Page 157 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

142 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • 1HE ORION

or the Pitriyl\na. The poet knows that the vault of the heavens
above him bas three halts or stages which Vi~hpu is said to have
used as his three steps ( ~ig. i. 22. 17 ). But of the nether world
the poet has no definite knowledge, and be therefore cannot
specify the yojanas or the stage it contains. Thus he simply says
that there are some yojanas therein. The first part of tbe verse may
now be translated thus : 0 Vri~bcikapi ! go to the house in
the celestial sphere which is cut off and which contains some
yojanas or stages. " In short Indra means that Vri~hakapi should
now descend into tbe southern hemi. pbere.
The later part of tbe verse literally means " and come to our
house from ned£yas. " Now nediyas is again a word which neither
Yaska nor Saya~a seem to have proP,erly understood. Pa~ini
( v. 3. 63.) tells us that nedfyas is the comparative of antika. Now
nedtyas cannot possibly be derived from antika by any change in
the form of the latter word. Papini therefore considers neda to be
a substitute for antika, when the comparative form is to be de-
rived. This is equivalent to saying that ' bet ' is to be substituted
for' good' in deriving the comparative form of' good 'in English.
I need not say how far such an explanation would be regarded
satisfactory. My own view is that ned£yas had lost its positive form
in the times of Papini, or perhaps its positive form was never in
use like that of ' superior ' in English. But PAl].ini, who, as a
grammarian, felt bound to account for all the forms, connected
nedtyas with antika, probably because the ordinary meaning of
nedtyas in his time was the same as that of the comparative form of
antika. But we cannot infer from this that ned£yas might not have
meant anything else in the days of PA11ini. Pa~ini might have taken
into account only the most ordinary sense of the word and finding
that a positive form was wanting connected it with the word which
expressed the ordinary meaning in the positive form. The fact
that Papini considers nedtyas as the comparative of antika does
not therefore preclude us from assuming, if we have other grounds
to do so, that nedtyas originally meant something else in addition
to its present sense; for PA~:tini speaks of theform and not of the
meaning of nedfyas. Having thus shown that the authority of
Pa~ini is not against me, I shall now give ~y meaning of ned£yas.

come up from irinlalra i. e., a cloud." But it may be as well asked if
kri11talrrit cannot here mean "from below '