Page 395 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

180 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

mean " the master of a hundred sacrifices " as suggested by the
Purapic tradition. Another fact which favours this interpretation
is that in the ~ig-Veda Indra is described as destroying 90, 99 or
100 fortresses or cities (purdh) of his enemies (1, 130, 7; 11, 19, 6;
VI, 31, 4; II, 14, 6 ). Now de~a-puroJ}, which means' the fortresses
of the gods,' has been* interpreted to mean 'days' in the descrip-
tion of the dash-rdtra sacrifice in the Taittirtya Sari:thita VII, 2, 5,
3- 4; and if deva-purd!t means ' days', the pura?t (cities, fortresses),
of Shambara may well be taken to mean 'nights. ' This view is
confirmed by the statement in the Aitareya Bnihma~a previously
quoted, which says that the Asuras 'found shelter with the night,
or in other words, the darkness of the night was, so to say, their
fortress. Indra's destroying a hundred forts of Shambara is, there-
fore, equivalent to his fighting with the enemy for a hundred con-
tinuous nights, a period during which the ancient sacrificers offered
him Soma libations in order that he may be better prepared for the
struggle with Vala. The destruction of99 or 100 forts of the enemy,
a group of a hundred nightly sacrifices, the nine and ninety rivers
( sravant£!1) which Indra is described as crossing during his fight
with Ahi (I, 32, 14 ), and a hundred leather straps with which
Kutsa is said to have bound down Indra to his sacrifice in the
Ta~9ya Brahma~a IX, 2, 22, and from which he is invoked to free
himself in ~ig. X, 38, 5, are but so many different kaleidoscopic
views of the same idea which makes Indra and Indra alone the
lord of a hundred sacrifices; and if we take all these together they
undoubtedly point out to the existence of a hundred continuous
nights in the ancient home of the ancestors of the Vedic people. In
V, 48, 3, ' a hundred ', moving in the abode of Indra are said to turn
on and turn off the course of ordinary days when Indra strikes
Vritra with his bolt;t and I think we have here a distinct allusion
either to a hundred sacrifices performed or to a hundred continuous
nights required for securing a complete victory over the powers of
darkness in the nether world, and which nights (or rather one long
night of hundred days ) may well be described as breaking off and

• Cf. Bhatta Bhiiskara's Com. which says:-'~~T: '~~ ~~~'t­
~fir ~~~T ~~Tf.'t '~' fflffi" ifl.i!% an-~~~~ I •. 1 '~ ~T: '
~<tg(((.O<IIf.'t ((~l<l"'tifi~l~ I
t J.tig. v, 48, 3,- an~~ 'fi!liT ~M" ~ 1 ~err
~ ~ ~ ti<t<tt<to:ffi Fcf "f ~ II