Page 302 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE VEDIC DAWNS
aow a new light is·thrown upon them by the conclusion ·established.'
above from . ~he examination of the different passages about the·;
dawn in the :B.ig-Veda, the Taittrtya and the Atharva Veda Samhita.
It may, however, be mentioned that I do not mean to say that in
the whole of the :B.ig-Veda not a single reference can be found to
the dawn of the tropical or the temperate zone. The Veda which,
mentions a year of 360 days is sure to mention the evanescent
<fawn which accompanies these days in regions to the south .of the
Arctic circle. A greater part of the description of the dawn is again
of such a character that we can apply it either to the long Polar
dawn, or to the short-lived dawn of the tropics. Thus both may be
said to awaken every living being ( I, 92, 9, ) or disclose the treasures
concealed by darkness ( I, 123, 4 ). Similarly when dawns of.
different days are said to depart and come, a new sister succeeding
each day to the sister previously vanished (I, 124, 9 ), we may either,
suppose that the consecutive dawns of different days are intended
or that a number 9f day-long dawns, which succeed one another
after every 24 hours at the Pole, were in the mind of the poet. These
passages do not, therefore, in any way affect the conclusion we have
arrived at above by the consideration of the special characteristics
of the dawns mention~d ~n the hymns. Wh~t we mean to prove is"
that. U~has, or the Goddess of dawn, the first appearance of which
was so eagerly and anxiously looked to, and which formed
the supject of so many beautiful hymns in the Vedic literature, is
not the evanescent dawn of the tropics but the long continuous
and revolving dawn of the pole; and if we have succeeded in prov-
ing this from the passages discussed above, it matters little if a
passage or more are found elsewhere in the :B.ig-Veda, describing
the ordinary tropical dawn, The Vedic :B.i~his who sang the present
hymns, must have been familiar with the tropical dawn if they now
and then added a 13th month to secure the correspondence of the
lunar and the solar year. But the deity of the Dawn was an ancient.
deity, the attributes of which had become known to the :B.i~his by
orally preserved traditions, about the primeval home; and the·
dawn-hymns, as we now possess them, faithfully <fescribe these
characteristics. How these old characteristics of the GoddesS1
of Dawn were preserved for centuries is a question to which I shall
revert after examining the whole of the Vedic evidence bearing on
the Polar theory. For the present we .. may assume that· these,
~eminiscences of .th~ old home were preserved much in th.e same,