, i. e., on (the day) Dae of (the month) Tîr;" and so on. Here each date is given in two different ways: first, by mentioning the Gâhanbâr or the season (the year being divided into six Gâhanbârs), and the day of that season; and secondly, by mentioning the month and the day of that month. Strictly speaking there is no necessity to adopt this double method of marking the days of the year, for either of them is enough to accurately define the day required. It is, therefore, highly probable, as remarked by Mr. Ervad Jamshedji Dadabhai Nadershah, that the method of counting by seasons and days is the older of the two, and the phrases containing the names of months and days are later interpola- tions, made at a time when the older method was superseded by the latter.* But even supposing that the double phrases were used originally, we can, so far as our present purpose is concerned, safely infer from these passages that the method of marking the days of the year by mentioning the season and the day thereof was in vogue at the time when the Âfrigân was written: and if the method is so old, it fully warrants us in in- terpreting chatvâriṁshyâm sharadi to mean "On the 40th (day) in Sharad (autumn)." There can be little doubt that the Vedic bards have recorded in this passage the exact date of the com- mencement of Indra's fight with Shambara, but in the absence of the true key to its meaning the passage has been so long un- fortunately misunderstood and misinterpreted both by Eastern and Western scholars. The grammatical possibility of connect- ing chatvâriṁshyâm, as an adjective, with sharadi helped on

• See his essay on "The Zoroastrian months and years with their divisions in the Avestic age" in the Cama Memorial Volume, pp. 251–