Page 23 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

10 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ORION
and Yajna are- declared to be convertible terms, • and no other
theory has yet been suggested on which this may be accounted for,
I am therefore, inclined to believe that the Vedic ~i~his kept up
their calendar by performing the corresponding round of sacri-
fices on the /sacred fire that constantly burnt in their houses, like
the fire of the Parsi priest in modern times. The numerous sacri-
ficial details, which we find so fully described in the Bni.hma~as,
might be later innovations, but the main idea of the yearly sacrifice
appears to be an old one. The etymology of the word ritvij ( ritu
+ yaj- season sacrificer ) shows that even in the oldest days there
existed a certain correspondence between the sacrifices and the
seasons and what is true of the seasons is true of the year which
according to one derivation of samvatsara ( vas= to dwell ) is
nothing but a period where seasons dwell, or a cycle of seasons.t
The priests were not only the sacri:ficers of the community, but
were also its timekeepers,:t and these two functions they appear
to have blended into one by assigning the commencement of the
several sacrifices to the leading days of the year, on the natural
ground that if the sacrifices were to be performed they must be
performed on the principal days of the year.§ Some scholars have
suggested that the yearly satras might have been subsequently in-
vented by the priests. But the hypothesis derives little support from

• See Ait. Br. li. 17, which says ij~: .lfiilrllfiY: 1 l1o!J~: .-\lso
Ait. Br. iv. zz; Shatapatha Br. xi. r. r, r; 2. ;. r :In Taitt. SaJ!t. ii s. 7.
3; vii. s. 7· 4 we have liW Cf Sfiilrll~: and again in vii. 2. ro. 3 ~
JfiiiTilRrl
t Cf. Bhlnu Dik~hita'~ Com. on Amara i. 4, 20. Dr. Schrader in his
Prehistoric Anttquities of the Aryan Peoples Part iv, Ch. vi (p. 305)
also makes a similar observation. He holds, on philological grounds,
that the conception of the year was already formed in the primeval
period by combining into one whole the conception of winter and
summer, which he believes to be the two primeval seasons.
t "In Rome the care of the calendar was considered a reJiaious
function, and it had from earliest times been placed in the han~s of
the pontiffs." Lewis's Bistorical Survey of the .\stronomy of the
Ancients, p. 2-1.
§:"Pl-ato states that the· months and years are regulated in order
th;,.t tile sacrifices and festi\'als may corresp()ud.with .the ,natural
seasons; and Ci.cero remarks that the system of intercalation was intro-
duced with this object." Lewis's His. Astr. An c., p. 19 .