The Arctic Home in the Vedas c10.27

c10.27

There is another circumstance connected with the Aṅgirases which further strengthens our conclusion, and which must, therefore, be stated in this place. The Aṅgirases are sometimes styled the *Virūpas*. Thus in III, 53, 7, the Aṅgirases are described as “*Virūpas*, and sons of heaven”; and the name *Virūpa* once occurs by itself as that of a single being, who sings the praises of Agni, in a stanza (VIII, 64, 6) immediately following one in which Aṅgiras is invoked, showing that *Virūpa* is here used as a synonym for Aṅgiras. But the most explicit of these references is X, 62, 5 and 6. The first of these verses states that the Aṅgirases are *Virūpas*, and they are the sons of Agni; while the second describes them along with the Navagva and the Dashagva in the following terms, “And which *Virūpas* were born from Agni and from the sky; the Navagva or the Dashagva, as the best of the Aṅgirases (*Aṅgiras-tama*), prospers in the assemblage of the gods.”¹ Now *Virūpas* literally means ‘of various forms,’ and in the above verses it seems to have been used as an adjective qualifying Aṅgirases to denote that there are many species of them. We are further told that the Navagvas and the Dashagvas were the most important (*Aṅgiras-tamaḥ*) of these species. In the last chapter I have discussed the meaning of the adjective *Virūpa* as applied to a couple of Day and Night and have shown, on the authority of Mâdhava, that the word, as applied to days and nights, denotes their duration, or the period of time over which they extend. *Virūpas* in the present instance appears to be used precisely in the same ense. The Navagvas and the Dashagvas were no doubt the most important of the early sacrificers, but these too were not their only species. In other words they were not merely ‘nine-going,’ and ‘ten-going,’ but ‘various-going’ (virûpas), meaning that the duration of their sacrifices was sometimes shorter than nine and sometimes longer than ten months. In fact a Sapta-gu (seven-going) is mentioned in X, 47, 6, along with Bṛihaspati, the son of Aṅgiras, and it seems to be used there as an adjective qualifying Bṛihaspati; for Bṛihaspati is described in another place (IV, 50, 4) as saptâsya (seven-mouthed), while the Atharva-Veda IV, 5, 1, describes the first Brâhmaṇa, Bṛihaspati, as dashâsya or ten-mouthed. We have also seen that in IV, 51, 4, the Dashagva is also called ‘seven-mouthed.’ All these expressions can be satisfactorily explained only by supposing that the Aṅgirases were not merely ‘nine-going’ or ‘ten-going’, but virûpas or ‘various-going’, and that they completed their sacrifices within the number of months for which the sun was above the horizon at the place where these sacrifices were performed. It follows, therefore, that in ancient times the sacrificial session lasted from seven to ten months; and the number of sacrificers (Hotṛis) corresponded with the number of the months, each doing his duty by rotation somewhat after the manner of the Egyptian priests previously referred to. These sacrifices were over when the long night commenced, during which Indra fought with Vala and vanquished him by the end of the year (parivatsare, X, 62, 2). The word parivatsare (at the end of the year) is very suggestive and shows that the year closed with the long night.