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

THE COWS' WALK, 217

indicate the existence of an ancient year approximately divided
into seven months' sunshine, one month's dawn, one month's
evening twilight and three months' long continuous night.
There are other considerations which point out to the same
conclusion. In the post-Vedic literature we have a persistent
tradition that Indra alone of all gods is the master of a hundred
sacrifices (shata-kratu), and that as this attribute formed, so
to say, the very essence of Indraship, he always jealously watch-
ed all possible encroachments against it. But European scholars
relying upon the fact that even Sâyaṇa prefers, except in a few
places (III, 51, 2), to interpret shata-kratu, as applied to Indra in
the Ṛig-Veda, as meaning, not 'the master of a hundred sacri-
fices,' but 'the lord of a hundred mights or powers,' have not
only put aside the Purâṇic tradition, but declined to interpret the
word kratu in the Ṛig-Veda except in the sense of 'power, energy,
skill, wisdom, or, generally speaking, the power of body or mind'.
But if the above explanation of the origin of the night-sacrifices
is correct, we must retrace our steps, and acknowledge that
the Purâṇic tradition or legend is, after all, not built upon a pure
misunderstanding of the original meaning of the epithet shata-
kratu as applied to Indra in the Vedic literature. I am aware of
the fact that traditions in the post-Vedic literature are often found
to have but a slender basis in the Vedas, but in the present case we
have something more reliable and tangible to go upon. We
have a group, an isolated group of a hundred nightly Soma
sacrifices, and as long as it stands unexplained in the Vedic
sacrificial literature it would be unreasonable to decline to con-
nect it with the Purâṇic tradition of Indra's sole mastership of
a hundred sacrifices, especially when in the light of the Arc-
tic theory the two can be so well and intelligibly connected.
The hundred sacrifices, which are regarded as constituting the
essence of Indraship in the Purâṇas, are there said to be the
Ashvamedha sacrifices; and it may, at the outset, be urged