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

THE AVESTIC EVIDENCE. 369 denying the possibility that the passage in question contains any traditional account of the ancient home of the Iranians; and this course seems to have been adopted by some Zend scholars of the day. But with the Vedic evidence, set forth and discussed in the previous chapters, before us, we need not have any of those apprehensions which have hitherto led many Zend scholars to err on the side of caution and moderation. We have seen that there are strong grounds for holding that the ancient Indo-European year was a year of ten months followed by a long night of two months; in other words, it was a year of ten sum- mer months and two winter months, that is, exactly of the same kind as the one which prevailed in the Airyana Vaêjo before the happy land was invaded by the evil spirit. The word for summer in Zend is hama, the same as Sanskrit samâ, which means "a year" in the Rig-Veda. The period of ten summer months mentioned in the Avesta would, therefore, mean a year of ten months' sunshine, or of ten mânusha yugâ, followed by a long wintry night of two months as described in the previous chapters. It may be urged that the Vendidad does not say that the two winter months were all dark, and we have, therefore, no authority for converting two winter months into two months of continuous darkness. A little reflection will, however, show that the objection is utterly untenable. In order to have a winter of ten months at the present day, we must place the Airyana Vaêjo in the Arctic regions; and once we do so, a long night of one, two or three months follows as a matter of course. This long night will now fall in the middle of the winter of ten months; but before the last Glacial epoch, or the invasion of Angra Mainyu, when there was a summer of ten months in the Arctic regions, the duration of the long night and that of the winter of two months must have been co-extensive. That is an important difference in the description of the paradise of the Aryans, as it is at present and as it was before the last Glacial 24