Page 333 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

H8 SAMAGRA TILA.K- 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

Finally we have an express text declaring that the sun halted in
the midst of the sky and thereby retaliated the mischief brought
on by Dasa's causing the long night. Thus we have not only the
long day and the long night mentioned in the ~ig-Veda, but the
idea that the two match each other is also found therein, while
the Taittir1ya Ara11yaka tells us that they form the opposite sides
of the Year-God·. Besides the passages proving the long duration of
the dawn, we have, therefore, sufficient independent evidence to
hold that the long night in the Arctic regions and its counterpart
the long day were bOth known to the poets of the ~ig-Veda and
the Taittirtya Samhita distinctly informs us that it was a pheno-
menon of the former ( pura ) age.
·-I shall close this chapter with a short discussion of another
Circum-Polar characteristic, I mean the southern course of the sun.
It is previously stated, that the sun can never appear overhead
at any station in the temperate or the frigid zone and that an
observer stationed within these zones in the northern hemis-
phere will see the sun to his right hand or towards the south, while
at the North Pole the sun will seem to rise from the south. Now
the word dak~hil}a in Vedic Sanskrit d:motes both the 'right
hand ' and the ' south ' as it does in other Aryan languages; for.
as observed by Prof. Sayee, these people had to face the rising
sun with their right hands to the south, in addressing their gods
and hence Sanskrit dak~hi-fJa, Welsh dehau and Old Irish des all
mean at once ' right hand ' and ' south. '* With this explanation
before us, we can now understand how in a number of passages
in the ~ig-Veda Western scholars translate dak~hi1Ja by 'right
side ', where Indian scholars take the word to mean ' the southern
direction .' There is a third meaning of dak~hi1Ja, viz., ' largess,
or ' guerdon ', and in some places the claims of rich largesses
seem to have been pushed too far. Thus when the suns are said to
be only for dakshi1Jdvats in I, 125, 6, it looks very probable that
originally the expression had some reference to the southern direc-
tion rather than to the gifts giveQ. at sacrifices. In III, 58, I, Surya
is called the son of Dak~hi1Jd. and even if Dak~hi1Jd be here taken to
mean the Dawn, yet the question why the Dawn was called Dak~hi1Jd
remains, and the only explanation at present suggested is that
Dak~hi'}d means ' skilful ' or ' expen '. A better way to explain

*See Sayee's Introduction to the Science of Language, Voi.IJ, p.r 30.