The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.35

c8.35

Literally translated this means "Remove far the debts (sins) incurred by me. May I not, O King ! be affected by others' doings. Verily, many dawns (have) not fully (vi) flashed forth. O Varuṇa ! direct that we may be alive during them."¹ The first part of this verse contains a prayer usually addressed to Gods, and we have nothing to say with respect to it, so far as the subject in hand is concerned. The only expression necessary to be discussed is *bhûyasîḥ uṣhâsaḥ avyuṣṭâḥ* in the third quarter of the verse. The first two words present no difficulty. They mean 'many dawns.' Now *avyuṣṭa* is a negative participle from *vyuṣṭa*, which again is derived from *uṣhṭa* with *vi* prefixed. I have referred to the distinction between *uṣhas* and *vyuṣṭi* suggested by the three-fold or the five-fold division of the dawn. *Vyuṣṭi*, according to the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa, means 'day,' or rather 'the flashing forth of the dawn into sunrise'; and the word *a + vi + uṣhṭa*, therefore, means "not-fully-flashed-forth into sunrise." But Sâyaṇa and others do not seem to have kept in view this distinction between the meanings of *uṣhas* and *vyuṣṭi*; or if they did, they did not know or had not in their mind the phenomenon of the long continuous dawn in the Arctic regions, a dawn, that lasted for several day-long periods of time before the sun's orb appeared on the horizon. The expression, *bhûyasîḥ uṣhâsaḥ avyuṣṭâḥ*, which literally means "many dawns have not dawned, or fully flashed forth," was, therefore, a riddle to these commentators. Every dawn, they saw, was followed by sunrise; and they could not, therefore, understand how ‘many dawns’ could be described as “not-fully-flashed-forth.” An explanation was thus felt to be a necessity, and this was obtained by converting, in sense, the past passive participle vi-uṣṭa into a future participle; and the expression in question was translated as meaning, “during the dawns (or days) that have not yet dawned,” or, in other words, “in days to come.” But the interpretation is on the face of it strained and artificial. If future days were intended, the idea could have been more easily and briefly expressed. The poet is evidently speaking of things present, and, taking vi-uṣṭa to denote what it literally signifies, we can easily and naturally interpret the expression to mean that though many dawns, meaning many day-long portions of time during which the dawn lasted, have passed, yet it is not vyuṣṭa, that is, the sun’s orb has not yet emerged from below the horizon, and that Varuṇa should protect the worshipper under the circumstances.