The Arctic Home in the Vedas c16.19

Language: English

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It has been shown previously that the climate of the Arctic regions in the inter-Glacial period was so mild and temperate as to be almost an approach to a perpetual spring, and that there was then a continent of land round about the Pole, the same being submerged during the glacial epoch. The primitive Aryans residing in such regions must, therefore, have lived a happy life. The only inconvenience experienced by them was the long Arctic night; and we have seen how this phenomenon has served to give rise to various myths or legends describing the struggle between the powers of light and darkness. The occurrence of the Arctic night, its tiresome length, and the long expected morning light on the horizon after some months were, naturally enough, the most important facts which attracted the attention of our primeval forefathers, and it is no wonder if they believed it to be the greatest exploit of their gods when the beneficent dawn came dawning up, after several months of darkness, from the nether world of aerial waters, inaugurating a new yearly round of sacrifices, festivals, or other religious or social ceremonies. It was the beginning of the Devayâna, when the powers of light celebrated their victory over the demons of darkness, and the Child of the Morning, the Kumâra, the leader of the army of gods, walked victoriously along the Devayâna path commencing the cycle of human ages, or mânushâ yugâ, as mentioned in the Rig-Veda.

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The Pitriyâna, or the walk of the Manes, corresponded with the dark winter, the duration of which extended in the original home from two to six months. This was the period of rest or repose during which, as observed previously, people refrained even from disposing the bodies of the dead owing to the absence of sunshine. All social and religious ceremonies or feasts were also suspended during this period as the powers of darkness were believed to be in the ascendant. In short, the oldest Aryan calendar was, as remarked by Dr. Schrader, divided into two parts, a summer of seven or ten months and a corresponding winter of five or two months. But it seems to have been an ancient practice to reckon the year by counting the recurrence of summers or winters rather than by combining the two seasons. It is thus that we can account for a year of seven or ten months in old times, or annual sacrificial sattras extending over the same period. This calendar is obviously unsuited to places to the outh of the Arctic circle; and the Aryans had, therefore, to change or reform the same, as was done by Numa, in postglacial times, when, expatriated from their mother land, they settled in the northern parts of Europe and Central Asia. But the reminiscence of the Devayâna as a special period of sacrifices and ceremonies was tenaciously preserved, and even now it is looked upon as a season of special religious merit.

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We can, on this theory, easily explain why the Gṛihya-Sûtras attach special importance to the Uttarâyaṇa from a ceremonial point of view, and why death during the Dakshiṇâyana is regarded as inauspicious. How the inter-glacial year of seven or ten months was changed to a year of twelve months in postglacial times, and how the equinoctial division which obtained at first on the analogy of the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna, was subsequently altered to the solstitial one, the old meaning of the word Uttarâyaṇa undergoing (Orion, p. 25 f.) a similar change, are questions, which, though important in the history of the Aryan calendar, are not relevant in this place; and we shall, therefore, proceed with the subject in hand. It is urged by some writers that though the worship of natural elements is found to obtain in several ancient Indo-European religions, yet its beginnings cannot be supposed to go back to the time of the common origin of the related peoples. Dr. Schrader has ably refuted this view in the concluding pages of his book on the pre-historic antiquities of Aryan peoples; and the theory of the Arctic home powerfully supports Dr. Schrader in his conclusions. "If we put aside everything unsafe and false," observes Dr.

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Schrader, "that Comparative Mythology and History of Religion has accumulated on this subject, we are solely, from the consideration of perfectly trustworthy material, more and more driven, on all sides, to assume that the common basis of ancient European religions was a worship of the powers of Nature practised in the Indo-European period."