The Arctic Home in the Vedas c12.34

c12.34

Mr. Wallis seems to think that since rajas is said to be divided three-fold, like the earth, and since the highest rajas is mentioned as the seat of waters, there is no scope in the Vedic division of rajas for a region beneath the earth; for the three rajas are exhausted by taking them as the rajas of the earth (pârthivam), the rajas of the sky (divo rajaḥ) and the highest (paramam) rajas, the seat of waters. But this objection is quite untenable, inasmuch as six different rajas, are also mentioned in the Rig-Veda (I, 164, 6). We can, therefore, suppose that there were three rajas above the earth and three below it, and so meet the apparent difficulty pointed out by Wallis. The three rajas can in some places be also interpreted to mean the earthly rajas, the one above the earth and the one below it, (X, 82, 4,). In I, 35, 2, the Savitṛi is described as moving through the dark rajas (kṛiṣhṇena rajasâ), and in the next verse we are told that he comes from the distant (parâvat) region, which shows that the dark rajas and the parâvat region are synonymous, and that the sun ascends the sky after passing through the dark rajas. Again the use of the word 'ascend'(ud-yan or ud-âcharat, I, 163, 1; VII, 55, 7), to describe the rising of the sun in the morning from the ocean, shows, by contrast, that the ocean which the sun is said to enter at the time of setting (X, 114, 4) is really an ocean underneath the earth. In I, 117, 5, the sun is described as sleeping in "the lap of Nir-ṛiti," and "dwelling in darkness"; while in I, 164, 32 and 33, the sun is said to have travelled in the interior of heaven and earth and finally gone into Nir-ṛiti, or as Prof. Max Muller renders it, 'the exodus in the west.' Now, in X, 114, 2, there are three *Nir-riti*s mentioned, evidently corresponding to the three earths and three heavens; and in X, 161 2, the lap of *Nir-riti* is identified with the region of death. Purûravas is again said (X, 95, 14) to have gone to the distant region (*param parâvatam*) and there made his bed on the lap of *Nir-riti*; while the Maruts are described as mounting up to the firmament from the bottom-less *Nir-riti* in VII, 58, 1. All these passages taken together show that *Nir-riti*, or the land of dissolution and death, commenced in the west, that the sun lying in darkness travelled through the distant region (*parâvat*) and eventually rose in the east from the lap of *Nir-riti*, and that the whole of this movement was placed not in the upper heaven, but on the other side of the vault through which the sun travelled before he entered into *Nir-riti*. In other words, the *Nir-riti*s extended below the earth from west to east; and since the region below the three earths is expressly mentioned in the Rig-Veda, the three *Nir-riti*s must be understood to mean the three regions below the earth corresponding to the three-fold division of the earth or of the heaven above it. Zimmer is, therefore, correct in stating that the sun moved through the *rajas* below the earth during night and that the Vedic poets knew of this nether *rajas*.