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

130 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.

limitations; (10) Upamâna, an apt comparison or simile. Sâyaṇa
in his introduction to the commentary on the Ṛig-Veda men-
tions the first nine of these, and as an illustration of the eighth,
Purâ-kalpa, quotes the explanatory passage from the Taittirîya
Saṁhitâ, I, 5, 7, 5, referred to above. According to Sâyaṇa the
statement, "In former times the priests were afraid that it
would not dawn," therefore, comes under Purâ-kalpa, or ancient
traditional history found in the Brâhmaṇas. It is no Arthavâda,
that is, speculation or explanation put forth by the Brâhmaṇa
itself. This is evident from the word purâ which occurs in
the Saṁhitâ text, and which shows that some piece of ancient
traditional information is here recorded. Now if this view
is correct, a question naturally arises why should ordinary long
winter nights have caused such apprehensions in the minds of the
priests only 'in former times,' and why should the long darkness
cease to inspire the same fears in the minds of the present
generation. The long winter nights in the tropical and the
temperate zone are as long to-day as they were thousands of
years ago, and yet none of us, not even the most ignorant, feels
any misgiving about the dawn which puts an end to the darkness
of these long nights. It may, perhaps, be urged that in ancient
times the bards had not acquired the knowledge necessary to
predict the certain appearance of the dawn after a lapse of
some hours in such cases. But the lameness of this excuse
becomes at once evident when we see that the Vedic calendar
was, at this time, so much advanced that even the question
of the equation of the solar and the lunar year was
solved with sufficient accuracy. Sâyaṇa's explanation of winter
nights causing misgivings about the coming dawn must, there-
fore, be rejected as unsatisfactory. It was not the long winter-
night that the Vedic bards were afraid of in former ages. It