Page 552 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 33~
story points out to a period of eleven months' sun-shine, and
an Arctic night of four weeks.
From the legends mentioned, or referred to, or described
above, it may be easily seen that many traces of the Arctic
calendar are still discernible in the mythology of the western
Aryan races like Celts, Teutons, Lets, Slavs, Greeks and
Romans. Long dawns or a number of dawns, long days, long
nights, dark winters, are all alluded to more or less explicitly in
these myths, though none of these legends refers directly to the
position of the primeval home and the cause of its destruction.
But this omission or defect is removed by the evidence contain-
ed in the Veda and the Avesta; and when the European legends
are viewed in the light of the Indo-Iranian traditions they clearly
point to the existence of a primeval home near the North Pole.
There are a number of other legends in the Celtic and Teutonic
literatures which describe the victory of sun-hero over the
demons of darkness every year, similar in character to the
victory of Indra over Vri_ta, or to the achievements of the
Ashvins, the physicians of the gods. Thus in the Norse mytho-
logy, Hodur, the blind god of winter, is represented as killing
Balder or Baldur, or the god of summer, and Vali the son of
Odin and Rind is said to have avenged his brother's death after-
wards. The encounters of Cuchualainn, the Celtic Sun-god,
with his enemies, the Fomori or the Fir Bolg, the Irish representa-
tives of the powers of darkness, are of the same character. It may
also be remarked that according to Prof. Rhys the world of
waters and the world of darkness and the dead are identical in
Celtic myths, in the same way as the world of water, the abode
of V~tra and the world of darkness are shown to be in the
Vedic mythology. The strange custom of couvade, by which
the whole population of Ireland is described as being laid up
in confinement or indisposed so as to be unable to defend their
country against the invasion of Ai1ill and Medle with their Fir
Bolg, excepting Cuchulainn and his father, again indicates,
according to Prof. Rhys, a sort of decline in the power of gods
.like that witnessed in the case of the winter-sun; in other words,
it was an indisposition or inactivity of the same sort which
amounts in the Norse Edda to nothing less than actual death
of the Anses at the hands of the powers of evil. This temporary
afHiction or the indisposition of the gods forms the subject of