Page 391 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

176 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

the Brahma~as, who knew little about the ancient Arctic home,
have converted these night-sacrifices into day-sacrifices; but the
explanation evidently appears to be invented at a time when
the true nature of the Ratri-kratus or Ratri-sattras was forgotten,
and it does not, therefore, preclude us from interpreting these
facts in a different way. I have already stated above that if we
accept the explanation of the Mimamsakas, we cannot explain
why the series of the night-sacrifices should abruptly end
with the Shata-ratra or a hundred nights' sacrifice; but by the
Arctic theory we can explain the fact satisfactorily by suppos-
ing that the duration of the long night in the ancient home varied
from one night ( of 24 hours ) to a hundred continuous nights
( of 2400 hours ) according to latitude, and that the hundred
nightly Soma sacrifices corresponded to the different durations
of the night at different places in the ancient home. Thus where
the darkness lasted only for ten nights ( 240 hours ) a Dasha-
ratra sacrifice was performed, while where it lasted for 100
nights ( 2400 hours) a Shata-ratra sacrifice was necessary. There
are no sacrifices after the Shata-ratra because a hundred conti-
nuous nights marked the maximum duration of darkness experi-
enced by the ancient sacrificers of the race. We have seen that
the legend of Aditi indicates a period of seven months' sunshine;
join to it the Dawn and the Twilight of 30 days each, and there
are left three months, ( or if we take the year to consist of 365
days, then 95 days ), for the duration of the long continuous
night,-a result which remarkably corresponds to the longest
duration of the night-sacrifices known in the Vedic literature.
The Dawn marked the end of the long night, and could not,
therefore, be included in the latter at least for sacrificial pur-
poses. In fact separate sacrifices are eajoined for the Dawn in
sacrificial works; and we may, therefore, safely exclude the long
Dawn from the province of the nightly sacrifices, and the same
may be said of the period of the long evening twilight. A hundred
nights' sacrifice thus marked the maximum duration of dark-
ness during which Indra fought with Vala and was strengthened
by the Soma libations offered to him in this sacrifice. As there
is no other theory to account for the existence of the night-
sacrifices, and especially for their number, to wit, one hundred,
these sacrifices may be safely taken to indicate the existence of
an ancient year approximately divided into seven months' sur:-