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

242 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
his researches were concerned they had led him again and
again to the Dawn and the Sun as the chief burden of the
myths of the Aryan race. The dawn here referred to is the
daily dawn as we see it in the tropical or the temperate zone,
or, in other words, it is the daily conquest of light over dark-
ness that is here represented as filling the minds of the
ancient bards with such awe and fear as to give rise to a variety
of myths. It may be easily perceived how this theory will
be affected by the discovery that Uṣhas, or the goddess of the
dawn in the Ṛig-Veda, does not represent the evanescent dawn
of the tropics, but is really the long continuous dawn of the
Polar or the Circum-Polar regions. If the Arctic theory is
once established, many of these mythological explanations will
have to be entirely re-written. But the task cannot be under-
taken in a work which is devoted solely to the examination of
the evidence in support of that theory.
The Storm theory was originally put forward by the Indian
Nairuktas as a supplement to the Dawn theory, in order to ac-
count for myths to which the latter was obviously inapplicable.
The chief legend explained on this theory is that of Indra and
Vṛitra, and the explanation has been accepted almost without
reserve by all Western scholars. The word Indra is said to be
derived from the same root which yielded indu, that is, the
rain drop; and Vṛitra is one, who covers or encompasses (vṛi,
to cover) the waters of the rain-cloud. The two names being
thus explained, everything else was made to harmonise with
the Storm theory by distorting the phrases, if the same could
not be naturally interpreted in conformity therewith. Thus
when Indra strikes parvata (i. e., a mountain) and delivers
the rivers therefrom, the Nairuktas understood parvata to be
a storm-cloud and the rivers to be the streams of rain. Indra's
wielding the thunderbolt has been similarly interpreted to
mean that he was the god of the thunderstorm, and thunder-
storm implied rain as a matter of course. If the Maruts