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

PRIMITIVE ARYAN CULTURE AND RELIGION. 461
old or ancient. In short, the ancient hymns, poets, or deities,
mentioned in the Ṛig-Veda must be referred to a by-gone age
and not to post-Glacial times. The Arctic character of these
deities, it may be further observed, is intelligible only on this
view. The Vedic bards may well be credited with having
composed, or fashioned, new songs or hymns; but the question
still remains whether the subject matter of these hymns was of
their own creation, and the fact that the deities have been
called ancient in contradistinction with the songs offered
to them (VI, 62, 4), and are clothed with Polar attributes,
at once enables us to solve the question by answering
that though the wording of the hymns was new, their sub-
ject matter was old, that is, traditionally handed down to the
poet from remote ages. Thus in a hymn of the tenth Maṇḍa-
la (X, 72, 1-2), the poet desiring to celebrate the births or
the origin of gods, thus begins his hymn, "Let us, from the
the love of praise, celebrate, in recited hymns, the births of
gods,—any one of us who in this later age may see them,
(yaḥ pashyâd uttare yuge)." Here we have a distinct con-
trast between the births of gods on the one hand and the
poet who may see the hymn in the later age on the other,
evidently meaning that the subject matter of the hymn is
an occurrence of the former age (yuga), and that the poet
celebrates as he perceives or sees it in the later age. The
view that the Vedic hymns, or rather their contents, were
perceived and not made by the Ṛiṣhis, derives material support
from this statement. A similar expression is also found in
VIII, 59, 6, which says "Indra and Varuṇa! I have seen
(abhi apashyam) through tapas that which ye formerly gave to
the Ṛiṣhis, wisdom, understanding of speech, sacred lore (shru-
tam) and all the places which the sages created when perform-
ing sacrifices."* The notion about the perception of the

• Ṛig. VIII, 59, 6,—इंद्रावरुणा यदृषिभ्यो मनीषां वाचो मतिं श्रुतम-
  दत्तमग्रे । यानि स्थानान्यसृजंत धीरा यज्ञं तन्वानास्तपसाभ्यपश्यम् ॥