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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE MATUTINAL DEITIES. 315
for ten months. After this period, the sun was lost, or went out
of the womb into the land of desolation, there to be shut up as
in a wooden case for two months. The sage Atri, therefore,
rightly invokes the Ashvins for his deliverance from the box
and also for the safe delivery of the child, i. e., himself, from the
womb of his mother after ten months. In the Atharva Veda XI,
5, 1, the sun, as a Brahmachârin, is said to move between heaven
and earth, and in the 12th verse of the same hymn we are told
that "Shouting forth, thundering, red, white he carries a great
penis (bṛihach-chhepas) along the earth." If the sun moving
between heaven and earth is called bṛihach-chhepas he may well
be called Vadhri (eunuch), when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti.
But Prof. Max Muller asks us, why he should be called Sapta-
vadhri or a seven-eunuch ? The explanation is simple enough.
The heaven, the earth and the lower regions are all conceived
as divided seven-fold in the Ṛig-Veda, and, when the ocean or
the waters are described as seven-fold (sapta-budhnam arṇavam,
VIII, 40, 5; sapta âpaḥ X, 104, 8), or when we have seven Dânus or
demons, mentioned in X, 120, 6, or when Indra is called saptâ-
han or the seven-slayer (X, 49, 8), or Vritra is said to have
seven forts (I, 63, 7), or when the cowstead (vraja), which the
two Ashvins are said to have opened in X, 40, 8, is described
as saptâsya, the sun, who is bṛihach-chhepas and seven-rayed or
seven-horsed (V, 45, 9) while moving between heaven and earth,
may very well be described as Saptavadhri or seven-eunuch when
sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti or the nether world of bottomless
darkness from which he is eventually released by the Ashvins. The
last three verses of V, 78, can thus be logically connected with the
story of Saptavadhri mentioned in the immediately preceding
verses, if the period of ten months, during which the child moves in
the mother's womb, is taken to represent the period of ten months'
sunshine followed by the long night of two months; the existence