The Arctic Home in the Vedas c7.25.3

c7.25.3

It is sufficient to observe in this place, that if we interpret the two-fold division of the Devayâna and the Pitriyâna in this way, it fully corroborates the statement in the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa that a year was but a day of the Gods. We may also note in this connection that the expression ‘path f the Gods’ occurs even in the Parsi scriptures. Thus in the Farvardîn Yasht, paras 56, 57, the Fravashis, which correspond with the Pitris in the Vedic literature, are said to have shown to the sun and the moon “the path made by Mazda, the way made by the Gods,” along which the Fravashis themselves are described as growing. The sun and the moon are, again, said to have “stood for a long time in the same place, without moving forwards through the oppression of the Daevas (Vedic Asuras, or the demons of darkness),” before the Fravashis showed ‘the path of Mazda,’ to these two luminaries.¹ This shows that ‘the path of Mazda’ commenced, like the Devayâna road, when the sun was set free from the clutches of the demons of darkness. In other words, it represented the period of the year when the sun was above the horizon at the place where the ancestors of the Indo-Iranian lived in ancient days. We have seen that the Devayâna, or the path of the Gods, is the way along which Sûrya, Agni and other matutinal deities are said to travel in the Rig-Veda;