The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.29

c8.29

To the commentators the verse is a perfect puzzle. Thus Sâyaṇa does not understand how the word ‘days’ (*ahâni*) can be applied to a period of time anterior to sunrise; for, says he, “The word day (*ahah*) is used only to denote such a period of time as is invested with the light of the Dawn.”¹ Then, again, he is obviously at a loss to understand how a number of days can be said to have elapsed between the first beams of the dawn and sunrise. These were serious difficulties for Sâyaṇa, and the only way to get over them was to force an unnatural sense upon the words, and make them yield some intelligible meaning. This was no difficult task for Sâyaṇa. The word *ahâni*, which means ‘days,’ was the only stumbling block in his way, and instead of taking it in the sense in which it is ordinarily used, without exception, everywhere in the Ṛig-Veda, he went back to its root-meaning, and interpreted it as equivalent to ‘light’ or ‘splendour.’ *Ahan* is derived from the root *ah* (or philologically *dah*), ‘to burn,’ or ‘shine,’ and *Ahunâ* meaning ‘dawn’ is derived from the same root. Etynologically *aháni* may, therefore, mean splendours; but the question is whether it is so used anywhere, and why we should here give up the ordinary meaning of the word. Sâyaṇa's answer is given above. It is because the word 'day' (*ahan*) can, according to him, be applied only to a period after sunrise and before sunset. But this reasoning is not sound, because in the Ṛig-Veda, VI, 9, 1, *ahaḥ* is applied to the dark as well as to the bright period of time, for the verse says, "There is a dark day (*ahaḥ*)" and a bright day (*ahaḥ*)." This shows that the Vedic poets were in the habit of using the word *ahaḥ* (day) to denote a period of time devoid of the light of the sun.¹ Sâyaṇa knew this, and in his commentary on I, 185, 9, he expressly says that the word *ahaḥ* may include night. His real difficulty was different, *viz.*, the impossibility of supposing that a period of several days could have elapsed between the first appearance of light and sunrise, and this difficulty seems to have been experienced even by Western scholars. Thus Prof. Ludwig materially adopts Sâyaṇa's view and interprets the verse to mean that the splendours of the dawn were numerous, and that they appear either before sunrise, or, if *prâchînam* be differently interpreted, 'in the east' at the rising of the sun. Roth and Grassmann seem to interpret *prâchînam* in the same way. Griffith translates *aháni* by 'mornings' and *prâchînam* by 'aforetime.' His rendering of the verse runs thus:—"Great is, in truth, the number of the mornings, which were aforetime at the sun's uprising; since thou, O Dawn, hast been beheld repairing as to thy love, as one no more to leave him." But Griffith does not explain what he understands by the expression, “a number of mornings which were aforetime at the sun’s uprising.”