Page 331 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

116 SAMAGRA TILAK-2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

for travel as in V, 62, l, but even there the meaning seems to
be that the horses rested at the place. In the present case the
sun is already in the midst of heaven, and we cannot take him
below the horizon without a palpable distortion of meaning.
Nor can we properly explain the action of retaliation ( pratima-
nam ). If we accept S~yapa s interpretation, we must therefore,
interpret the first half of the ver e to mean that" the sun unyok-
ed his carriage in the midst of heaven. " There is another passage
in the ).tig-Veda which speaks of the sun halting in the midst of
heaven. In Vll, 87, 5, the king Varona is said to have made ' the
golden ( sun ) rock like a swing in the heaven " ( chakre divi
pre~1khdm hirWJmayam , clearly meaning that the sun swayed
backwards and forwards in the heaven being visible all the time,
( cf. also VII, 88, 3 ). The idea expressed in the pre ent verse is
exactly the same, for even within the Arctic regions the sun will
appear as swinging only during the long continuous day, when he
does not go below the horizon once every twenty-four hours.
There is, therefore, nothing strange or uncommon in the present
verse which says that, " the sun unyoked his carriage for some
time in the midst of the sky;" and we need not be impatient
to escape from the natural meaning of the verse. A long halt
of the sun in the midst of the heaven is here clearly described,
and we must take it to referto the long day in the Arctic region.
The statement in the second line further supports the same view.
European scholars appear to have been misled, in this instance,
by the words Arya and Dasa, which they are accustomed to inter-
pret as meaning the Aryan and the non-Aryan race. But though
the words may be interpreted in this way in some passages, such
is not the case everywhere. The word Dasa is applied to Indra's
enemies in a number of places. Thus Shambara is called a Dasa
(IV, 30, 14 ), and the same adjective is applied to Pipru in VIII,
32, 2, and to Namuchi in V, 30, 7. Indra is said to inspire fear
into the Dasa in X, 120, 2, and in II, 11, 2, he is described as having
rent the Dasa who considered himself immortal. In the verse
under consideration lndra's victory over Pipru is celebrated, and
we know that Pipru is elsewhere called a Dasa. It is, therefore
quite natural to suppose that the words Arya and Dasa in the
above verse, refer to Indra and Pipru, and not to the Aryan
and the non-Aryan race. fhe exploits described are all heavenly,
-and it jars with the context to take a single sentence in the whole