Page 547 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

328 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ARCTIC HOME
of Hephrestus and Athene, the exact date being the enu kai nea
of the month of Pyanepsion, that is, approximately the last day
of October. Prof. Rhys then compares the Celtic feast of the
Lugnassad with the Greek festival named Panathenrea, and the
feast on the Calends of May with the Athenian Thargelia, and
concludes his comparison of the Celtic and the Greek calendar
by observing that " a year which was common to Celts with
Greeks is not unlikely to have once been common to them with
some or all other branches of the Aryan family. "•

This shows that the ancient Aryan races of Europe knew
of six months' day and six months' night, and their calendars
were the modifications of this Arctic division of the year.
Comparative philology, according to Dr. Schrader, leads us to
the same conclusion. Speaking of the ancient division of the
year he says : " Nearly everywhere is the chronology of the
individual peoples a division of the year into two parts can be
traced. This finds linguistic expression in the circumstance that
the terms for summer, spnng, and winter have parallel suffix
formations. As in the primeval period,t jhi-m and t sem-existetl
side by side, so in Zend zima and hama correspond to each
other, ~ Armenian amarn and jmern, in Teutonic sum-ar and
wint-ar, in Celtic gam and sam, in Indian vasanta and hemanta.
There is absolutely no instance, in which one and the same
language shows identity of suffixes in the names of the three
s_easons of the year. In Slavonic, also, the year is divided into
two principal divisions, summer ( Jeto ) and winter ( zima )
and finally evident traces of old state of things are not wanting
in Greek and Latin. ":): Dr. Scharder further remarks that the
separate conceptions of winter and summer were combined in
one whole even in primitive times; but there is no word for a
year common to all or most of the Aryan languages, and it is
not unlikely that the names of summer or winter were used to
denote the return of the seasons more frequently than the concep-
tion of winter and summer combined into one whole. As the
length of summer, or the period of sunshine, as contrasted with

• Ibid, p. 521.
t Rhys' Hibbert Lectures, p. 676.
:1: Schradt!r's Prehistoric Antiquities of Aryan Peoples, translated
by Jevons, PartCh. IV p. 302.