Page 112 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

ORION AND IUS BEST 99

that the word was used in ~ah.ini's days, to denote a division of
time and a kind of grain, and I think we can better account for
both these meanings of hayana by connecting the word with ayana
and Agray01Ja or the half-yearly sacrifices. Dr. Geiger, speaking
of the old Parsi calendar observes that ' probably the half year
was more employed in civil life than the complete year.'• Now
whether the observation be entirely correct or not, we can, I think
at any rate, assume that the division of the year into two equal
halves is an old one. I have already discussed the two-fold division
of the year into Devayana and Pitriyana and its coincidence
with the passage of the sun to the north and the south of the equator.
Ayana in the sense of such a division thus appears to be an old
word and by prefixing h to it we may easily get hayana subsef(uentiy
changed into hdyana like the words in the Prajanadi list, wherein
this word was not included as it was derived by Pa~ini ~n a diffe-
rent way, The insertion and omission of h when followed by a
vowel at the beginning of a word is not uncommon even in these
days,t and there is nothing extraordnary if we derive hdyana
from ayana. Now by a natural process when we have two forms
of a word or two derivatives of the same root they gradually come
to be utilised for speCific purposes, and so acquire distinct meanings.
Sanskrit lexicographers class such words under Yogar(I,(Jha, mean-
ing thereby that etymology and convention have each a share in
determining their denotation. Hayana might thus come to exclu-
sively denote a complete year, while ayana continued to denote a
"'
half-year as before.~ When ayana thus, become hayana, Agraya~Ji~
• Dr. Geiger's Civ. East. Iran., Vol. I, p. J 52. Dr. Schrader makes
a similar otservation. ·For all these reasons (most of which are philo-
logical ) I believe we have the right to presuppose an original division
of the Indo Germanic year mto two seasons.' Preh. Ant. Ary. Ploples,
Part IV, chap. vi, p. 302.
t Cf. The derivation of the word 'history' from 'is tory' in Max
Muller's Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. II, p. 329.
t Zend Zayan6, denoting winter, probably presen·es an older
meaning, when h:J,•una was used to denote the second of the two
seasons (summer and winter) into which Dr. Schrader believes that the
year was primevally divided. Some of the synonyms for the year In
Sankrit originally denoted particular season, e. g. Vm11t;, SltariJII, Sam;
and Ha:Ytma may be similarly supposed to have been denved from the
names of the half-year or a''ana.