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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 461 old or ancient. In short, the ancient hymns, poets, or deities, mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda must be referred to a by-gone age and not to post-Glacial times. The Arctic character of these deities, it may be further observed, is intelligible only on this view. The Vedic bards may well be credited with having composed, or fashioned, new songs or hymns; but the question still remains whether the subject matter of these hymns was of their own creation, and the fact that the deities have been called ancient in contradistinction with the songs offered to them (VI, 62, 4), and are clothed with Polar attributes, at once enables us to solve the question by answering that though the wording of the hymns was new, their sub- ject matter was old, that is, traditionally handed down to the poet from remote ages. Thus in a hymn of the tenth Maṇḍa- la (X, 72, 1-2), the poet desiring to celebrate the births or the origin of gods, thus begins his hymn, "Let us, from the the love of praise, celebrate, in recited hymns, the births of gods,—any one of us who in this later age may see them, (yaḥ pashyâd uttare yuge)." Here we have a distinct con- trast between the births of gods on the one hand and the poet who may see the hymn in the later age on the other, evidently meaning that the subject matter of the hymn is an occurrence of the former age (yuga), and that the poet celebrates as he perceives or sees it in the later age. The view that the Vedic hymns, or rather their contents, were perceived and not made by the Ṛiṣhis, derives material support from this statement. A similar expression is also found in VIII, 59, 6, which says "Indra and Varuṇa! I have seen (abhi apashyam) through tapas that which ye formerly gave to the Ṛiṣhis, wisdom, understanding of speech, sacred lore (shru- tam) and all the places which the sages created when perform- ing sacrifices."* The notion about the perception of the

• Ṛig. VIII, 59, 6,—इंद्रावरुणा यदृषिभ्यो मनीषां वाचो मतिं श्रुतम- दत्तमग्रे । यानि स्थानान्यसृजंत धीरा यज्ञं तन्वानास्तपसाभ्यपश्यम् ॥