Page 355 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

140 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE AR.CTIC HOME
by itself means " a period of time " or that, at any rate, it is one of
its meanings goes without saying. Even the Petersburg Lexicon
assigns this meaning to yuga in the Atharva. Veda VIII, 2, 21; but
so far as the ~ig-Veda is concerned yuga according to it, must
mean ' descent ', or ' generation, ' or something like it, but never
' a period of time. ' This is especially the oose, with the phrase
Manu~ha yuga, or Man~hya yugani, which occurs several times.
in the ~ig-Veda. Western scholars would everywhere translate
it to mean ' generations of men, ' while native scholars, like saya~a
and Mahidhara, take it to refer to' mortal ages' in a majority of
places. In some cases (I, 124, 2; I, 1#, 4) SayaQ.a, however,
suggests as an alternative, that the phrase may be understood to
mean ' conjunction ' or ' couples ( yuga ) of men ', and this has
probably given rise to the interpretation put upon the phrase by
Western scholars. Etymologically the word yuga may mean 'con-
junction ' or ' a couple ' denoting either ( 1) ' a couple of day and
night, ' or ( 2 ) ' a couple of months. ' i. e. ' a season, ' or ( 3 ) ' a
couple of fortnights ' or ' the time of the conjunction of the moon
and the sun, ' i. e. ' a month '. Thus at the beginning of the Kali-
Yuga the planets and the sun were, it is supposed, in conjuction
and hence it is said to be called a yuga. It is also possible that the
word may mean ' a conjunction, or a couple, or even a generation·
of men. ' Etymology, therefore, does not help us in determining
which of these meanings should be assigned to the word yuga or
the phrase, Manu~hd yuga in the ~ig-Veda, and we must find out
some other means for determining it. The prejudice we have
referred to above, appears to be mainly due to the disinclination
of the Western scholars to import the later Yuga theory into the
~ig-Veda. But it seems to me that the caution has been carried too
far, so far as almost to amount to a sort of prejudice.
Turning to the hymns of the ~ig-Veda, we find as remarked by
Muir, the phrase yuge yuge used at least in half a dozen places
( III, 26, 3; VI, 15, 8; X, 94, 12, etc. ), and it is interpreted by
saya~a to mean a period of time. In III, 33, 8, and X, 10, 10, we
have uttara yugani 'later ages', and in X, 72, 1, we read uttare yuge
' in a later age', whilst in the next two verses we have the phrases
Devdnam purve yuge and Devandm prathame yuge clearly referr~
ing to the later and earlier ages of the gods. The word Devanam
is in the plural and.yuga is ip the singular, and it is not therefore
possible to take the phrase to mean 'generations of gods .'. The