The Arctic Home in the Vedas c11.53

Language: English

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But a far more striking corroboration of the above view is furnished by certain passages in the Avesta which describe the fight of Tishtrya with the demon of draught called Apaosha or ‘the burner’ in the Parsi scriptures. In the Rig-Veda the fight of Indra with Vritra (Vritra-tûrya) is often represented as ‘a struggle for waters’ (ap-tûrya), or as ‘the striving for cows’ (go-iṣṭi), or ‘the striving for day’ (div-iṣṭi), and Indra is said to have released the cows or waters, and brought on the dawn or the sun by killing Vritra (I, 51, 4; II 19, 3). Now Indra, as Vritra-han, appears as Verethraghna in the Avesta; but the fight for waters is therein ascribed not to Verethraghna but to Tishtrya, the star of rain. It is he, who knocks down Apaosha and liberates the waters for the benefit of man, “with the assistance of the winds, and the light that dwells in the waters.” In short Tishtrya’s conquest over Apaosha is an exact parallel of Indra’s conquest over Vritra as described in the Rig-Veda; and as the legends are interpreted at present, they are said to refer to the breaking up of the clouds and the bringing on of the rains on the earth, Tishtrya being supposed to be the star of rain. But this theory fails to account for the fact how the recovery of the dawn and the rising of the sun, or the bringing on of light, were included amongst the effects of Indra’s victory over Vritra.

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It will be shown in the next chapter that the struggle for waters has very little to do with rain, and that the fight for waters and the fight for light are really synchronous, being two different versions of the same story. In short, both of these legends really represent the victory of the powers of light over darkness. Shushṇa or ‘the scorcher’ is one of the names given to Indra’s enemy in the Rig-Veda (I, 51, 11), and the result of the conflict between Indra and Shushṇa is the release of the waters, as well as the finding of the morning cows (VIII, 96, 17), and the winning of the sun (VI, 20, 5). Apaosha is thus Shushṇa under a different garb, and the only difference between the two legends is that while Indra is the chief actor in the one, Tishtrya is the chief hero in the other. But this difference is immaterial inasmuch as the attributes of one deity are often transferred, even in Rig-Veda, to another. The Avestic legend of Tishtrya is, therefore, rightly understood by Zend scholars to be a reproduction of the Vedic legend of Indra and Vṛitra.¹ Now, in the Tîr Yasht, Tishtrya is represented as eventually overcoming Apaosha with the help of the Haoma sacrifice offered to Tishtrya by Ahura Mazda (Yt. VIII, 15-25). The fight is carried on in the region of the waters, the sea Vouru-Kasha, from which Tishtrya is described as rising up victorious after defeating Apaosha (Yt. VIII, 32).

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The Daêva Apaosha is again said to have assumed the form of a dark horse, while Tishtrya is represented as opposing him in the form of a bright horse, hoof against hoof (Yt. VIII, 28), and eventually coming up victorious from out of the sea Vouru-Kasha, like the sacrificial horse rising from the waters in the Rig-Veda (I, 163, 1). But the passage most important for our purpose is the one in which Tishtrya informs Ahura Mazda as to what should be done in order to enable Tishtrya to overcome his enemy and to appear before the faithful at the appointed time. "If men would worship me," says Tishtrya to Ahura Mazda, "with a sacrifice in which I were invoked by my own name, as they worship the other Yazatas with sacrifices in which they are invoked by their own names, then I should have come to the faithful at the appointed time; I should have come in the appointed time of my beautiful immortal life, should it be one night, or two nights, or fifty, or a hundred nights," (Yt. VIII, 11). As Tishtrya appears before man after his battle with Apaosha, the phrase "appointed time ” signifies the time during which the battle is fought and at the termination of which Tishtrya comes to the faithful;

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and the passage, therefore, means (1) that the “ appointed time,” when Tishtrya was to appear before man after fighting with Apaosha, varied from one night to a hundred nights, and (2) that Tishtrya required to be strengthened during the period by Haoma sacrifices in which he was to be invoked by his own name. We have seen above that a hundred nightly Soma sacrifices were offered to Indra by the ancient Vedic sacrificers to enable him to secure a victory over Vritra, and that Indra was the only deity to whom the libations were offered in these sacrifices. The legend of Tishtrya and Apaosha is, therefore, an exact reproduction of Indra’s fight with Vritra or Vala; and with this correspondence before us, we should feel no hesitation in accepting the view stated above regarding the origin of the Shata-râtra sacrifice. Neither Darmesteter nor Spiegel explains why the appointed time for the appearance of Tishtrya is described as “ one night, or two nights, or fifty, or a hundred nights,” though both translate the original in the same way. The legend also forms the subject of chapter VII of the Bundahish, but there, too, we find no explanation as to why the appointed time is described as varying from one to a hundred nights. It is, however, suggested by some that the appointed time may refer to the season of rains.

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But rains cannot be said to come after “ one night, two nights, or fifty, or a hundred nights, ” and the latter expression would, therefore, be utterly inappropriate in their case; nor, as stated above, does Tishtrya’s fight with Apaosha represent only a struggle for rain, since we know that it is a struggle for light as well. We have also seen that the existence of night-sacrifices in the Vedic literature, extending over one, two, three, or ten, or a hundred nights, indicates the long darkness during which Indra fought with Vala; and the coincidence between this fact and the ‘appointed time’