The Arctic Home in the Vedas c12.65

Language: English

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It will be seen from the foregoing discussion that the true nature and movements of waters released by Indra from the grasp of Vṛitra has been misunderstood from the days of the most ancient Nairuktas, or, we might say, even from the days of the Brâhmaṇas. There are passages in the Rig-Veda where Pûṣhan is said to cross the upper celestial hemisphere in boats; but the Ashvins and Sûrya are generally described as traversing the heaven in their chariots. This led the ancient Nairuktas to believe that the upper celestial hemisphere was not a seat of aerial waters, and that when Indra was described as releasing waters by slaughtering Vṛitra, the waters referred to could not but be the waters imprisoned in the rain-clouds. The seven rivers set free to flow by killing Vṛitra were similarly understood to be the rivers of India, like the Ganges, the Jamuna, &c., while the piercing of the mountains was explained away by distorting or straining the meaning of such words as, parvata, giri, &c., as stated above. It was at this stage that the subject was taken in hand by Western scholars, who, taking their cue from the Hapta-hindu of the Avesta, eloquently advanced the theory that the seven rivers, set free by Indra, were the rivers of the Panjaub. This explanation, when first started, was regarded as an important historical discovery; and so it would have been, if it had been a real fact. But, as pointed out above, the Panjanb is, by nature, a land of five rivers and not seven;

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and it is so described in the Vâjasaneyî Samhitâ. It is also evident that as the seven rivers, set free to flow by Indra, were released simultaneously with the dawn, they could not be the rivers of the Panjaub. We do not mean to say that the Panjaub was not an Aryan settlement at the time when the Vedic hymns were sung, for the rivers of the Panjaub are expressly mentioned in the Rig-Veda. But the rivers of the Panjaub were not the seven rivers mentioned in the Vedas; and if so, a new explanation of the Vritra legend becomes necessary, and such an explanation is furnished only by the theory of the cosmic circulation of aerial waters or rivers through the lower and the upper world, carrying along with them the sun, the moon and the other heavenly bodies. We can now very well explain how Vritra, by stretching his body cross, closed the passages in the mountainous ranges (parvatas), which, on the analogy of mountains usually seen on the horizon, were believed to lie between the upper and the lower world; and how the waters, and with them the sun and the dawn, were prevented from coming up from the nether world for a long time in the Arctic home of the ancestors of the Vedic bards.

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Another point elucidated by the present theory is the four-fold character of the effects of Indra's conquest over Vritra, a point which has been entirely neglected by ancient and modern Nairuktas, not because it was unknown but because they were unable to give any satisfactory explanation of the same, except on the hypothesis that different effects have been confounded with each other by the poets of the Rig-Veda. But the theory of the cosmic circulation of aerial waters, a theory which is also found in the mythology of many other nations, now clears up the whole mystery. If Indra is described as the leader or the releaser of waters (apâm netâ, or apâm sraṣṭâ), the waters do not mean the waters in the clouds, but the waters or the watery vapours which fill the universe, and formed the material out of which the latter was created. In other words, the conquest over waters was something grander, something far more marvelous and cosmic in character than the mere breaking up of the clouds in the rainy season;

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and under these circumstances it was naturally considered to be the greatest of Indra’s exploits, when, invigorated by a hundred nightly Soma sacrifices, he slew with ice the watery demon of darkness, shattered his hundred autumnal forts, released the waters or the seven rivers upstream to go along their aerial way and brought out the sun and the dawn, or the cows, from their place of confinement inside the rocky caves, where they had stood still since the date of the war, which, according to a Vedic passage, hitherto misread and misunderstood, commenced in higher latitudes every year on the 40th day of Sharad or autumn and lasted till the end of winter. It is not contended that Indra had never been the god of rain. There are a few passages in the Rig-Veda (IV, 26, 2; VIII, 6, 1), where he is expressly mentioned as sending down rain, or is compared to a rain-god. But as Vritra-han or the killer of Vritra and the releaser of waters and the dawn, it is impossible to identify him with the god of rain. The story of the release of captive waters is an ancient story; for Vritra appears as Orthros in the Greak mythology, and Vritra-han, as Verethragna, is the god of victory in the Parsi scriptures.

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Now this Vritra-han may not have been originally the same as Indra, for the word Indra does not occur in European Aryan languages, and it has, therefore, been suggested by some comparative mythologians that the conquest of waters, which was originally the exploit of some other Aryan deity, was probably ascribed to Indra in the Vedic mythology, when Indra became the principal deity in the Vedic pantheon. The fact that Tishtrya, and not Verethraghna, is said to be the releaser of waters and light in the Avesta, lends some support to this theory. But whichever view we adopt, it does not affect the conclusion we have come to above regarding the true explanation of the Vritra legend. Clouds and rain cannot constitute the physical basis of the legend, which is evidently based on the simple phenomenon of bringing light to the people who had anxiously waited for it during the darkness of the long night in the Arctic regions; and it is a pity that any misconception regarding Vedic cosmography, or the nature of waters and their cosmic movements, should have, for sometime at least, stood in the way of the true interpretation of this important legend. Indra may have become a storm-god afterwards; or the conquest over Vritra, originally achieved by some other deity, may have come to be ascribed to Indra, the rain-god in later times.

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But whether the exploits of Vritra-han were subsequently ascribed to Indra, or whether Indra, as the releaser of captive waters, was afterwards mistaken for the god of rain, like Tishtrya in the Avesta, one fact stands out boldly amidst all details, viz., that captive waters were the aerial waters in the nether world, and that their captivity represented the annual struggle between light and darkness in the original home of the Aryans in the Arctic region; and if this fact was not hitherto discovered, it was because our knowledge of the ancient man was too meagre to enable us to perceive it properly.