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

124 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
day may gradually gain over the night at one time and the night
over the day at another, producing a variety of ordinary days and
nights of different lengths. All these phenomena are so connected
astronomically that if one of them is established, the others
follow as a matter of scientific inference. Therefore, if the long
duration of the Vedic dawn is once demonstrated, it is, astrono-
mically speaking, unnecessary to search for further evidence
regarding the existence of long days and nights in the Ṛig-Veda.
But as we are dealing with a state of things which existed several
thousand years ago, and with evidence, which, though tra-
ditionally handed down, has not yet been interpreted in the way
we have done, it is safer to treat, in practice, the aforesaid
astronomical phenomena as disconnected facts, and separately
collect evidence bearing on each, keeping the astronomical
connection in reserve till we come to consider the cumulative
effect of the whole evidence in support of the several facts
mentioned above. I do not mean to imply that there is any
uncertainty in the relation of sequence between the above
astronomical facts. On the contrary, nothing can be more certain
than such a sequence. But in collecting and examining the
evidence bearing on facts like those under consideration, it is
always advisable in practice to collect as much evidence and
from as many different points of view as possible. In this and
the following two chapters, we, therefore, propose to ex-
amine separately the evidence that can be found in the Vedic
literature about the long day, the long night, the number of
months of sunshine and of darkness, and the character of the
year, and see if it discloses characteristics found only at, or
around, the North Pole.
And first regarding the long night,—a night of several
days' duration, such as makes the northern latitudes
too cold or uncomfortable for human habitation at present,