The Arctic Home in the Vedas c13.27

c13.27

But what became of the child (Kumâra) which disappeared in this way? Was he lost for ever or again restored to his parents? How did the father or even the mother obtain the child so lost? Some one must bring the child to them, and this task seems to have been entrusted to the Ribhus or the Ashvins in the Rig-Veda. Thus in I, 110, 8, the Ribhus are said to have united the mother with the calf, and in I, 116, 13, the Ashvins are described as giving to Vadhrimati a child called Hiranya-hasta. The story of restoring Vishnâpu to Vishvaka (I, 117, 7) and of giving milk to Shayu's cow probably refer to the same phenomenon of bringing back the morning sun to the parents; and from this it is but a small step to the story of Kumâra (lit., a child), one of the names of Kârttikeya in the Purânas. It was this Kumâra, or the once hidden (guha), or dropped (skanda) Child, rising along with the seven rivers or mothers (VIII, 96, 1) in the morning, that led the army of gods or light and walked victoriously along the Devayâna path. He was the leader of days, or the army of gods; and as Maruts were the allies of Indra in his conflict with Vritra, Kumâra or the Child, meaning the morning sun, may, by a turn of the mythological kaleidoscope, be very well called a son of Rudra, the later representative of the Maruts; or said to be born of Agni, who dwelt in waters; or described as the son of seven or six Krittikâs. As the morning sun has to pierce his way up through the apertures of Albûrz, temporarily closed by Vritra, this Kumâra can again be well termed Krauncha-dârana, or the piercer of the Krauncha mountain, an epithet applied to him in the Purânas.¹ But we are not here concerned with the growth which Kumâra, or the child of the morning, attained in later mythology. We took up the legends of the Ashvins with a view to see if there were any incidents in them which became intelligible only on the Arctic theory, and the foregoing examination of the legends shows that we have not searched in vain. The expression dasha-mâsya in the legend of Sapta-vadhri and dashame yuge in that of Dîrghatamas directly indicate a period of ten months' sunshine, and we have seen that three, ten, or a hundred continuous nights are also referred to directly or metaphorically in some of these legends. We have again such expressions as "the sun sleeping in darkness or in the lap of Nir-riti," which show that actual and not metaphorical darkness was intended. In short, the sun, sunk in the nether world of waters and darkness, and not merely a winter sun, is the burden of all these legends, and the achievements of the Ashvins refer to the rescue of the sun from the dark pit of the nether world or from the bottomless ocean or darkness. The Vernal and Arctic theories are both solar in character, and in either case the legends are interpreted on the supposition that they represent some solar phenomenon. But the Arctic theory does not stop with the decay of the sun's power in winter, but goes a step further in making the long darkness of the circum-polar region, the natural basis of many important Vedic legends; and the foregoing discussion of the myths of the Ashvins clearly shows that a wider basis, like the one supplied by the Arctic theory, was not only desirable but necessary for a proper explanation of these legends—a fact, which, in its turn, further corroborates and establishes the new theory.