The Arctic Home in the Vedas c7.3

c7.3

AT the threshold of the Vedic literature, we meet with an elaborately organised sacrificial system so well regulated by the luni-solar calendar as to show that the Vedic bards had, by that time, attained considerable proficiency in practical astronomy. There were daily, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly sacrifices, which, as I have elsewhere shown, also served as chronometers in those days.¹ The Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas distinctly mention a lunar month of thirty days and a year of twelve such months, to which an intercalary month was now and then added, to make the lunar and the solar year correspond with each other. The ecliptic, or the belt of the zodiac, was divided into 27 or 28 divisions, called the Nakṣatras, which were used as mile-stones to mark the annual passage of the sun, or the monthly revolution of the moon round the earth. The two solstitial and the two equinoctial points, as well as the passage of the sun into the northern and the southern hemisphere, were clearly distinguished, and the year was divided into six seasons, the festivals in each month or the year being accurately fixed and ascertained. The stars rising and setting with the sun were also systematically observed and the eastern and western points of the compass determined as accurately as the astronomical observations of the day could permit. In my Orion or the Antiquity of the Vedas, I have shown how the changes in the position of the equinoxes were also marked in these days, and how they enable us to classify the periods of Vedic antiquity. According to this classification the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ comes under the Kṛittikâ period ( 2500 B. C. ), and some may, therefore, think that the details of the Vedic calendar given above are peculiar only to the later Vedic literature. A cursory study of the Ṛig-Veda will, however, show that such is not the case. A year of 360 days, with an intercalary month occasionally added, or a year of twelve lunar months, with twelve intercalary days inserted at the end of each year, was familiar to the poets of the Ṛig-Veda and is often mentioned in the hymns.¹ The northern and the southern passage of the sun from equinox to equinox, the Devayâna and the Pitṛiyâna, together with the yearly sattras, have also been referred to in several places, clearly showing that the Ṛig-Vedic calendar differed, if at all, very little from the one in use at the time of the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ or the Brâhmaṇas. A calendar of twelve months and six seasons is peculiar only to the temperate or the tropical zone, and if we were to judge only from the facts stated above, it follows that the people who used such a calendar, must have lived in places where the sun was above the horizon during all the days of the year. The science of Vedic mythology, so far as it is developed at present, also supports the same view. Vṛitra is said to be a demon of drought or darkness, and several myths are explained on the theory that they represent a daily struggle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, or of eventual triumph of summer over winter, or of day over night, or of Indra over watertight clouds. Mr. Nârâyaṇa Âiyaṅgâr of Bangalore has attempted to explain some of these myths on the astral theory, showing that the myths point out to the position of the vernal equinox in Orion, in the oldest period of Vedic civilisation. But all these theories or methods of interpretation assume that the Vedic people have always been the inhabitants of the temperate or the tropical zone, and all these myths and traditions were formed or developed in such a home.