Page 516 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE A VESTIC EVIDENCE 297
Va~jo. " but it is doubtful if" daitya " denotes a river in this place.
The Zend phrase Airyanem Vaejo vanghuyao daityayo, which
Darmesteter translates as " the Airyana Vaejo, by the good
( vanghuhi ) river Daitya, " is understood by Spiegel to mean " the
Airyana Vaejo of the good creation," while Haug takes it as
equivalent to "the Airyana Va~jo of good capability. " It
is, therefore, doubtful if the Daitya river is mentioned along
with the Airyana Vaejo in this passage. But even supposing that
Darmesteter's rendering is correct, he gives us no authority for
indentifying Daitya with Vanguhi. The Bundahish (XX, 7 and
13) mentions Veh ( Vanguhi) and Daitik ( Daitya) as two distinct
rivers though both seem to be located in the Ain1n-vej ( Airyana
Vaejo ). We cannot again lose sight of the fact that it is not the
Vanguhi ( Veh) alone that flows through the Airyana Vaejo, but
that the Rangha ( Arag ) has the same source and flows through
the same land, viz., the Airyana Vaejo. Thus in the very beginning
of Chapter XX of the Bundahish, we read that the Arag and the
Veh are the chief of the eighteen rivers, and that they " flow forth
from the north, part from Alburz and part from the Alburz of
Ahura-mazd; one towards the west, that is the Arag; and one
towards the east, that is the Veh river. "The Bundahish (VII, 15)
further informs us that the Veh river flows out from the same
source as the Arag river, and Dr. West in a footnote observes
that both these rivers flow out from " the north side of the
ArMvivstlr ( Ardvi Sura Anahita ) fountain of the sea, which is
said to be on the lofty Hugar ( Hukairya ), a portion of Algurz.
Even according to Bundahish, the Vanguhi is, therefore, the
eastern and the Rangha the western river, in the nothern
part of Alburz; or in other words, they represent two rivers in
a country, situated in the north, one flowing towards the east,
and one to the west, in that region. It would, therefore, be, to say
the least, unsafe to infer from this that the Airyana Vaejo represents
the easternmost country, because the name Veh or Vanguhi
was in later times attached to the easternmost river in Iran. For
by parity of reasoning, we can as well place the Airyan Vaejo
in the far west, in as much as the name Arag or Rangha was
given, as stated by Darmesteter himself, in later times to the west-
ernmost river. '
It is again a question why Rangha should be identified with
the Caspian Sea, or some western river in Iran. The Fargard