The Arctic Home in the Vedas c15.7

c15.7

In treating of the Gavâm-ayanam and the corresponding legend of the Dashagvas, a reference has already been made to the Greek legend of Hêlios, who is described as having 350 oxen and as many sheep, obviously representing a year of 350 days and nights, and to the Roman tradition about December being the tenth and the last month of the year as denoted by its etymology. Prof. Lignana in his essay on The Navagvas and the Dashagvas of the Rig-Veda, published in the proceedings of the seventh International Congress of the Orientalists, 1886, however, remarks that the passage of Plutarch in the life of Numa, where this tradition is mentioned, does not support the view that the Romans originally counted not more than ten months. It is true that Plutarch mentions an alternative story of Numa’s altering the order of months “making March the third which was the first, January first which was the eleventh of Romulus, and February the second which was the twelfth and the last.” But immediately afterwards Plutarch says, “Many, however, assert that two months of January and February were added by Numa, whereas before they had reckoned ten months in the year”; and in the next paragraph gives his own opinion, “That the Roman year contained at first ten months only and not twelve, we have a proof in the name of the last; for they still call it *December*, or the tenth month; and that March was first is also evident, because the fifth from it was called *Quintilis*, the sixth *Sextilis*, and so the rest in their order.” ¹ I have referred to this passage previously and shown that Plutarch’s reasoning about the order of the months as indicated by their numerical names cannot be lightly set aside. If January and February were the last two months in the ancient calendar of the Romans, we should have to assume that the numerical order from *Quintilis* to *December* was abruptly given up after *December*, which does not seem probable. It is, therefore, more reasonable to hold that Numa actually added two months to the old year, and that the story of the transposition of the two months of January and February from the end to the beginning of the year was a later suggestion put forward by those who knew not how to account for a year of ten months, or 304 days only. But besides Plutarch, we have also the testimony of Macrobius, who, as stated before, tells us that Romulus had a year of ten months only. There can, therefore, be little doubt about the existence of a tradition of the ancient Roman year of ten months, and we now see that it is thoroughly intelligible by comparison with the annual sacrificial *sattras* of ten months mentioned in the Vedic literature. The names of the Roman months from *Quintilis* to *December* further show that the months of the year had no special names in ancient times, but were named simply in their numerical order, a fact which accounts for the absence of common names for the months of the year in different Aryan languages.