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

214 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
libations were offered in order to help him in his fight with the
Asuras, who had taken shelter with the darkness of the night.
That the Ati-râtra is an ancient sacrifice is further proved by the
occurrence of a similar ceremony in the Parsi scriptures. The
word Ati-râtra does not occur in the Avesta, but in the Vendîdad,
XVIII, 18 (43)–22 (48), we are told that there are three parts of
the night, and that in the first of these parts (thrishvai), Fire, the
son of Ahura Mazda, calls upon the master of the house to arise
and put on his girdle and to fetch clean wood in order that he
may burn bright ; for, says the Fire, “Here comes Azi (Sans. Ahi),
made by the Daêvas (Vedic Asuras), who is about to strive against
me, and wants to put out my life.” And the same request is
made during the second and the third part of the night. The
close resemblance between this and the three paryâyas of the
Ati-râtra sacrifice does not seem to have been yet noticed : but
whether noticed or not, it shows that the Ati-râtra is an ancient
rite performed during the night for the purpose of helping
Indra, or the deity that fought with the powers of darkness,
and that such sacrificial acts as putting on the girdle (kosti) or
squeezing the Soma, were performed during this period of dark-
ness.
Now what applies to the sacrifice of a single night may
well be extended to cases where sacrifices had to be performed
for two, three or more continuous nights. I have already
shown before that the ancient sacrificers completed their sacri-
ficial sessions in ten months, and a long night followed the com-
pletion of these sacrifices. What did the sacrificers do during
this long night ? They could not have slept all the time ; and
as a matter of fact we know that the people in the extreme
north of Europe and Asia do not, even at present, sleep
during the whole of the long night which occurs in their
part of the globe. Paul Du Chaillu, who has recently (1900)
published an account of his travels in The Land of the