The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c6.59

c6.59

we are told that the year is but a day of the Devas and even Herodotus (450 B. C.) mentions a people who sleep during the six months of the year.* If the tradition is, therefore, as old as it is represented to be, it is impossible to reconcile it with the later meaning of *uttarâyana* as commecing from the winter solstice and this would then furnish an additional ground to hold that in early times the Uttarâyana began with the vernal equinox as stated in the Shatapatha Brâhmaṇa.