Page 453 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

234 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
striking and important and so long as the Arctic theory was
unknown, the attention of scholars was not likely to be drawn to
this alternative construction.* But now we can very well understand
why Indra is said to have found Shambara on the 40th ( day ) of
Sharad, and why the forts, which gave shelter to the demon, are
described as shdrad£1,1, as well as why Arbuda or the watery demon
is said to be killed by ice ( hima ). I have stated before that the forts
( pural,z ) of Shambara must be understood to mean 'days', and
the adjective shdradil,l only serves to strengthen the same view.
The disappearance of the sun below the horizon in the beginning
of the 8th month in autumn, followed by a long twilight, a con-
tinuous dark night of about 100 days, and long dawn of 30 days
in the Arctic regions, is the basis of the legend, and every incident
therein can be naturally and intelligibly explained only on this
theory.
There is one more incident in the Vptra legend which requires
to be considered before we close its examination. We have seen
that water and light are described as having been simultaneously
liberated by Indra after slaughtering V~itra. These waters are
sometimes spoken of as streams or rivers (II, 15, 3; 11, 2 ), which

• A similar phrase ts found also in the Atharva Veda {XII, 3, 34
and 4 r ). The hymn describes the preparation of Bralnnaud<~na, or the
porridge, given as a fee to the Briihmal).S, and in the 34th verse it is
stated that "The treasurer shall fetch it in sixty autumns, ( $ha$1rtYam
shlJ1atsu tzi1hip:i abhichhat)." But, as remarked by Prof. Bloomfield (vide his
translation of A. V. with notes inS. B. E. Series, Vol. XLII, p. 651 ),
the meaning of the phrase" sixty autumns" is obscure; and the only
other alternative possible is to take $ha$htY:fln as the locative of $hMliti
(feminine form, in long i of $ha~hta) rn eaning " the 6oth"; and interpret
the original phrase to mean "On the 6oth ( tithi ) in autumns." The
word $ha$hta cannot be used in classical Sanskrit as an ordinal numeral
according to P4I;lini ( V, z, 58); but the rule does not seem to hold
strictly in Vedic Sanskrit (See Whitney's Grammar,§ 487 ). Even in the
post-Vedic literature we meet with such ordinal forms as $hMlit,z '"l1itn,
etc. Thus the colophon ot the 6oth chapter of the Sabhil and the Udyoga-
parvan of the Maha.bhilrata (Roy's Cal. Ed.) reads thus:- Iti ... $ha$llttzl:
aahyt"lya~· shewing that sh,,~llt,z was used at the time as an ordinal
numeral (See Pet. Lex. s. v. ;ha~ht,z ). The Bralunaudan.z is according to
this interpretation to be cooked on the 6oth day in autumn i.e. at the
end of Sharad every year.