Page 343 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

128 :SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • TIJE ARCTIC HOME

the meaning of a simple legend when the key to it is lost. That the
twelve Adityas are understood to represent the twelve month-gods
in later Vedic literature is evident from the passage in the Shata-
patha Brahmapa (XI, 6, 3, 8-Brih. Arp. Up. III, 9, 5, ) which
says, "There are twelve months of the year; these are the Adityas ".
With this explanation before us, and the belief that different seasonal
changes could be explained only by assuming the existence of
different suns, it required no very gerat stretch of imagination to
infer that if twelve Adityas now represent the twelve months of the
year, the seven Adityas must have once ( pU,rvyam yugam )
represented the seven months of the year. But this explanation,
reasonable though it was, did not commend itself, or we might
even say, occur to Vedic scholars, who believed that the home of
the Aryans lay somewhere in Central Asia. It is, therefore,
satisfactory to find that the idea of different suns producing
different months is recognised so expressly in the Taittirtya
Aratlyaka, which quotes a Vedic text, not now available, in support
thereof and finally pronounces in favour of the theory, which
regards the seven suns as presiding over seven different heavenly
regions and thereby producing different seasons, in spite of the
objection that it would lead to the assumption of thousands of
suns-an objection, which the AraQyaka disposes of summarily
by observing that eight is a settled number and that we have no
right to change it. That this explanation is the most probable of
all and further evident from ~ig. IX, 114, 3, which says " There
are seven sky-regions ( sapta disha!; ), with their different suns
( mind suryd!; ), there are seven Hotris as priests, those who are
the seven gods, the Adityas,-with them. 0 Soma ! protect us. "
Here nand suryd!J, is an adjective which qualifies disha!; ( sapta ),
and the co-relation between seven regions and seven suns is thus
expressly recognised. Therefore, the simplest explanation of Aditi's
legend is that she presented to the gods, that is, brought forth into
heavens, her seven sons, the Adityas, to form the seven months
of sunshine in the place. She had an eighth son, but he was born
in an undeveloped state, or was, what we may call, stillborn;
evidently meaning that the eighth month was not a month of
sunshine, or that the period of darkness at the place commenced
with the eighth month. All this occurred not in this age, but in
the previous age and the words pU,rvyam yugam in X, 72, 9, are