Page 472 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

VEDIC MYTHS -,-THE MATl,JTINkJ. DEITIES ' Z~3
:blind during these hundred continuous nights and eventually
cured of his blindness by the Ashvins, the harbingers of . light
and dawn. The only objection that may be urged against this
interpretation is that hundred days should have been described
as oxen or cows and not as sheep. But I think, that such nice dis-
tinctions cannot be looked for in every myth and th1\t if hundred
days were really converted into so many nights we c.an well speak
of thelll as "sheep';. Theslaughter of 100 or 101 sheep· can
thus be easily and naturally explained on the theory of long
continuous darkness, the maximum length of which, as stated
in the previous chapter, was one hundred days, or a hundred
periods of 24 hours. In short, the legends of the Ashvins furnish
us with evidence of three, ten, or a hundred continuous nights in
ancient times and the incidents which lead us to this inference,
are, at best, but feebly explained by the Vernal or the Dawn
theory as at present understood.

But the most important of the Ashvins' legends, for our pur-
pose, is the story of Atri Saptavadhri. He is described as having
been thrown into a burning abyss and extricated from this peri-
lous position by the Ashvins, who are also said to have delivered
him from darkness ( tamasa!z) in VI, 50, 10. In I, 117, 24, the
Ashvins are represented as giving a son called Hirat:lya-hasta,
or the Gold-hand, to Vadhrimati or the wife of a eunuch; while
in V, 78, a hymn, whose seer is Saptavadhri himself, the latter is
represented as being shut up in a wooden case, from which he
was delivered by the Ashvins. Upon this Prof. Max Muller observ-
~s. " If this tree or this wooden case is meant for the night, then
by being kept shut up in it he ( Saptavadhri ) was separated from
)lis wife, he was to her like a Vadhri (eunuch) and in the morn-
Jog only when delivered by the Ashvins he became once more
the husband of the dawn. " But the learned Professor is at a
joss to explain why Atri, in his character of the nocturnal sun,
,should be called not only a Vadhri but Saptavadhri, or a seven-
.eunuch. Vadhri, as a feminine word, denotes a leather strap and
as pointed out by Prof. Max MUller, Sayap.a is of opinion that
the word can be used also ~n the mascUline gender (.X, 102, 12 ).
The word Saptavadhri may, therefore, denote the sun caught
in a net of seven leather straps. But the different incidents in the
Jegend clearly point out that a. s.even-eunuch and not a person