Page 259 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

as in rhe temperate zone, a nycthemeron, or a day and a night
together, never exceeding, as with us, the ordinary period of
twenty-four hours. This alternation of ordinary days and nights
will commence after the close of the long night in January, and
in the beginning, the night will be longer than the day; but as
the sun passes from the southern into the northern hemisphere,
the day will gain over the night, and, eventually, after four
months, terminate into a continuous day for two months. At the
close of this long day in July, the alternation of ordinary days and
nights will again commence, the day in the beginning being longer
than the night, but a nycthemeron never exceeding, as in the
previous case, a period of twenty-four hours. As the sun passes
from the northern into the southern hemisphere, the night will
begin to gain over the day, until, after four months of such
succession of ordinary days and nights, it terminates into the
continuous night of two months mentioned above. The same
description applies, mutatis mutandis, where the long night may
last for 3, 4 or 5 months, until we reach the Polar condition of
a day and a night of six months each, when the intermediate
sm;cession of ordinary days and nights will vanish.

" Cf. Bhiiskara.charya's Siddhanta Shiroma1.1i, Goladhyaya Chapter
VI I., verses 6-7 which are as follows :
~~~~T: ~T: I~~~~: II
~ ~ :q ~T9ct:.l ffi<fft-i" ffireiN nsf II
~f'R:q ~T ~ ~ I ffif~ ~ ~ @IT-.l<I:_II
"There is a peculiarity at the place, where the latitude is greater
than 66 ° N. \Vhenever the northern declination of the sun exceeds the
complement of the latitude, there will be perpetual day, for such time
as that excess continues. Similarly when the southern (declination
exceeds), there will be perpetual night. On Meru, therefore there is
equal half-yearly perpetual day and night." Thus if the latitude of a
place be 70 °, its complement wtll be go -70 = zo 0 ; and as the sun's
height above the celestial equator (that is, his declination ) is never
1
greater than 23 ° z8 there will be a continuous day at the place, so long
1
as the declination is greater than 20° and less 23 ° 28 , and there will
be a similar continuous night when the sun is in the Southern hemis-
phere. Paul Du Chail!u mentions that at Nordkyn or North Cape (X. !at.
71° 6 so") the northernmost place on the continent of Europe, the long
1
night commences on r8th November, and ends on 24th January, lasting,
in all, for 67 days of twenty-four hours each.