Page 114 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

ORION -AND HIS BELT 101

further. With them ina is derived from i to go, ayana from ay
to go,luiyana from hay to go. and hdyana from ha to go.• Whe-
ther and how far we can dispense with some of these roots• is an
important philological question, but it is not necessary for us to
discuss it here. It does not much affect the point under discussion
whether l:ayana is derived from ayana, i. e. ay to go, or from hd
to go as Pal].ini has done. Etymolo~cally both · the words,
ayana and hdyana mean, ' going ' and when both came to be
used to denote a division of time, it is natural to suppose that
they soon acquired special meanings. Thus while ayana continu-
ed to denote the half year, hayana, whilch was comparatively a
later word, might have been exclusively used to denote the com-
plete year, and as the beginning of the first ayana was also the
beginning of the year, A( a )grayana would be naturally ~hanged
into A.{ a )graha.( a )a~ to expre~s the beginning of the year.
Whether we adopt Pat:tini's derivation or the principle of modern
philology we thus arrive at the same result, and so far as our pre-
sent inquiry is concerned we can therefore suppose that the vari-
ous words, which may be represented by . A( a )gra( a )yana, or
A( a )grahd( a )yana, are all transformations or derivations of
agra + ayana =A( ·a )grayana.
Now as regards the meaning it appears to me that ayana
at first denoted nothing more than the pas.sage of the sun. Gradu-
ally it meant a division of time regulated bu such passage. The
igrayOTJil·i~h~is thus appear to have originally meant the two
half-yearly sacrifices performed on the first day of each ayana,
which seems to be regarded somewhat like the new year's day at
present. Gargya Narayana, in his commentary on Ashvalayana's
Shrauta Sutras ( i. 2. 9. l ) derives Agrayana from ·agra + ayana;
but interpretes it to mean a sac.rifice which is followed by eating
( ayana) that is, which require to be performed before the new
.
harvest is used for domestic purposes. He thus takes ayana to
• Th1s method sometimetimcs fails, and native grammarians who
are not now at liberty to coin new roots, have to resort to the
PrishodarAdi list. For example, we have two forms ilval.'i and /zi/r:,,J/i as
different readings for it~tmHi in Am:~ra i. 3· 23. Of these Uvnla can be
derived from il, to sleep, though the root meaning is not su1table, but
/tilval/icannot be everi so derived and TlrAnltha in h1s VA.chaapatya
would derive or rather obtain the inital h by Prishodarldi. Similarly cf.
JI;,zt:Z/a = t,';/a-Pri~ hodar!di!