Page 344 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

MONTHS AND SEASONS 129
very important from this point of view. The word yuga is evidently
used to denote a period of time in the first and second verses
of the hymn, which refer to the former age of the gods ( devdndm
pttrvye yuge) and also of later age ( uttare yuge ). Western scholars
are accustomed to interpret yuga to mean " a generation of men "
almost in every place where the phrase is met with; and we shall
have to consider the correctness of this interpretation later on.
For the purpose of this legend it is enough to state that the phrase
p-Urvyam yugam occurs twice in the hymn and that where it first
occurs ( in verse 2 ), it clearly denotes " an early age " or " some
division of time". Naturally enough we must, therefore, interpret
it in the same way where it occurs again in the same hymn, viz.
·in the verse describing the legend of Aditi's seven sons. The sun
having seven rays, or seven horses, also implies the same idea
differently expressed. The seven months of sunshine, with their
different temperatures, are represented by seven suns producing
these different results by being differently located, or as having
different kinds of rays, or as having different chariots, or horses,
or differnt wheels to the same chariot. It is one and the same
idea in different forms, or as the ~ig-Veda puts it, " one horse
with seven names ", (I, 164, 2 ). A long dawn of thirty days
indicates a period of sunshine for seven months, and we now see
that the legend of Aditi is intelligible only if we interpret it as
a relic of a time when there were seven flourishing month-gods,
and the eighth was either still-born, or cast away. MdrtdiJr;Ja
is etymologically derived from marta meaning ' dead or undevelop-
ed ', (being connected with mrita, the past participle of mri, to die)
and dnda, an egg or bird; and it denotes a dead sun, or a sun
that h~~ sunk below the horizon, for in Rig. X, 55, 5, we find the
word mamdra (died) used to denote the setting of the daily sun.
The sun is also represented as a bird in many places in the ~ig­
Veda ( V, 47, 3; X, 55, 6; X, 177, 1; X, 189, 3 ). A cast away bird
(Martdt,J~a) is, therefore, the sun that has set or sunk below the
horizon, and the whole legend is obviously a reminiscence of
the place where the sun shone above the horizon for seven months
and went below it in the beginning of the eighth. If this
nature of the sun-god is once impressed on the memory, it cannot
be easily forgotten by any people simply by their being obliged
to change their residence; and thus the seyen-fold character of
the sun-god must have been handed down as an old tradition,
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