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

222 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
But a far more striking corroboration of the above view is
furnished by certain passages in the Avesta which describe the
fight of Tishtrya with the demon of draught called Apaosha or
'the burner' in the Parsi scriptures. In the Ṛig-Veda the fight of
Indra with Vṛitra (Vṛitra-tûrya) is often represented as 'a struggle
for waters' (ap-tûrya), or as 'the striving for cows' (go-
ishṭi), or 'the striving for day' (div-ishṭi), and Indra is said to have
released the cows or waters, and brought on the dawn or the sun
by killing Vṛitra (I, 51, 4; II, 19, 3). Now Indra, as Vṛitra-han,
appears as Verethraghna in the Avesta; but the fight for waters is
therein ascribed not to Verethraghna but to Tishtrya, the star of
rain. It is he, who knocks down Apaosha and liberates the waters
for the benefit of man, "with the assistance of the winds, and the
light that dwells in the waters." In short Tishtrya's conquest
over Apaosha is an exact parallel of Indra's conquest over
Vṛitra as described in the Ṛig-Veda; and as the legends are in-
terpreted at present, they are said to refer to the breaking up of
the clouds and the bringing on of the rains on the earth, Tish-
trya being supposed to be the star of rain. But this theory fails
to account for the fact how the recovery of the dawn and the
rising of the sun, or the bringing on of light, were included
amongst the effects of Indra's victory over Vṛitra. It will be
shown in the next chapter that the struggle for waters has very
little to do with rain, and that the fight for waters and the fight
for light are really synchronous, being two different versions of
the same story. In short, both of these legends really represent
the victory of the powers of light over darkness. Shushṇa or
'the scorcher' is one of the names given to Indra's enemy in
the Ṛig-Veda (I, 51, 11), and the result of the conflict between
Indra and Shushṇa is the release of the waters, as well as the
finding of the morning cows (VIII, 96, 17), and the winning of the
sun (VI, 20, 5). Apaosha is thus Shushṇa under a different garb,