Page 352 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

MONTHS AND SEASONS 137
There is another circumstance connected with the Ailgirases
which further strengthens our conclusion, and which must, there-
fore, be stated in this place. The Ailgirases are sometimes styled
the Virupas. Thus in III, 53, 7, the Ailgirases are described as
" Virt~,pas, and sons of heav~n ", and the name Virupa once occurs
by itself as that of a single being who sings the praises of Agni, in
a stanza (VIII, 75, 6) immediately following one in which Ailgiras
is invoked, showing that Virupa is here used as a synonym for
Ailgiras. But the most explicit of these references is X, 62, 5 and 6.
The first of these verses states that the Ailgirases are Virupas, and
they are the sons of Agni; while the second describes them along
with the Navagva and the Dashagva in the following terms, " And
which VirUpas were born from Agni and from the sky; the Navagva
or the Dashagva, as the best of the Ailgirases ( Atigiras-tama ),
prospers in the assemblage of the gods."* Now Virupas literally
means ' of various forms' and in the above verses it seems to have
been used as an adjective qualifying Ailgirases to denote that there
are many species of them. We are further told that the Navagvas_
and the Dashagvas were the most important ( Angiras-tama!, ) of
these species. In the last chapter I have discussed the meaning of
the adjective Virupa as applied to a couple of Day and Night and
have shown, on the authority of Madhava, that the word, as ap-
plied to days and nights, denotes their duration, or the period of
time over which they extend. Virupas in the present instance appears
to be used precisely in the same sense. The Navagvas and the
Dashagvas were no doubt the most important of the early sacri-
ficers, but these too were not their only species. In other words
they were not merely ' nine-going ', and 'ten-going, ' but ' various
going ' ( virupas ), meaning that the duration of their sacrifices was
sometimes shorter than nine and sometimes longer than ten months.
In fact a Sapta-gu (seven-going) is mentioned in X, 47, 6, along
with Brihaspati, the son of Ailgiras, and it seems to be used there
as an adjective qualifying Brihaspati; for Brihaspati is described
in another place (IV, 50, 4) as saptdsya (seven-mouthed), while
the Atharva-Veda IV, 6, 1, describes the first B'!-ihmaJ!.a, Brfuaspati,
as dashdsya or ten-mouthed. We have also seen that in IV, 51, 4,
the Dashagva is also called' seven-mouthed.' All these expressions

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