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

VEDIC MYTHS—THE MATUTINAL DEITIES. • 339
horse, which represented the sun, was harnessed by Trita, and
first bestrode by Indra (I, 163, 2). It was the place from
which the seven aerial rivers rose up with the seven suns to
illumine the ancient home of the Aryan race for seven months,
and into which they again dropped with the sun after
that period. It was the same waters that formed the source
of earthly waters by producing rain by their circulation
through the upper regions of heaven. These waters were be-
lieved to stretch from west to east underneath the three
earths, thus forming at once the place of desolation and the
place of the birth of the sun and other matutinal deities men-
tioned in the Ṛig-Veda. It was the place where Vṛitra con-
cealed the cows in a stony stable, and where Varuṇa and
Yama reigned supreme, and the fathers (Pitṛis) lived in comfort
and delight. As regards the division of this watery region,
we might say that the Vedic bards conceived the nether
world as divided in the same way as the earth and the heaven.
Thus there were three, seven or ten lower worlds to match
with the three-fold, seven-fold or ten-fold division of the heaven
and the earth. It will thus be seen that a right conception
of the nether waters and their movement is quite necessary
for understanding the real meaning of many a Vedic, and,
we might even say, the Purâṇic legends, for the latter are ge-
nerally based either upon the Vedic legends or some one or
other incident mentioned in them. If this universal and com-
prehensive character of the waters be not properly understood
many legends will appear dark, confused or mysterious; and
I have, therefore, summed up in this place the leading charac-
teristics of the goddesses of water as conceived by the Vedic
poets and discussed in the foregoing pages. In the post-Vedic
literature many of these characteristics are predicated of the sea
of salt water on the surface of the earth, much in the same way
as the Greek Okeanos, which has been shewn to be phonetically
identical with the Sanskrit word âshayâna or enveloping, came