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

296 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. Aryan deity, was probably ascribed to Indra in the Vedic my- thology, when Indra become the principal deity in the Vedic pantheon. The fact that Tishtrya, and not Verethraghna, is said to be the releaser of waters and light in the Avesta, lends some support to this theory. But whichever view we adopt, it does not affect the conclusion we have come to above regarding the true explanation of the Vṛitra legend. Clouds and rain cannot constitute the physical basis of the legend, which is evidently based on the simple phenomenon of bringing light to the people who had anxiously waited for it during the darkness of the long night in the Arctic regions; and it is a pity that any misconception regarding Vedic cosmography, or the nature of waters and their cosmic movements, should have, for sometime at least, stood in the way of the true inter- pretation of this important legend. Indra may have be- come a storm-god afterwards; or the conquest over Vṛitra, originally achieved by some other deity, may have come to be ascribed to Indra, the rain-god in later times. But whether the exploits of Vṛitra-han were subsequently ascrib- ed to Indra, or whether Indra, as the releaser of captive waters, was afterwards mistaken for the god of rain, like Tishtrya in the Avesta, one fact stands out boldly amidst all details, viz., that captive waters were the aerial waters in the nether world, and that their captivity represented the annual struggle between light and darkness in the original home of the Aryans in the Arctic region; and if this fact was not hitherto discovered, it was because our knowledge of the ancient man was too meagre to enable us to perceive it properly.