The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.12

c8.12

The three-fold division of the dawn does not seem to be unknown to the poets of the Rig-Veda. For, in VIII, 1, 3, Varuna's "dear ones are said to prospered the three dawns for him,"¹ and by the phrase tisraḥ dānuchitrāḥ in I, 174, 7, 'three due-lighted' dawns appear to be referred to. There are other passages in the Rig-Veda² where the dawn is asked not to delay, or tarry long, lest it might be scorched like a thief by the sun (V, 79, 9); and in II, 5, 6, the steeds of the dawn are said to be 'slow' (aja-asaḥ), showing that the people were sometimes tired to see the dawn lingering long on the horizon. But a still more remarkable statement is found in I, 113, 13, where the poet distinctly asserts,³ "the Goddess Uṣhas dawned continually or perpetually (shasvat) in former days (purā);" and the adjective shashvat-tamā (the most lasting) is applied to the dawn in I, 118, 11. Again the very existence and use of two such words as uṣhas and vi-uṣhṭi is, by itself, a proof of the long duration of the dawn; for, if the dawn was brief, there was no practical necessity of speaking of the full-blown state (vi+uṣhṭi) of the dawn as has been done several times in the Rig-Veda. The expression, uṣhasaḥ vi-uṣhṭau, occurs very often in the Rig-Veda, and it has been translated by the phrase, "on the flashing forth of the dawn." But no one seems to have raised the question why two separate words, one of which is derived from the other simply by prefixing the preposition vi, should be used in this connection. Words are made to denote ideas, and if uṣhas and vi-uṣhṭi were not required to denote two distinct phenomena, no one, especially in those early days, would have cared to use a phrase, which, for all ordinary purposes, was superfluously cumbrous. But these facts, howsoever suggestive, may not be regarded as conclusive, and we shall, therefore, now turn to the more explicit passages in the hymns regarding the duration of the Vedic dawn.