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

THE VEDIC DAWNS. 97
out of respect for the deity, where was the necessity of informing
us that they do not quarrel though collected in the same place ?
The expresssions 'waves of waters', or 'men arrayed' &c., are
again too definite to be explained away as honorific. Sâyaṇa
seems to have perceived this difficulty, and has, probably for the
same reason, proposed an explanation slightly different from that
of Yâska But, unfortunately, Sâyaṇa's explanation does not solve
the difficulty, as the question still remains, why the deities pre-
siding over the dawn should be more than one in number. The
only other explanation put forward, so far as I know, is that the
plural number refers to the dawns on successive days during the
year, as we perceive them in the temperate or the tropical zone.
On this theory there would be 360 dawns in a year, each followed
by the rising of the sun every day. This explanation may appear
plausible at the first sight. But on a closer examination it will
be found that the expressions used in the hymns cannot be made
to reconcile with this theory. For, if 360 dawns, all separated
by intervals of 24 hours, were intended by the plural number used
in the Vedic verses, no poet, with any propriety, would speak of
them as he does in I, 92, 1, by using the double pronoun etâḥ and
tyâḥ, as if he was pointing out to a physical phenomenon
before him; nor can we understand how 360 dawns, spread
over the whole year, can be described as advancing like 'men
arrayed' for battle. It is again absurd to describe the 360
dawns of the year as being collected in the 'same enclosure'
and 'not striving against or quarrelling with each other.' We
are thus forced to the conclusion that the Ṛig-Veda speaks
of a team or a group of dawns, unbroken or uninterrupted
by sunlight, so that if we be so minded, we can regard
them as constituting a single long continuous dawn. This
is in perfect accord with the statement discussed above, viz.,
13