The Arctic Home in the Vedas c11.49.4

c11.49.4

and if *deva-puráh* means ‘days,’ the *puráh* (cities, fortresses) of Shambara may well be taken to mean ‘nights.’ This view is confirmed by the statement in the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa, previously quoted, which says that the Asuras found shelter with the night, or, in other words, the darkness of the night was, so to say, their fortress. Indra’s destroying a hundred forts of Shambara is, therefore, equivalent to his fighting with the enemy for a hundred continuous nights, a period during which the ancient sacrificers offered him Soma libations in order that he may be better prepared for the struggle with Vala. The destruction of 99 or 100 forts of the enemy, a group of a hundred nightly sacrifices, the nine and ninety rivers (*sravantīḥ*) which Indra is described as crossing during his fight with Ahi (I, 32, 14), and a hundred leather straps with which Kutsa is said to have bound down Indra to his sacrifice in the Tâṇḍya Brâhmaṇa IX, 2, 22, and from which he is invoked to free himself in Ṛig. X, 38, 5, are but so many different kaleidoscopic views of the same idea which makes Indra and Indra alone the lord of a hundred sacrifices; and if we take all these together they undoubtedly point out to the existence of a hundred continuous nights in the ancient home of the ancestors of the Vedic people.