Page 319 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

104 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
therefore, very unlikely that Vedic bards perpetuated the memory
of these long nights by making it a grievance of such importance
as to require the aid of their deities to relieve them from it.
There are other passages where the same longing for the end of
darkness or for the appearance of light is expressed, and these
cannot be accounted for on the theory that to the old Vedic
bards night was as death, since they had no means which a civi-
lised person in the twentieth century possesses, of dispelling the
darkness of night by artificial illumination. Even the modem
savages are not reported to be in the habit of exhibiting such
impatience for the morning light as we find in the utterances of
the Vedic bards; and yet the latter were so much advanced in
civilisation as to know the use of metals and carriages. Again
not only men, but Gods, are said to have lived in long darkness.
Thus, in X, 124, 1, Agni is told that he has stayed " too long in
the long darkness," the phrase used being jyog eva d£rgham tama
ashay~h~ah. This double phrase jyog ( long ) and dirgham is still
more inappropriate, if the duration of darkness never exceeded that
of the longest winter-night. In II, 2, 2, the same deity, Agni, is said
to shine during " continuous nights," which, according to Max
Muller, is the meaning of .the word k~hapal.z in the original.*
The translation is no doubt correct, but Prof. Max Muller does
.not explain to us what he means by the phrase ' continuous
nights '. Does it signify a succession of nights uninterrupted. by
. sunlight ? or, is it only an elegant rendering, meaning nothing
more than a number of nights ? The learned translator seems to
·have narrowly missed the true import of the phrase employed
by him.

But we need not depend on stray passages like the above
to prove that the long night was known in early days. In the
tenth Mandala of the ~ig-Veda we have a hymn ( 127) address-
ed to the Goddess of night and in the 6th verse of this hymn
Night Is invoked to " become easily fordable " to the worshipper
( na~ sutara bhava ). In the Parishi~hta, which follows this· hymn
in the ~ig-Veda and which is known as Rdtri-sukta or Durgd-
·stava, the worshipper asks the Night to be favourable to him,
exclaiming " May we reach the other side in safety ! May we

• See. S. B. E. Series, Vol. XLVI, p. 195.