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

V DIC MYTHS—THE CAPTIVE WATERS. 235
Ṛig-Veda as moving round like a wheel, a characteristic, which is
true only in the case of the Polar dawn. These facts suffici-
ently prove the acquaintance of the Vedic bards with the
physical phenomena, witnessible only in the Arctic regions.
But to make the matter more certain, I have, in the last three
chapters, quoted and discussed Vedic passages, which go to
prove that the long Arctic nights and the corresponding long
days of varying duration, as well as a year of ten months or
five seasons, were equally known to the poets of the Ṛig-Veda.
An examination of the ancient sacrificial system and especially
of the annual Sattras and night-sacrifices, further showed that in
old times yearly sacrificial sessions did not last for twelve months
as at present, but were completed in nine or ten months; and
the hundred night-scarifices were, at that time, really performed
as their name indicates, during the darkness of the long night.
The legends of Dîrghatamas and Aditi's sons, and the tradition
about the sacrificial sessions of the Navagvas and the Dashag-
vas also pointed to the same conclusion. Our case does not,
therefore, depend on an isolated fact here and an isolated fact
there. We have seen that the half-year-long day and night, the
long dawn with its revolving splendours, the long continuous
night matched by the corresponding long day and associated
with a succession of ordinary days and nights of varying lengths,
and the total annual period of sunshine of less than twelve
months are the principal peculiar characteristics of the
Polar or the Circum-Polar calendar; and when express pas-
sages are found in the Vedas, the oldest record of early Aryan
thoughts and sentiments, showing that each and every one of
these characteristics was known to the Vedic bards, who
themselves lived in a region where the year was made up of
three hundred and sixty or three hundred and sixty five days,
one is irresistibly led to the conclusion that the poets of the
Ṛig-Veda must have known these facts by tradition and that