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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE MATUTINAL DEITIES. 315 for ten months. After this period, the sun was lost, or went out of the womb into the land of desolation, there to be shut up as in a wooden case for two months. The sage Atri, therefore, rightly invokes the Ashvins for his deliverance from the box and also for the safe delivery of the child, i. e., himself, from the womb of his mother after ten months. In the Atharva Veda XI, 5, 1, the sun, as a Brahmachârin, is said to move between heaven and earth, and in the 12th verse of the same hymn we are told that "Shouting forth, thundering, red, white he carries a great penis (bṛihach-chhepas) along the earth." If the sun moving between heaven and earth is called bṛihach-chhepas he may well be called Vadhri (eunuch), when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti. But Prof. Max Muller asks us, why he should be called Sapta- vadhri or a seven-eunuch ? The explanation is simple enough. The heaven, the earth and the lower regions are all conceived as divided seven-fold in the Ṛig-Veda, and, when the ocean or the waters are described as seven-fold (sapta-budhnam arṇavam, VIII, 40, 5; sapta âpaḥ X, 104, 8), or when we have seven Dânus or demons, mentioned in X, 120, 6, or when Indra is called saptâ- han or the seven-slayer (X, 49, 8), or Vritra is said to have seven forts (I, 63, 7), or when the cowstead (vraja), which the two Ashvins are said to have opened in X, 40, 8, is described as saptâsya, the sun, who is bṛihach-chhepas and seven-rayed or seven-horsed (V, 45, 9) while moving between heaven and earth, may very well be described as Saptavadhri or seven-eunuch when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti or the nether world of bottomless darkness from which he is eventually released by the Ashvins. The last three verses of V, 78, can thus be logically connected with the story of Saptavadhri mentioned in the immediately preceding verses, if the period of ten months, during which the child moves in the mother's womb, is taken to represent the period of ten months' sunshine followed by the long night of two months; the existence