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

THE AVESTIC EVIDENCE. 369
denying the possibility that the passage in question contains
any traditional account of the ancient home of the Iranians;
and this course seems to have been adopted by some Zend
scholars of the day. But with the Vedic evidence, set forth and
discussed in the previous chapters, before us, we need not have
any of those apprehensions which have hitherto led many Zend
scholars to err on the side of caution and moderation. We have
seen that there are strong grounds for holding that the ancient
Indo-European year was a year of ten months followed by a long
night of two months; in other words, it was a year of ten sum-
mer months and two winter months, that is, exactly of the same
kind as the one which prevailed in the Airyana Vaêjo before the
happy land was invaded by the evil spirit. The word for
summer in Zend is hama, the same as Sanskrit samâ, which means
"a year" in the Rig-Veda. The period of ten summer months
mentioned in the Avesta would, therefore, mean a year of ten
months' sunshine, or of ten mânusha yugâ, followed by a long
wintry night of two months as described in the previous chapters.
It may be urged that the Vendidad does not say that the two
winter months were all dark, and we have, therefore, no
authority for converting two winter months into two months of
continuous darkness. A little reflection will, however, show
that the objection is utterly untenable. In order to have a winter
of ten months at the present day, we must place the Airyana
Vaêjo in the Arctic regions; and once we do so, a long night of
one, two or three months follows as a matter of course. This
long night will now fall in the middle of the winter of ten
months; but before the last Glacial epoch, or the invasion of
Angra Mainyu, when there was a summer of ten months in the
Arctic regions, the duration of the long night and that of the
winter of two months must have been co-extensive. That is an
important difference in the description of the paradise of the
Aryans, as it is at present and as it was before the last Glacial
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