The Arctic Home in the Vedas c12.3.2

c12.3.2

But to make the matter more certain, I have, in the last three chapters, quoted and discussed Vedic passages, which go to prove that the long Arctic nights and the corresponding long days of varying duration, as well as, a year of ten months or five seasons, were equally known to the poets of the Rig-Veda. An examination of the ancient sacrificial system, and especially of the annual Sattras and night-sacrifices, further showed that in old times yearly sacrificial sessions did not last for twelve months as at present, but were completed in nine or ten months; and the hundred night-sacrifices were, at that time, really performed, as their name indicates, during the darkness of the long night. The legends of Dîrghatamas and Aditi's sons, and the tradition about the sacrificial sessions of the Navagvas and the Dashagvas also pointed to the same conclusion. Our case does not, therefore, depend on an isolated fact here and an isolated fact there. We have seen that the half-year-long day and night, the long dawn with its revolving splendours, the long continuous night matched by the corresponding long day and associated with a succession of ordinary days and nights of varying lengths, and the total annual period of sunshine of less than twelve months are the principal peculiar characteristics of the Polar or the Circum-Polar calendar;