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

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 405
their places and arrange to meet at midnight but without ex-
tinguishing the torch. This means a long day of four weeks,
and as it must have a long night of four weeks to match it
the story points out to a period of eleven months' sun-shine,
and an Arctic night of four weeks.
From the legends mentioned, or referred to, or described
above, it may be easily seen that many traces of the Arctic
calendar are still discernible in the mythology of the west-
ern Aryan races like Celts, Teutons, Lets, Slavs, Greeks and
Romans. Long dawns or a number of dawns, long days, long
nights, dark winters, are all alluded to more or less explicitly in
these myths, though none of these legends refers directly to the
position of the primeval home and the cause of its destruction.
But this omission or defect is removed by the evidence contained
in the Veda and the Avesta ; and when the European legends are
viewed in the light of the Indo-Iranian traditions they clearly
point to the existence of a primeval home near the North Pole.
There are a number of other legends in the Celtic and Teutonic
literatures which describe the victory of sun-hero over the
demons of darkness every year, similar in character to the victory
of Indra over Vṛitra, or to the achievements of the Ashvins, the
physicians of the gods. Thus in the Norse mythology, Hodur,
the blind god of winter, is represented as killing Balder or Baldur,
or the god of summer, and Vali the son of Odin and Rind is said
to have avenged his brother's death afterwards. The encounters
of Ċuchulainn, the Celtic Sun-god, with his enemies, the Fomori
or the Fir Bolg, the Irish representatives of the powers of dark-
ness, are of the same character. It may also be remarked that
according to Prof. Rhys the world of waters and the world of
darkness and the dead are identical in Celtic myths, in the same
way as the world of water, the abode of Vṛitra and the
world of darkness are shown to be in the Vedic mythology.
The strange custom of couvade, by which the whole population