Page 411 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

196 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME

for all the incidents in the myths and legends to which they are
applied.
According to the Dawn theory, "the whole tbeogony and
philosophy of the ancient world is centred in the Dawn, the
mother of the bright gods, of the sun in his various aspects, of
the morn, the day, the spring; herself the brilliant image and
visage of immortality. " Prof. Max Muller, in his Lectures on the
Science of Language, further remarks* that " the dawn, which
to us is a merely beautiful sight, was to the early gazers and thinkers
the problem of all the problems. It was the unknown land from
whence rose every day those bright emblems of divine powers,
which left in the mind of man the first impression and intimation
of another world, of power above, of order and wisdom. What
we simply call the sun-rise, brought before their eyes every day
the riddle of all riddles, the riddle of existence. The days of their
life sprang from that dark abyss, which every morning seemed
instinct with light and life." And again" a new life flashed up every
morning before their eyes and the fresh breezes oftbe dawn reached
them like greetings wafted across the golden threshold of the sky
from the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds,
beyond the dawn, beyond the immortal sea which brought us
hither. " The dawn ·seemed to them to open golden gates for the
sun to pass in triumph and while those gates were open their
eyes and their minds strove in their childish way to pierce beyond
the finite world. That silent aspect awakened in the human mind
the conception of the Infinite, the Immortal, the Divine, and the
names of dawn became naturally the names of higher powers. "
This is manifestly more poetic than real. But the learned Professor
explains many Vedic myths on the theory that they are all Dawn-
stories in different garbs. Thus if Sarapyo., who had twins from
Vivasvat, ran off from him in the form of a mare, and he followed
her in the form of a horse, it is nothing but a story of the Dawn
disappearing at the approach of the sun and producing the pair of
day and night. The legend of Surya's marriage with Soma, and of
Vri~Mkapayi whose oxen (the morning vapours) were swallowed
by Indra, or of Aditi giving birth to the Adityas are again said
to be the stories of the Dawn under different aspects. Sarama.
crossing the waters to find out the cows stolen by Pa~is, is similarly

• See Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. II, p. 545, ff.