Page 502 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

VEDIC MYTHS-THE MATUTINAL DEITIES 283
as conceived by the inhabitants of a place where a summer of
ten months was followed by a long winter night of two months,
or, in other words which formed the land of the Dashagvas.
But our interest in this remarkable fight does not come to
an end with this explanation. For when we remember the fact
that the word king was not confined to the warrior class in the
~ig-Veda, and that in one place (I, 139, 7) it seems to be actu-
ally applied to the AJigirases, the expressions ' ten golden kings '
and ' ten sacrificers ' or ' ten-fold Ailgirases ', or ' the ten
Dashagvas sacrificing for ten months,' become synonymous
phrases. Now Brihaspati was the chief of the Atigirases, and
as such may naturally be considered to be the representative
of them all; and we have seen that he is represented once as
seven-mouthed and seven-headed, and once as ten-mouthed
and ten-headed ( ~ig. IV, 50, 4; A. V. IV, 6, 1 ). This Brihaspati
is connected with the story of Sarama and Pa~is, and is said to
have helped Indra in recovering the cows, or is sometimes
described as having performed the feat himself (I, 83, 4; X, 108,
6-11 ). Brfuaspati is also represented in X, 109, as having lost
his wife, who was restored to him by the gods. This is obviously
the story of the restoration of the dawn to man, as represented
"
by the chief sacrificer Brihaspati. In the Taittirtya Arya~yaka
I, 12, 3-4, lndra is described as the lover of Ahalya ( Ahalyayai
jaraf! ), and the myth has been explained as referring to the
dawn and the sun, by an old orthodox scholar like Kumarila.
Ahalya in the later literature is the wife of the ~i~hi Gotama
( lit. rich in cows ) ; but it is not difficult to perceive that the
story of Ahalya (which Prof. Max Muller derives from ahan,
a day ), was originally a dawn-story, or a different version of
the legend of Brahmajaya narrated in X, 109.
These facts are very suggestive and call to mind some of
the incidents in the story of the RAmayana. It is quite outside
the scope of this book to fully enter into the question of
the historical basis of this well-known Indian epic. We are
concerned with Vedic myths and Vedic mythology, and if we
refer to the Ramayana we do so simply to point out such
resemblances as are too striking to be left unnoticed. The main
story in the RAmayana is narrated in such detail that, on the
face of it, it bears the stamp of a historic origion. But even
then we have to explain why RAma's adversary was conceived as