The Arctic Home in the Vedas c11.47

Language: English

c11.47.1

Now what applies to the sacrifice of a single night may well be extended to cases where sacrifices had to be performed for two, three or more continuous nights. I have already shown before that the ancient sacrificers completed their sacrificial sessions in ten months, and a long night followed the completion of these sacrifices. What did the sacrificers do during this long night? They could not have slept all the time; and as a matter of fact we know that the people in the extreme north of Europe and Asia do not, even at present, sleep during the whole of the long night which occurs in their part of the globe. Paul Du Chaillu, who has recently (1900) published an account of his travels in *The Land of the* *Long Night*, informs us (p. 75) that although the sun went below the horizon for several days in the Arctic regions, yet during the period "the Lapps could tell from the stars whether it was night or day, for they were accustomed to gauge time by the stars according to their height above the horizon, just as we do at home with the sun"; and what the Lapps do now, must have been done by the oldest inhabitants of the circum-polar regions. It is, therefore, clear that the ancient sacrificers of the Aryan race could not have gone to sleep after sacrificing for ten months. Did they then sit idle with their hands folded when Indra was fighting for them with the powers of darkness? They performed their sacrifices for ten months with a view to help Indra in his war with Vala;

c11.47.2

and just at the time when Indra most needed the help of invigorating songs and Soma libations, are we to suppose that these sacrificers sat idle, gave up the sacrifices and left Indra to fight with Vala alone and single-handed as best as he could? The whole theory of sacrifices negatives such a supposition. Therefore, if the Arctic theory is true, and if the ancestor of the Vedic Rishis ever lived in a region where the darkness of the night lasted for several days, (a day being taken as a measure of time equal to 24 hours), we naturally expect to find a series of nightly Soma sacrifices performed during the period, to help the gods in their struggle with the demons of darkness; and, as a matter of fact, there are in the Vedic sacrificial literature, a number of sacrifices which, if we include the *Ati-râtra* in it, extend from one to a hundred nights. The *Mîmâmsakas* and even the authors of the *Brâhmanas*, who knew little about the ancient Arctic home, have converted these night-sacrifices into day-sacrifices; but the explanation evidently appears to be invented at a time when the true nature of the *Râtri-kratus* or *Râtri-sattras* was forgotten, and it does not, therefore, preclude us from interpreting these facts in a different way. I have already stated above that if we accept the explanation of the Mîmâmsakas, we cannot explain why the series of the night-sacrifices should abruptly end with the Shata-râtra or a hundred nights' sacrifice;

c11.47.3

but by the Arctic theory we can explain the fact satisfactorily by supposing that the duration of the long night in the ancient home varied from one night (of 24 hours) to a hundred continuous nights (of 2400 hours) according to latitude, and that the hundred nightly Soma sacrifices corresponded to the different durations of the night at different places in the ancient home. Thus where the darkness lasted only for ten nights (240 hours) a Dasha-râtra sacrifice was performed, while where it lasted for 100 nights (2400 hours) a Shata-râtra sacrifice was necessary. There are no sacrifices after the Shata-râtra because a hundred continuous nights marked the maximum duration of darkness experienced by the ancient sacrificers of the race. We have seen that the legend of Aditi indicates a period of seven months sunshine; join to it the Dawn and the Twilight of 30 days each, and there are left three months, (or if we take the year to consist of 365 days, then 95 days), for the duration of the long continuous night,—a result which remarkably corresponds to the longest duration of the night-sacrifices known in the Vedic literature. The Dawn marked the end of the long night, and could not, therefore, be included in the latter at least for sacrificial purposes. In fact separate sacrifices are enjoined for the Dawn in sacrificial works;

c11.47.4

and we may, therefore, safely exclude the long Dawn from the province of the nightly sacrifices, and the same may be said of the period of the long evening twilight. A hundred nights' sacrifice thus marked the maximum duration of darkness during which Indra fought with Vala and was strengthened by the Soma libations offered to him in this sacrifice. As there is no other theory to account for the existence of the night-sacrifices, and especially for their number, to wit, one hundred, these sacrifices may be safely taken to indicate the existence of an ancient year approximately divided into seven months' sunshine, one month's dawn, one month's evening twilight and three months' long continuous night.