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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE MATUTINAL DEITIES. • 339 horse, which represented the sun, was harnessed by Trita, and first bestrode by Indra (I, 163, 2). It was the place from which the seven aerial rivers rose up with the seven suns to illumine the ancient home of the Aryan race for seven months, and into which they again dropped with the sun after that period. It was the same waters that formed the source of earthly waters by producing rain by their circulation through the upper regions of heaven. These waters were be- lieved to stretch from west to east underneath the three earths, thus forming at once the place of desolation and the place of the birth of the sun and other matutinal deities men- tioned in the Ṛig-Veda. It was the place where Vṛitra con- cealed the cows in a stony stable, and where Varuṇa and Yama reigned supreme, and the fathers (Pitṛis) lived in comfort and delight. As regards the division of this watery region, we might say that the Vedic bards conceived the nether world as divided in the same way as the earth and the heaven. Thus there were three, seven or ten lower worlds to match with the three-fold, seven-fold or ten-fold division of the heaven and the earth. It will thus be seen that a right conception of the nether waters and their movement is quite necessary for understanding the real meaning of many a Vedic, and, we might even say, the Purâṇic legends, for the latter are ge- nerally based either upon the Vedic legends or some one or other incident mentioned in them. If this universal and com- prehensive character of the waters be not properly understood many legends will appear dark, confused or mysterious; and I have, therefore, summed up in this place the leading charac- teristics of the goddesses of water as conceived by the Vedic poets and discussed in the foregoing pages. In the post-Vedic literature many of these characteristics are predicated of the sea of salt water on the surface of the earth, much in the same way as the Greek Okeanos, which has been shewn to be phonetically identical with the Sanskrit word âshayâna or enveloping, came