The Arctic Home in the Vedas c13.25

c13.25

In connection with this subject it is necessary to refer to a riddle or a paradox, which arises out of it. The sun was supposed to move in the womb of his mother for ten months and then to drop into the nether world. In other words, as soon as he came out of the womb, he was invisible; while in ordinary cases a child becomes visible as soon as it is brought into the world after ten months of gestation. Here was an idea, or rather an apparent contradiction between two ideas, which the Vedic poets were not slow to sieze upon, and evolve a riddle out of it. Thus we have seen above (I, 164, 32) that the sun is described as being invisible to one who made him, evidently meaning his mother. In V, 2, 1, we again meet with the same riddle; for it says, "Young mother carries in secret the boy confined; she does not yield him to the father. People do not see before them his fading face, laid down with the Arâti."¹ In I, 72, 2, we further read, "All the clever immortals did not find the calf though sojourning round about us. The attentive (gods), wearying themselves, following his foot-steps, stood at the highest beautiful standing place of Agni;" and the same idea is expressed in I, 95, 4, which says, "Who amongst you has understood this secret? The calf has by itself given birth to its mother. The germ of many, the great seer moving by his own strength comes forward from the lap of the active one (apasâm)." It is the story of the hidden Agni, who is described in X, 124, 1, as having long (jyok) resided in the long darkness (*dīrgham tamaḥ*), and who eventually comes out as the child of waters (*apām napāt*, I, 143, 1). The epithet *apām napāt* as applied to Agni is usually explained as referring to the lightening produced from the clouds, but this explanation does not account for the fact of his long residence in darkness. The puzzle or the riddle is, however, satisfactorily solved by the Arctic theory, combined with the cosmic circulation of aerial waters. The sun, who moves in the interior of heaven and earth for ten months, as in the womb of his mother, naturally suggested to the Vedic poets the parallel idea of the period of ten months' gestation; but the wonder was that while a child is visible to all as soon as it is born, the sun became invisible just at the time when he came out of the womb. Where did he go? Was he locked up in a wooden chest or bound down with leather straps in the region of waters? Why did the mother not present him to the father after he was safely delivered? Was he safely delivered? These questions naturally arise out of the story, and the Vedic poets appear to take delight in reverting again and again to the same paradox in different places. And what applies to Sûrya or the sun applies to Agni as well; for there are many passages in the Rig-Veda where Agni is identified with the sun. Thus Agni is said to be the light of heaven in the bright sky, waking at dawn, the head of heaven (III, 2, 14), and he is described as having been born on the other side of the air in X, 187, 5. In the Aitareya Brâhmaṇa (VIII, 28), we are further told that the sun, when setting, enters into Agni and is reproduced from the latter; and the same identification appears to be alluded to in the passages from the Rig-Veda, where Agni is said to unite with the light of the sun or to shine in heaven (VIII, 44 29). The story of concealing the child after ten months of gestation whether applied to Agni or to Sûrya is thus only a different version of the story of the disappearance of the sun from the upper hemisphere after ten months of sunshine.