The Arctic Home in the Vedas c10.15

Language: English

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We have here referred to, or quoted, the texts and passages bearing on Aditi's legend, or the number of Âdityas, at some length, in order to show how we are apt to run into wild speculations about the meaning of a simple legend when the key to it is lost. That the twelve Âdityas are understood to represent the twelve month-gods in later Vedic literature is evident from the passage in the Shatapatha Brâhmaṇa (XI, 6, 3, 8 = Bṛih. Ârṇ. Up. III, 9, 5), which says "There are twelve months of the year; these are the Âdityas." With this explanation before us, and the belief that different seasonal changes could be explained only by assuming the existence of different suns, it required no very great stretch of imagination to infer that if twelve Âdityas now represent the twelve months of the year, the seven Âdityas must have once (pûrvyam yugam) represented the seven months of the year. But this explanation, reasonable though was, did not commend itself, or we might even say, occur to Vedic scholars, who believed that the home of the Aryans lay somewhere in Central Asia.

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It is, therefore, satisfactory to find that the idea of different suns producing different months is recognised so expressly in the Taittirîya Âranyaka, which quotes a Vedic text, not now available, in support thereof, and finally pronounces in favour of the theory, which regards the seven suns as presiding over seven different heavenly regions and thereby producing different seasons, in spite of the objection that it would lead to the assumption of thousands of suns—an objection, which the Âranyaka disposes of summarily by observing that eight is a settled number, and that we have no right to change it. That this explanation is the most probable of all is further evident from Rig. IX, 114, 3, which says “There are seven sky-regions (sapta dishaḥ), with their different suns (nânâ-sûryâḥ), there are seven Hotṛis as priests, those who are the seven gods, the Âdityas,—with them, O Soma! protect us.” Here nânâ-sûryâḥ is an adjective which qualifies dishaḥ (sapta), and the co-relation between seven regions and seven suns is thus expressly recognised. Therefore, the simplest explanation of Aditi’s legend is that she presented to the gods, that is, brought forth into heavens, her seven sons, the Âdityas, to form the seven months of sunshine in the place. She had an eighth son, but he was born in an undeveloped state, or, was, what we may call, still-born;

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evidently meaning that the eighth month was not a month of sunshine, or that the period of darkness at the place commenced with the eighth month. All this occurred not in this age, but in the previous age, and the words pûrvyam yugam in X, 72, 9, are very important from this point of view. The word yuga is evidently used to denote a period of time in the first and second verses of the hymn, which refer to the former age of the gods (devânâm pûrvye yuge) and also of the later age (uttare yuge). Western scholars are accustomed to interpret yuga to mean ‘a generation of men’ almost in every place where the phrase is met with; and we shall have to consider the correctness of this interpretation later on. For the purpose of this legend it is enough to state that the phrase pûrvyam yugam occurs twice in the hymn, and that where it first occurs (in verse 2), it clearly denotes ‘an early age’ or ‘some division of time.’ Naturally enough we must, therefore, interpret it in the same way where it occurs again in the same hymn, viz., in the verse describing the legend of Aditi’s seven sons. The sun having seven rays, or seven horses, also implies the same idea differently expressed. The seven months of sunshine, with their different temperatures, are represented by seven suns producing these different results by being differently located, or as having different kinds of rays, or as having different chariots, or horses, or different wheels to the same chariot.

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It is one and the same idea in different forms, or as the Rig-Veda puts it, “one horse with seven names,” (I, 164, 2). A long dawn of thirty days indicates a period of sunshine for seven months; and we now see that the legend of Aditi is intelligible only if we interpret it as a relic of a time when there were seven flourishing month-gods, and the eighth was either still-born, or cast away. Mârtâṇḍa is etymologically derived from mârta meaning ‘dead or undeveloped’, (being connected with mṛita, the past participle of mṛi, to die) and aṇḍa, an egg or a bird; and it denotes a dead sun, or a sun that has sunk below the horizon, for in Rig. X, 55, 5, we find the word mamâra (died) used to denote the setting of the daily sun. The sun is also represented as a bird in many places in the Rig-Veda (V, 47, 3; X, 55, 6; X, 177, 1; X, 119, 3). A cast away bird (Mârtâṇḍa) is, therefore, the sun that has set or sunk below the horizon, and the whole legend is obviously a reminiscence of the place where the sun shone above the horizon for seven months, and went below it in the beginning of the eighth. If this nature of the sun-god is once impressed on the memory, it can not be easily forgotten by any people simply by their being obliged to change their residence; and thus the seven-fold character of the sun-god must have been handed down as an old tradition, though the Vedic people lived later on in places presided over by the twelve Âdityas.

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That is how ancient traditions are preserved everywhere, as, for instance, those relating to the older year in the Egyptian literature, previously referred to.