The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.38.3

c8.38.3

This, joined with the express statement at the end of the *Anuvâka* that in reality it is but one dawn, is sufficient to prove that the thirty dawns mentioned in the *Anuvâka* were continuous and not consecutive. But, if a still more explicit authority be needed it will be found in the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa, II, 5, 6, 5. This is an old Mantra, and not a portion of the explanatory Brâhmaṇa, and is, therefore, as good an authority as any of the verses quoted above. It is addressed to the Dawns and means “These very Dawns are those that first shone forth, the Goddesses make five forms; eternal (shashvatîḥ), (they) are not separated (na avaprijyanti), nor do (they) terminate (na gamanti antam).”¹ The ‘five forms’ here referred to correspond with the division of 30 dawns into 5 groups of 6 each, made in the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ, after the manner of sacrificial ṣaḷ-ahas, or groups of six days; and we are expressly told that the dawns, which make these 5 forms, are continuous, unseparated, or uninterrupted. In the Ṛig-Veda I, 152, 4, the garment of the lover of the dawns (lit. the maidens, kanînâm jâram) is described as ‘inseparable’ and ‘wide’ (an-avapṛigṇa and vitata), and reading this in the light of the aforesaid Mantra from the Taittirîya Brâhmaṇa we are led to conclude that in the Ṛig-Veda itself the dawny garment of the sun, or the garment, which the dawns, as mothers, weave for him (cf.