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

THE NIGHT OF THE GODS. 63
with twelve intercalary days inserted at the end of each year,
was familiar to the poets of the Ṛig-Veda and is often mentioned
in the hymns.* The northern and the southern passage of the
sun from equinox to equinox, the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna,
together with the yearly sattras, have also been referred to in
several places, clearly showing that the Ṛig-Vedic calendar
differed, if at all, very little from the one in use at the time of,
the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ or the Brâhmaṇas. A calendar of twelve
months and six seasons is peculiar only to the temperate or the
tropical zone, and if we were to judge only from the facts stated
above, it follows that the people who used such a calendar, must
have lived in places where the sun was above the horizon during
all the days of the year. The science of Vedic mythology, so far
as it is developed at present, also supports the same view. Vṛitra
is said to be a demon of drought or darkness, and several
myths are explained on the theory that they represent a
daily struggle between the powers of light and the powers of dark-
ness, or of eventual triumph of summer over winter, or of day over
night, or of Indra over watertight clouds. Mr. Nârâyaṇa Âiyangâr
of Bangalore has attempted to explain some of these myths on
the astral theory, showing that the myths point out to the
position of the vernal equinox in Orion, in the oldest period of
Vedic civilisation. But all these theories or methods of
interpretation assume that the Vedic people have always been
the inhabitants of the temperate or the tropical zone, and all
these myths and traditions were formed or developed in such a
home.

• See Ṛig. I, 25, 8,—वेद मासो धृतव्रतो द्वादश प्रजावतः। वेदा य उप-
  जायते । Also Ṛig. IV, 33, 7,—द्वादश द्यून्यदगोह्यस्यातिथ्ये रणन्नृभवः ससंतः
  See Orion, page 167 f. In Ṛig. I, 164, 11, 360 days and 360
  nights of the year are expressly mentioned.