Page 295 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

~ cribed as sachetasah· and sam£ch£h, which means that they are
-~harmonious' and·' walk together' and not separately. The
:first expression is found in the ~ig-Veda, but not the second, though
it could be easily ·inferred, from the fact that the dawns are there
described as " collected in the same enclosure. " Griffith renders
•. sam£ch£1} by ' a closely gathered band ' and translates the verse
-thus :_:____ " The Bright one hath sent forth the Dawns, a closely
' gathered band, immacufate, unanimous, brightly refulgent in their
thomes. "* lfere all the adjectives of the dawns clearly rndicate
a group of undivided dawns acting harmoniou ly; and yet strange
' to Gay Griffith, who tran lates correctly misses the spirit altogether.
We have thus sufficient direct authority for holding that it is a
• team,' or in Griffith's words' ' a closely gathered band ' of thirty
continuous dawns that is described in the Vedic hymns, and not
the evanescent dawn of the temperate or the tropical zone, either
single or as a series of consecutive dawns.
It is inetresting to examine how Saya~a explains the existence
-of as many as thirty dawns, before we proceed to other authorities.
In his commentary on the Taittirtya Samhita IV, 3, 11, he tells us
. that the first dawn spoken of in the first verse in the Anuvaka, is
·the dawn at the beginning of the creation, when everything was
· undistinguishable according to the Brdhmm;a. The second dawn
in .the second verse is said to be the ordinary dawn that we see
every day. So far it was all right; but the number of dawns soon
outgrew. the number of the kinds of dawn. known to Sayap.a.
The third, fourth and fifth verses, of the Anuvdka describe three
more dawns, and Saya~a was at last forced to explain that though
. the dawn was one yet by its Yogic or occult powers it assumed these
various shapes ! But the nve dawns multiplied into thirty sisters
in the next verse, and Saya~a finally adopted the explanation that
thirty separate dawnr represented the thirty consecutive dawns of
one month. But why only thirty dawns of one month out of 360
.dawns of a year should thus be selected in these Mantras is no-
·where explained. The explanations, besides being mutually in-
consistent, again conflict with the last verse in the Anuvdka with
the Brdhmm;a or the explanation given in the Samhita itself, and
with the passage from the Taittirtya Brahma~a quoted above. But
" 1\th.- Veda; VII, 22, 2--'11:.-.:r~ ~~~-:~~.OJ:. ~: ~:
i; ,.j'•-
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