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

LONG DAY AND LONG NIGHT. 131
was something else, something very long, so long that, though
you knew it would not last permanently, yet, by its very length,
it tired your patience and made you long for, eagerly long for,
the coming dawn. In short, it was the long night of the Arctic
region, and the word purâ shows that it was a story of former
ages, which the Vedic bards knew by tradition. I have shown
elsewhere that the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ must be assigned to the
Kṛittikâ period. We may, therefore, safely conclude that at
about 2500 B. C., there was a tradition current amongst the Ve-
dic people to the effect that in former times, or rather in the
former age, the priests grew so impatient of the length of the
night, the yonder boundary of which was not known, that they
fervently prayed to their deities to guide them safely to the
other end of that tiresome darkness. This description of the
night is inappropriate unless we take it to refer to the long and
continuous Arctic night.
Let us now see if the Ṛig-Veda contains any direct reference
to the long day, the long night, or to the Circum-polar calendar,
besides the expressions about long darkness or the difficulty of
reaching the other boundary of the endless night noticed above.
We have seen before that the Ṛig-Vedic calendar is a calendar
of 360 days, with an intercalary month, which can neither be
Polar nor Circum-polar. But side by side with it the Ṛig-Veda
preserves the descriptions of days and nights, which are not
applicable to the cis-Arctic days, unless we put an artificial con-
struction upon the passages containing these descriptions. Day
and Night is spoken of as a couple in the Vedic literature, and is
denoted by a compound word in the dual number. Thus we have
Ushâsâ-naktâ (I, 122, 2), Dawn and Night; Naktoshâsâ (I, 142, 7),
Night and Dawn; or simply Ushâsau (I, 188, 6), the two Dawns;
all meaning a couple of Day and Night. The word Aho-râtre also