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

THE NIGHT OF THE GODS. 63 with twelve intercalary days inserted at the end of each year, was familiar to the poets of the Ṛig-Veda and is often mentioned in the hymns.* The northern and the southern passage of the sun from equinox to equinox, the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna, together with the yearly sattras, have also been referred to in several places, clearly showing that the Ṛig-Vedic calendar differed, if at all, very little from the one in use at the time of, the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ or the Brâhmaṇas. A calendar of twelve months and six seasons is peculiar only to the temperate or the tropical zone, and if we were to judge only from the facts stated above, it follows that the people who used such a calendar, must have lived in places where the sun was above the horizon during all the days of the year. The science of Vedic mythology, so far as it is developed at present, also supports the same view. Vṛitra is said to be a demon of drought or darkness, and several myths are explained on the theory that they represent a daily struggle between the powers of light and the powers of dark- ness, or of eventual triumph of summer over winter, or of day over night, or of Indra over watertight clouds. Mr. Nârâyaṇa Âiyangâr of Bangalore has attempted to explain some of these myths on the astral theory, showing that the myths point out to the position of the vernal equinox in Orion, in the oldest period of Vedic civilisation. But all these theories or methods of interpretation assume that the Vedic people have always been the inhabitants of the temperate or the tropical zone, and all these myths and traditions were formed or developed in such a home.

• See Ṛig. I, 25, 8,—वेद मासो धृतव्रतो द्वादश प्रजावतः। वेदा य उप- जायते । Also Ṛig. IV, 33, 7,—द्वादश द्यून्यदगोह्यस्यातिथ्ये रणन्नृभवः ससंतः See Orion, page 167 f. In Ṛig. I, 164, 11, 360 days and 360 nights of the year are expressly mentioned.