Page 493 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

274 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
and when the two accounts agree so well we cannot lightly set
aside the story in the Brahma:pa or hold that it was woven out
of stray references in the ~ig-Veda. But in the absence of the
Arctic theory, or the theory of long darkness extending over
nearly four months or a third part of the year, European
scholars have been at a loss to understand why the deity should
have been named " the Third "; and various ingenious theo-
ries have been started to explain how Trita, which ordinarily
means the third, came to denote the deity that was thrown into
a pit or well in a distant land. Thus Prof. Max Muller thinks
that the name of the deity was originally Tfita ( <!~ ) and not
Trita ( ~) and he derives the former from the root trr£ ( ~) to
cross. Trita ( ~) which, by-the-by, is not a regular gramma-
tical form though found in the Atbarva Veda VI, 113, 1 and
3, would tbu mean " the sun crossing the ocean " being
in this respect comparable to tara7Ji which means ' the sun "
in the later Sanskrit literature. In short, according to Prof.
Max Muller, Tpta ( ~ ) means the ' set sun '; and the
story of Trita ( ~ ) is, therefore, only a different version
of the daily struggle between light and darkness. But Prof.
Max Muller's theory requires us to assume that this miscon-
ception or the corruption of Tpta ( ~ ) into Trita ( ~ )
took place before the Aryan separation, insamuch as in Old
Irish we have the word triath which means the sea, and which
is phonetically equivalent to Greek triton, Sanskrit trita and
Zend thrita. Prof. Max Muller himself admits the validity of
this objection, and points ont that the Old Norse Thridi, a
name of Odin, as the mate of Har and Jasnhar, can be
accounted for only on the supposition that trita ( ~) was
changed by a misapprehension into trita ( ~ ) long before
the Aryan separation. This shows to what straits scholars
are reduced in explaining certain myths in the absence of the
true key to their meaning. We assume, without the slightest
authority, that a misapprehension must have taken place before
the Aryan separation, because we cannot explain why a deity
was called ' the Thrid ', and why triath in Old Irish was used
to denote the sea. But the whole legend can be now very easily
and naturally explained by the Arctic theory. The personified
third part of the year, called Trita or the Third, is naturally
described as going into darkness, or a well or pit, or into the