The Arctic Home in the Vedas c13.24

Language: English

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The whole mystery is, however, cleared up by the light thrown upon the legend by the Arctic theory. The dawn is sometimes spoken of in the Rig-Veda as producing the sun (I, 113, 1; VII. 78, 3). But this dawn cannot be said to have borne the child for ten months; nor can we suppose that the word *dasha-mâsyah* (of ten months), which is found in the 7th and the 8th, and the phrase *dasha mâsân* found in the 9th verse of the hymn were used without any specific meaning or intention. We must, therefore, look for some other explanation, and this is supplied by the fact that the sun is said to be pre-eminently the son of Dyâvâ-pṛithivî, or simply of Dyu in the Rig-Veda. Thus in X, 97, 1, the sun is called divas-putra or the son of Dyu, and in I, 164, 33, we read, “Dyu is the father, who begot us, our origin is there; this great Earth is our parent mother. The father laid the daughter's embryo (garbham) within the womb of the two wide bowls (uttânayoḥ chamvoḥ)”. In the preceding verse, we have, “He (the sun) yet enveloped in his mother's womb, having various offsprings, has gone into the (region of) Nir-ṛiti”; and further that “he, who had made him, does not know of him;

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surely is he hidden from those who saw him.” In I, 160, 1, we similarly find that “These Heaven and Earth, bestowers of prosperity and all, the wide sustainers of the regions, the two bowls of noble birth, the holy ones : between these two goddesses, the refulgent sun-god travels by fixed decrees.” These passages clearly show (1) that the sun was conceived as a child of the two bowls, Heaven and Earth, (2) that the sun moved like an embryo in the womb, i.e., the interior of heaven and earth, and (3) that after moving in this way in the womb of the mother for some time, and producing various offsprings, the sun sank into the land of desolation (Nir-ṛiti), and became hidden to those that saw him before. Once the annual course of the sun was conceived in this way, it did not require any great stretch of imagination to represent the dropping of the sun into Nir-ṛiti as an exit from the womb of his mother. But what are we to understand by the phrase that ‘he moved in the womb for ten months’? The Arctic theory explains this point satisfactorily. We have seen that Dîrghatamas was borne on waters for ten months, and the Dashagvas are said to have completed their sacrificial session during the same period. The sun can, therefore, be very well described, while above the horizon for ten months, as moving in the womb of his mother, or between heaven and earth for ten months.

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After this period, the sun was lost, or went out of the womb into the land of desolation, there to be shut up as in a wooden case for two months. The sage Atri, therefore, rightly invokes the Ashvins for his deliverance from the box and also for the safe delivery of the child, i.e., himself, from the womb of his mother after ten months. In the Atharva Veda XI, 5, 1, the sun, as a Brahmachârin, is said to move between heaven and earth, and in the 12th verse of the same hymn we are told that "Shouting forth, thundering, red, white he carries a great penis (bṛihach-chhepas) along the earth." If the sun moving between heaven and earth is called bṛihach-chhepas he may well be called Vadhri (eunuch), when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti. But Prof. Max Muller asks us, why he should be called Saptavadhri or a seven-eunuch? The explanation is simple enough. The heaven, the earth and the lower regions are all conceived as divided seven-fold in the Rig-Veda, and, when the ocean or the waters are described as seven-fold (sapta-budhnam arṇavam, VIII, 40, 5;

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sapta âpaḥ X, 104, 8), or when we have seven Dânus or demons, mentioned in X, 120, 6, or when Indra is called sapta-han or the seven-slayer (X, 49, 8), or Vṛitra is said to have seven forts (I, 63, 7), or when the cowstead (vraja), which the two Ashvins are said to have opened in X, 40, 8, is described as saptâsya, the sun, who is bṛihach-chhepas and seven-rayed or seven-horsed (V, 45, 9) while moving between heaven and earth, may very well be described as Saptavadhri or seven-eunuch when sunk into the land of Nir-ṛiti or the nether world of bottomless darkness, from which he is eventually released by the Ashvins. The last three verses of V, 78, can thus be logically connected with the story of Saptavadhri mentioned in the immediately preceding verses, if the period of ten months, during which the child moves in the mother's womb, is taken to represent the period of ten months' sunshine followed by the long night of two months, the existence of which we have established by independent Vedic evidence. The point has long remained unexplained, and it is only by the Arctic theory that it can be now satisfactorily accounted for.