Page 476 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

VEDIC MYTHS-THE MATUTINAL DIDTIES 257

Muller asks us, why he should be called Saptavadhri or a seven-
eunuch ? The explanation is simple enough. The heaven, the
earth and the lower regions are all conceived as divided seven-
fold in the J,ljg-Veda, and when the ocean or the waters are des-
cribed as seven-fold ( sapta-budhnam ar'}avam, VIII, 40, 5; sapta
apal:z X, 104, 8 ), or when we have seven DAnus or Demons
mentioned in X, 120, 6, or when lndra is called sapta-han or the
seven-slayer (X, 49, 8 ), or V{itra is said to have seven forts (I,
63, 7 ) or when the cowstead ( vraja ), which the two Ashvins
are said to have opet:J.ed in X, 40, 8, is described as saptasya the
sun who is brihach-chheapas and seven rayed or seven•horsed
( V, 45, 9 ) while moving between heaven and earth, may very
well be described as Saptavadhri or seven-eunuch when sunk
into the land of Nir-riti or the nether world of bottomless dark-
ness from which he is eventually released by the Ashvins. The
1ast three verses of V, 78, can thus be logically connected with
the story of Saptavadhri mentioned in the immediately preced-
Ing verses, if the period of ten months, during which the child
moves in the mother's womb, is taken to represent the period
of ten months' sunshine followed by the long night of two mon-
ths, the existence of which we have established by independent
Vedic evidence. The point has long remained unexplained, and
it is only by the Arctic theory that it can be now satisfactorily
accounted for.

In connection with this subject it is necessary to refer to a
riddle or a paradox, which arises out of it. The sun was
supposed to move in the womb of his mother for ten months
and then to drop into the nether world. In other words, as soon
as he came out of the womb, he was invisible; while in ordinary
cases a child becomes visible as soon as it is brought into the
world after ten months of gestation. Here was an idea, or rather
an apparent contradiction between two ideas, which the Vedic
poets were not slow to seize upon and evolve a riddle out of it.
Thus we have seen above (I, 164, 32) that the sun is described
as being invisible to one who made him, evidently-meaning his
mother. In V; 2, 1, we again meet with the same riddle; for it
says," Young mother t:1arries in secret the boy Gonfined; she does
not yield him to the father. People do not see before them his
A. 17