Page 174 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

CONCLUSION 159
works, and hence all that I mean is that if the astronomical allu-
sions, references, facts, and legends in the Vedic works can
have any meaning, we cannot materially shorten the periods I
have here indicated. We may not rely on vague traditional beliefs
amongst one nation alone, but when we find that the traditions
of India, Greece, and Iran, agree in their important features, and
can be explained satisfactorily only by placing the vernal equinox
in Orion, and when we have an express authority for doing so
in the ~igveda, I do not think that we can reasonably refuse to
accept the conclusions deduced therefrom. It is true that we have
determined the oldest Vedic periods from the traditions we find
recorded in the ~igveda, and strictly speaking, it is the periods
of the traditions and not of the hymns into which they have been
incorporated. But this does not, in my opinion, materially affect
the conclusions we have arrived at above regarding the ancient
period of the Vedic literature. I do not mean to deny that the hy-
mns may not have been sung some time after these traditions and
legends were originally conceived, or that after they were first
sung the hymns might not have been somewhat modified in form
in passing from mouth to mouth before they became settled in
the form in which we now possess them. But though so much
may be legitimately conceded, I think that it is impossible to
hold that the hymns were composed thousands of years after the
stories narrated in them were first conceived. For, as a matter
of fact, we find that the ~igveda hymns had already become anti-
quated and unintelligible in the days of the Taittirtya- Satp.hita
and the Brahmat:tas. The Taittirtya Saiphita places the vernal
equinox in the Krittikas, and I have shown that we must fix its
date at about 2500 B. C. If the hymns of the ~igveda Saq1hita
were unintelligible at this time, they must have been sung several
centuries before it. The comparison of the Taittirtya with the
~igv~!Jihita further shows that while the first mentions three
year-beginning& ~ne current . and two old-the second only
mentions one. Agam, the ~igveda Samhita contains no reference
to the Krittikas as the mouth of the Nak~hatras. I therefore
conclude that the legends in question must have been incorporat-
ed into the hymns of the ~igveda, when they were still intelli-
gible, that is, in the Orion period .. It is of course impossible to
detet:mine the dates of individual hymns. That all of them were
not sung at one time is quite evident from their style. Some of