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

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 399
days than the Celtic one; but Prof. Rhys accounts for this
difference on the ground "that winter, and therefore the year
commences earlier in Scandinavia than in the continental centre
from which the Celts dispersed themselves."*
As regards the ancient Greek calendar, Prof. Rhys has
shown that the old year ended with the festival of Apaturia
and the new one began with the Chalceia, an ancient feast in
honour of Hephæstus and Athene, the exact date being the énu
kai nea of the month of Pyanepsion, that is, approximately
the last day of October. Prof. Rhys then compares the Celtic
feast of the Lugnassad with the Greek festival named Pan-
athenæa, and the feast on the Calends of May with the Athe-
nian Thargelia, and concludes his comparison of the Celtic and
the Greek calendar by observing that "a year which was
common to Celts with Greeks is not unlikely to have once been
common to them with some or all other branches of the Aryan
family."†
This shows that the ancient Aryan races of Europe knew
of six months' day and six months' night, and their calendars
were the modifications of this Arctic division of the year.
Comparative philology, according to Dr. Schrader, leads us to
the same conclusion. Speaking of the ancient division of the
year he says:—"Nearly everywhere in the chronology of the
individual peoples a division of the year into two parts can be
traced. This finds linguistic expression in the circumstance
that the terms for summer, spring, and winter have parallel
suffix formations. As in the primeval period *jhi-m and *sem-
existed side by side, so in Zend zima and hama correspond to
each other, in Armenian amarn and jmern, in Teutonic sum-ar
and wint-ar, in Celtic gam and sam, in Indian vasanta and he-
manta. There is absolutely no instance, in which one and the
same language shows identity of suffixes in the names of the
three seasons of the year. In Slavonic, also, the year is
*Rhys' Hibbert Lectures, p. 676. † Ibid. p. 121.