Page 305 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

90: SAMAGRA TILAK -:2 • : TI:tE AR.CTIC HOME
, ~But if the Vedic dawn. is· Polar in origin;, the· an~stor& of
the Vedic bards m·ust have witnessed it, not 'in the Post-Glacial,·:
but in the Pre-Glacial. era; and it may be finally asked why a refer-
ence ·to this early age is not found in the hymns before us ? For-
tunately the hymns do preserve· a few indic~tions of the time
when these long dawns appeared. Thus; in I, 113, 13, we are told
that the Goddess Dawn shone perpetually in former days ( pura ) ·
and here the word pura does not mean the foregone days of this
kalpa, but rather refers to a by-gone age, or pura kalpa as in the
passage from the Taittiriya Samhita (I, 5, 7, 5) quoted and
discussed in the next chapter. The word prathama, in the Taitti- i
rtya Samhita, IV, 3, II, 1 and the Taittirtya Brahma~a, II, 5, 6,
5~ does not again mean simply. ' first in order', but refers to
' ancient times ', as when Indra's 'first'. or 'oldest' exploits are
mentioned in I, 32, 1, or when certain practices are said to be
'first' or 'old' in x; 90, 16~ It is probable that it was this import
of the word prathama that led Saya~a to propose that the first
dawn, mentioned in the Taittirtya Samhita IV, 3, Il, represented
the dawn at the·. beginning of the creation. The Vedic poets could
not but have been conscious that the Mantras they used to lay
down the dawn-bricks were inapplicable to the dawn as they saw
it; and the Taittiriya Sarithita ( V, 3; 4, 7 ) which explains the
Mantras, clearly states that this story or the description of the
dawns is a tradition of old times when the Gods perceived the
thirty dawns. It is not, therefore, correct to say that there are
no references in the Vedic hymns to the time when these long
q.awns were visible. We shall revert to the point later on, when
further evidence on the subject will be noticed and discussed~
The object of the present chapter was to examine the duration
of the Vedic dawn, the Goddess of the morning, the subject of
so many beautiful hymns in the Rig-Veda, and to show that the
deity is invested with Polar characteristics. The evidence in support
of this view has been fully discussed; and we shall, therefore, now
take up the other Polar and Circum-Polar tests previously
mentioned, and see whether we can find out further evidence
from the ~ig~Veda to .strengthen our conclusions.

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