The Arctic Home in the Vedas c15.19

c15.19

This shows that the ancient Aryan races of Europe knew of six months' day and six months' night, and their calendars were the modifications of this Arctic division of the year. Comparative philology, according to Dr. Schrader, leads us to the same conclusion. Speaking of the ancient division of the year he says:— "Nearly everywhere in the chronology of the individual peoples a division of the year into two parts can be traced. This finds linguistic expression in the circumstance that the terms for summer, spring, and winter have parallel suffix formations. As in the primeval period *jhi-m* and *sem-* existed side by side, so in Zend *zima* and *hama* correspond to each other, in Armenian *amarn* and *jmern*, in Teutonic *sum-ar* and *wint-ar*, in Celtic *gam* and *sam*, in Indian *vasanta* and *hemanta*. There is absolutely no instance, in which one and the same language shows identity of suffixes in the names of the three seasons of the year. In Slavonic, also, the year is divided into two principal divisions, summer (*lêto*) and winter (*zima*); and finally evident traces of old state of things are not wanting in Greek and Latin.”¹ Dr. Schrader further remarks that the separate conceptions of winter and summer were combined in one whole even in primitive times; but there is no word for a year common to all or most of the Aryan languages, and it is not unlikely that the names of summer or winter were used to denote the return of the seasons more frequently than the conception of winter and summer combined into one whole. As the length of summer, or the period of sunshine, as contrasted with the period of darkness, varied from six to twelve months in the Arctic regions the conception of a year of twelve months was perhaps less suited for practical reckoning in the primeval home than the conception of so many months’ summer or so many months’ winter taken singly, and this explains why in the Rig-Veda we have the expression “*mânushâ yugâ* and *kshapah*” to denote the whole year.