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

THE NIGHT OF THE GODS. 75
of the Gods' occurs even in the Parsi scriptures. Thus in the
Farvardin Yasht, paras 56, 57, the Fravashis, which correspond
with the Pitṛis in the Vedic literature, are said to have shown
to the sun and the moon "the path made by Mazda, the way
made by the Gods," along which the Fravashis themselves are
described as growing. The sun and the moon are, again, said
to have "stood for a long time in the same place, without
moving forwards through the oppression of the Daevas (Vedic
Asuras, or the demons of darkness)," before the Fravashis
showed 'the path of Mazda,' to these two luminaries.* This
shows that 'the path of Mazda' commenced, like the Devayâna
road, when the sun was set free from the clutches of the demons
of darkness. In other words, it represented the period of the
year when the sun was above the horizon at the place where
the ancestors of the Indo-Iranian lived in ancient days. We
have seen that the Devayâna, or the path of the Gods, is the
way along which Sûrya, Agni and other matutinal deities are
said to travel in the Ṛig-Veda; and the Parsi scriptures supple-
ment this information by telling us that the sun stood still before
the Fravashis showed to him 'the path of Mazda', evidently
meaning that the Devayâna, or 'the path of Mazda', was the
portion of the year when the sun was above the horizon after
being confined for some time by the powers of darkness.
But the correspondence between the Indian and the
Parsi scriptures does not stop here. There is a strong pre-
judice, connected with the Pitṛiyâna, found in the later
Indian literature, and even this has its parallel in the Parsi
scriptures. The Hindus consider it inauspicious for a man
to die during the Pitṛiyâna, and the great Mahâbhârata
warrior, Bhîshma, is said to have waited on his death-bed
until the sun passed through the winter solstice, as the

• See Sacred Books of the East Series, Vol, XXIII, pp. 193-194.