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

88 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
of, some past and some yet to come; and the two groups are
said to occupy a very long interval. That seems to be the real
meaning of the verse. But without laying much stress on any
particular meaning for the present, it is enough for our purpose
to show that, even adopting Aufrecht's rendering, we cannot
escape from the necessity of making the description refer to the
Polar conditions. The verse in question is the tenth in the
hymn, and it may be noticed that in the 13th verse of the same
hymn we are told that "in former days, perpetually (shashvat)
did the Goddess Uṣhas shine," clearly indicating that the Dawn,
in early days, lasted for a long time.
The following verse is, however, still more explicit, and
decisive on the point. The seventh Maṇḍala of the Ṛig-Veda
contains a number of dawn-hymns. In one of these (VII, 76), the
poet, after stating in the first two verses that the Dawns have
raised their banner on the horizon with their usual splendour,
expressly tells us, (verse 3), that a period of several days elapsed
between the first appearance of the dawn on the horizon and the
actual rising of the sun that followed it. As the verse* is very
important for our purpose, I give below the Pada text with an
interlineal word for word translation:—
Tâni it ahâni bahulâni âsan
Those verily days many were
yâ prâchînam ud-itâ sûryasya ।
which aforetime on the uprising of the sun
Yataḥ pari jâre-iva â-charantî
from which after towards a lover, like moving on
Ushaḥ dadṛikshe na punaḥ yatî-iva ॥
O Dawn! wast seen not again forsaking (woman), like
I have followed Sâyaṇa in splitting jâra-iva of
Saṁhitâ text into jâre+iva, and not jâraḥ+iva as Shâkala
—* Ṛig. VII, 76, 3,—तानीदहानि बहुलान्यसन् य्रा प्राचीनमुदिता सू-
र्यस्य । यतः परि जार इवाचरत्युषो ददृक्षे न पुनर्यतीव ॥