Page 425 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

206 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
ages, which give the time of lndra's fight with the demon. On
the Storm theory, the fight must be placed in the rainy season
or VaroFhd,· but the forts of Vri,tra, which Indra is said to have
destroyed and thus acquired the epithet purabhid or purandara,
are described in the ~ig-Veda as autumnal or shdradif:z i. e.,
- belonging or pertaining to Sharad, the season which follows
Var~hii. The discrepancy may be accounted for, by supposing
that VaroFhd and Sharad, were once included under one season
which was named not V ar~hii but Sharad. But the explanation is
opposed to another passage in the ~ig-Veda (X, 62, 2 ) which says
that V ala was killed at the end of the year ( parivatsare ), unless
we again suppose that the year commenecd with Sharad in those
days. Nor can we explain how Arbuda is said to be killed with
hima (ice) by Indra. Again as previously stated, the dawn could
not be considered as prize of the conflict, nor could the fight be
said to have been fought in darkness, if we choose the rainy season
as the time for the battle of Indra with Vritra. It will thus be seen
that the Storm theory does not satisfactorily explain the statements
regarding the time of the struggle between Indra and Vritra.
The fourth objection against the Storm theory, as applied
to the story of Vr,itra, is that many words like paravat, giri, or
adri, which do not signify a cloud, either primarily or secondarily,
have to be interpreted as referring figuratively to the rain-cloud.
This sounds harsh in many a passage where Indra or Br,ihaspati is
described as piercing a mountain or breaking open a stone-cave
and liberating the waters or the cows confined therein. In the absence
of any other theory, we had to interpret these passages, by the
Storm theory, as the Nairuktas have done, by assigning to any
and every word, used to denote the prison-house of waters or the
cows, the meaning of a rain-cloud moving in the sky. But though
we could thus temporarily get over the difficulty, the fact, that
we had to strain the words used, or to assign unnatural meanings
to them, was always a drawback, which detracted from the value
of our interpretation. It was probably for this reason that Prof.
Old~nberg was led to suggest that Indra's piercing the mountain
and liberating the waters therefrom should be understood to refer
not to the rain-cloud, but to the actual striking of the mountains
with the thunder-bolt and making the rivers flow forth from them.
But, as observed by Max Muller, "the rivers do not gush out
of rocks even when they have been struck by lightning; " and so