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

394 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.
hundred and more days of the year."* It has been shown
previously that the description of the Vedic dawns, as a close-
ly united band, precludes us from regarding them as three
hundred and more dawns of the year ; and that the only infer-
ence we can draw from a closely united group of dawns is that
it represents the long and continuous Arctic dawn divided
into a number of parts of twenty-four hours each for conveni-
ence. The description of the dawn in the Lettish mythology
does not seem to be so full as that in the Vedas and by itself
it may not be sufficient to indicate the Polar dawn; but con-
sidering the fact that the dawn is described as sky-daughter
and spoken of in the plural by the poets of the Lets and the
poets of the Ṛig-Veda alike, we may safely extend to the
Lettish mythology the conclusion we have drawn from the
more detailed description of the Dawn in the Ṛig-Veda, and
the same may be said of the Celtic and the Greek stories of
the dawn given above.
In treating of the Gavâm-ayanam and the corresponding
legend of the Dashagvas, a reference has already been made
to the Greek legend of Hêlios, who is described as having
350 oxen and as many sheep, obviously representing a year
of 350 days and nights, and to the Roman tradition about
December being the tenth and the last month of the year as
denoted by its etymology. Prof. Lignana in his essay on
The Navagvas and the Dashagvas of the Ṛig-Veda, published
in the proceedings of the seventh International Congress of the
Orientalists, 1886, however, remarks that the passage of Plu-
tarch in the life of Numa, where this tradition is mentioned,
does not support the view that the Romans originally counted
not more than ten months. It is true that Plutarch mentions
an alternative story of Numa's altering the order of months
"making March the third which was the first, January first
which was the eleventh of Romulus, and February the second

• Rhys' Hibbert Lectures p. 458.