The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.37.4

c8.37.4

It is again absurd to describe the 360 dawns of the year as being collected in the ‘same enclosure’ and ‘not striving against or quarrelling with each other.’ We are thus forced to the conclusion that the Rig-Veda speaks of a team, or a group of dawns, unbroken or uninterrupted by sunlight, so that, if we be so minded, we can regard them as constituting a single long continuous dawn. This is in perfect accord with the statement discussed above, viz., that many days passed between the first appearance of light on the horizon and the uprising of the sun (VII, 76, 3). We cannot, therefore, accept the explanation of consecutive dawns, nor that of Yâska, nor of Sâyaṇa regarding the use of the plural number in this case. The fact is that the Vedic dawn represents one long physical phenomenon which can be spoken of in plural by supposing it to be split up into smaller day-long portions. It is thus that we find Uṣas addressed sometimes in the plural, and sometimes in the singular number. There is no other explanation on which we can account for and explain the various descriptions of the dawn found in the different hymns.