Page 413 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

198 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
thunderstorm implied rain as a matter of course. If the Maruts
helped Indra in the battle. it was easily explained by the Storm
theory because a thunderstorm or rain was always accompanied
by stormy weather. But a more difficult point in the legend, which
required explanation, was the hemming in or the captivating of
the waters by Vritra or Ahi. In the case of waters in the clouds it
was easy to imagine that they were kept captive in the cloud by the
demon of drought. But the ~ig-Veda often speaks of sindhus or
streams being released by the slaughter ofVritra; and if the streams
or rivers really represented, as conceived by the advocates of this
theory, the rivers of the Punjab, it was rather difficult to understand
how they could be described as being hemmed in or kept captive
by Vritra. But the ingenuity of Vedic scholars was quite equal to
the occasion, and it was suggested that, as the rivers in India often
get entirely dried up in summer, the god of the rainy season, who
called them back to life, could be rightly described as releasing
them from the grasp of Vritra. The Indian Nairuktas do not appear
to have extended the theory any further. But in the hands of
German mythologians the Storm theory became almost a rival to
the Dawn theory; and stories, like that of Saral}yu, have been
explained by them as referring to the movements of dark storm-
clouds hovering in the sky. " Clouds, storms, rains, lightning and
thunder, " observes Prof. Kuhn, " were the spectacles that above
all others impressed the imagination of the early Aryans and
busied it most in finding terrestrial objects to compare with their
ever-varying aspects. The beholders were at home on the earth,
and the things on the earth were comparatively familiar to them;
even the coming and going of the celestial luminaries might
often be regarded by them with more composure, because of their
regularity; but they could never surcease to feel the liveliest interest
in those wonderful meteoric changes, so lawless and mysterious in
their visitations, which wrought such immediate and palpable
effects for good or ill upon the lives and fortunes of the beholders.*
For this reason Prof. Kuhn thinks that these meteorological
phenomena are the principal ground-work of all Indo-European
mythologies and superstitions; and in accordance with this creed
Prof. Roth explains Sara~yu as the dark storm-cloud soaring in the

• See i\fax .Mull er's Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. II.
p. s66.