The Arctic Home in the Vedas c11.48

c11.48

There are other considerations which point out to the same conclusion. In the post-Vedic literature we have a persistent tradition that Indra alone of all gods is the master of a hundred sacrifices (shata-kratu), and that as this attribute formed, so to say, the very essence of Indraship, he always jealously watched all possible encroachments against it. But European scholars, relying upon the fact that even Sâyaṇa prefers, except in a few places (III, 51, 2), to interpret shata-kratu, as applied to Indra in the Rig-Veda, as meaning, not ‘the master of a hundred sacrifices,’ but ‘the lord of a hundred mights or powers,’ have not only put aside the Purâṇic tradition, but declined to interpret the word kratu in the Rig-Veda except in the sense of ‘power, energy, skill, wisdom, or, generally speaking, the power of body or mind.’ But if the above explanation of the origin of the night-sacrifices is correct, we must retrace our steps, and acknowledge that the Purâṇic tradition or legend is, after all, not built upon a pure misunderstanding of the original meaning of the epithet shata-kratu as applied to Indra in the Vedic literature. I am aware of the fact that traditions in the post-Vedic literature are often found to have but a slender basis in the Vedas, but in the present case we have something more reliable and tangible to go upon. We have a group, an isolated group of a hundred nightly Soma sacrifices, and as long as it stands unexplained in the Vedic sacrificial literature it would be unreasonable to decline to connect it with the Purâṇic tradition of Indra's sole mastership of a hundred sacrifices, especially when in the light of the Arctic theory the two can be so well and intelligibly connected. The hundred sacrifices, which are regarded as constituting the essence of Indraship in the Purâṇas, are there said to be the Ashvamedha sacrifices; and it may, at the outset, be urged that the *Shata-râtra* sacrifice mentioned in the sacrificial works is not an Ashvamedha sacrifice. But the distinction is neither important, nor material. The Ashvamedha sacrifice is a Soma sacrifice and is described in the sacrificial works along with the night-sacrifices. In the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ (VII, 2, 11,) a hundred offerings of food to be made in the Ashvamedha sacrifice are mentioned, and the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa (III, 8, 15, 1) states that Prajâpati obtained these offerings “during the night,” and consequently they are called *Râtri-homas*. The duration of the Ashvamedha sacrifice is again not fixed, inasmuch as it depends upon the return of the horse, and in the Rig-Veda (I, 163, 1) the sacrificial horse is identified with the sun moving in waters. The return of the sacrificial horse may, therefore, be taken to symbolise the return of the sun after the long night, and a close resemblance between the Ashvamedha and the night-sacrifices, which were performed to enable Indra to fight with Vala and rescue the dawn and the sun from his clutches, may thus be taken as established. At any rate, we need not be surprised if the *Shata-râtra* Soma sacrifice appears in the form of a hundred Ashvamedha sacrifices in the Purâṇas. The tradition is substantially the same in either case, and when it can be so easily and naturally explained on the Arctic theory, it would not be reasonable to set it aside, and hold that the writers of the Purâṇas created it by misinterpreting the word *shata-kratu* occurring in the Vedas.