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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE CAPTIVE WATERS. 253
Arbuda is said to be killed with hima (ice) by Indra. Again, as
previously stated, the dawn could not be considered as a prize of
the conflict, nor could the fight be said to have been fought in
darkness, if we choose the rainy season as the time for the
battle of Indra with Vṛitra. It will thus be seen that the Storm
theory does not satisfactorily explain the statements regarding
the time of the struggle between Indra and Vṛitra.
The fourth objection against the Storm theory, as applied
to the story of Vṛitra, is that many words like parvata, giri, or
adri, which do not signify a cloud, either primarily or second-
arily, have to be interpreted as referring figuratively to the rain-
cloud. This sounds harsh in many a passage where Indra or
Bṛihaspati is described as piercing a mountain or breaking open
a stone-cave and liberating the waters or the cows confined there-
in. In the absence of any other theory, we had to interpret
these passages by the Storm theory, as the Nairuktas have done,
by assigning to any and every word, used to denote the prison-
house of waters or the cows, the meaning of a rain-cloud mov-
ing in the sky. But though we could thus temporarily get over
the difficulty, the fact, that we had to strain the words used, or
to assign unnatural meanings to them, was always a drawback,
which detracted from the value of our interpretation. It was
probably for this reason that Prof. Oldenberg was led to suggest
that Indra's piercing the mountain and liberating the waters there-
from should be understood to refer not to the rain-cloud, but to
the actual striking of the mountains with the thunder-bolt and
making the rivers flow forth from them. But, as observed by
Max Muller, “the rivers do not gush out of rocks even when
they have been struck by lightning”; and so Prof. Oldenberg’s
explanation, though it gets us out of one difficulty, lands us on
another, which, to say the least, is equally puzzling. If we, there-
fore, cannot suggest a better explanation, we might as well accept
the device of the Nairuktas and interpret parvata or whatever