The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.37.3

c8.37.3

The expressions ‘waves of waters,’ or ‘men arrayed’ &c., are again too definite to be explained away as honorific. Sâyaṇa seems to have perceived this difficulty, and has, probably for the same reason, proposed an explanation slightly different from that of Yâska. But, fortunately, Sâyaṇa’s explanation does not solve the difficulty, as the question still remains, why the deities presiding over the dawn should be more than one in number. The only other explanation put forward, so far as I know, is that the plural number refers to the dawns on successive days during the year, as we perceive them in the temperate or the tropical zone. On this theory there would be 360 dawns in a year, each followed by the rising of the sun every day. This explanation may appear plausible at the first sight. But on a closer examination it will be found that the expressions used in the hymns cannot be made to reconcile with this theory. For, if 360 dawns, all separated by intervals of 24 hours, were intended by the plural number used in the Vedic verses, no poet, with any propriety, would speak of them, as he does in I, 92, 1, by using the double pronoun etâḥ and tyâḥ, as if he was pointing out to a physical phenomenon before him; nor can we understand how 360 dawns, spread over the whole year, can be described as advancing like ‘men arrayed’ for battle.