The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.43

Language: English

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But to proceed with the subject, it may be urged that it is only the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ that gives us the number of the dawns, and that it would not be proper to mix up these statements with the statements contained in the hymns of the Ṛig-Veda, and draw a conclusion from both taken together. The Taittirîya Saṃhitâ treats of sacrificial tes, and the Mantras relating to the dawn-bricks may not be regarded as being originally connected. The fact that only some of these are found in the Atharva-Veda Samhita, might lend some support to this view. But a critical study of the Anuvâka, will remove all these doubts. The ‘thirty sisters’ are not mentioned one by one, leaving it to the hearer, or the reader, to make up the total, and ascertain the final number for himself. The sixth verse in the Anuvâka expressly mentions ‘the thirty sisters’, and is, by itself, sufficient to prove that in ancient days the number of dawns was considered to be thirty. But if an authority from the Rig-Veda be still needed, we have it in VI, 59, 6, where Dawn is described as having traversed ‘thirty steps’ (trimshat padâni akramît).¹ This statement has, as yet, remained unexplained. ‘A single dawn traversing thirty steps’ is but a paraphrase of the statement that ‘dawns are thirty sisters, keeping to the same goal in their circuits.’ Another verse which has not yet been satisfactorily explained is the Rig-Veda, I, 123, 8.

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It says “The dawns, alike to-day and alike to-morrow, dwell long in the abode of Varuna. Blameless, they forth-with go round (pari yanti) thirty yojanas; each its destined course (kratum).”² The first half of the verse presents no difficulty. In the second we are told that the dawns go round thirty yojanas, each following its own ‘plan,’ which is the meaning of kratu, according to the Petersberg Lexicon. But the phrase ‘thirty yojanas’ has not been as yet satisfactorily explained. Griffith following M. Bergaigne understands it to mean thirty regions or spaces, indicating the whole universe; but there is no authority for this meaning. Sâyaṇa, whom Wilson follows, gives an elaborate astronomical explanation. He says that the sun's rays precede his rising and are visible when the sun is below the horizon by thirty yojanas, or, in other words, the dawn is in advance of the sun by that distance. When dawns are, therefore, said to traverse thirty yojanas, Sâyaṇa understands by it the astronomical phenomenon of the dawn illumining a space of thirty yojanas in advance of the sun, and, that when the dawn, at one place, is over, it is to be found in another place, occupying a space of thirty yojanas in that place. The explanation is very ingenious; and Sâyaṇa also adds that the dawns are spoken of in the plural number in the verse under consideration, because the dawns at different places on the surface of the earth, brought on by the daily motion of the sun, are intended.

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But unfortunately the explanation cannot stand scientific scrutiny. Sâyaṇa says that the sun travels 5,059 yojanas round the Meru in 24 hours; and as Meru means the earth and the circumference of the earth is now known to be about 24,877 miles, a yojana would be about 4.9, or in round number, about 5 miles. Thirty such yojanas will, therefore, be 150 miles; while the first beams of the dawn greet us on the horizon when the sun is not less than 16° below the horizon. Taking one degree equal to 60 miles, 16° would mean 960 miles, a distance far in excess of the thirty yojanas of Sâyaṇa. Another objection to Sâyaṇa's explanation is that the Vedic bard is evidently speaking of a phenomenon present before him, and not mentally following the astronomical dawns at different places produced by the daily rotation of the earth on its axis. The explanation is again inapplicable to ‘thirty steps (padâni)’ of the dawn expressly mentioned in VI, 59, 6. Therefore, the only alternative left is to take the phrases ‘thirty yojanas,’ ‘thirty sisters,’ and ‘thirty steps’ as different versions of one and the same fact, viz., the circuits of the dawn along the Polar horizon. The phrase ‘each its destined course’ also becomes intelligible in this case, for though thirty dawns complete thirty rounds, each may well be described as following its own definite course. The words *pari yanti* in the text literally apply to a circular (*pari*) motion, (cf. the words *pari-ukṣaṇam*, *pari-staraṇam*, &c.);

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and the same term is used in the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ with reference to ‘thirty sisters’. The word *yojana* primarily means ‘a chariot’ (VIII, 72, 6), and then it came to denote ‘a distance to be accomplished without unharnessing the horses’, or what we, in the vernacular, call a ‘*ṭappâ*.’ Now this *ṭappâ*, or ‘the journey to be accomplished without unharnessing the horses’, may be a day’s journey, and Prof. Max Muller has in one place interpreted the word *yojana* in this way.¹ In V, 54, 5, the Maruts are said “to have extended their greatness as far as the sun extends his daily course,” and the word in the original for ‘daily course’ is *yojanam*. Accepting this meaning, we can interpret the expression ‘the dawns forthwith go round (*pari yanti*) thirty yojanas’ to mean that the dawns complete thirty daily rounds as at the North Pole. That circular motion is here intended is further evident from III, 61, 3, which says, in distinct terms, “Wending towards the same goal (*samânam artham*), O Newly-born (Dawn)! turn on like a wheel (*chakram iva â vavṛtsva*).”² Although the word *navyasi* (newly-born) is here in the vocative case, yet the meaning is that the dawn, ever anew or becoming new every day, revolves like a wheel. Now a wheel may either move in a perpendicular plane, like the wheel of a chariot, or in a horizontal plane like the potter's wheel. But the first of these two motions can not be predicated of the dawn anywhere on the surface of the earth.

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The light of the morning is, everywhere, confined to the horizon, as described in the Rig-Veda, VII, 80, 1, which speaks of the dawn as "unrolling the two *rajasî*, which border on each other (*samante*), and revealing all things."¹ No dawn, whether in the frigid, the temperate, or the tropical zone can, therefore, be seen travelling, like the sun, from east to west, over the head of the observer in a perpendicular plane. The only possible wheel-like motion is, therefore, along the horizon, and this can be witnessed only in regions near the Pole. A dawn in the temperate or the tropical zone is visible only for a short time on the eastern horizon, and is swallowed up, in the same place, by the rays of the rising sun. It is only in the Polar regions that we see the morning lights revolving along the horizon for some day-long periods of time, and if the wheel-like motion of the dawn, mentioned in III, 61, 2, has any meaning at all, we must take it to refer to the revolving splendours of the dawn in the Arctic regions previously described. The expressions "reaching the appointed place (*niṣh-kṛitam*) day by day" (I, 123, 9), and "wending ever and ever to the same goal" (III, 61, 3) are also ill-suited to describe the dawn in latitudes below the Arctic circle;

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but if we take these expressions to refer to the Polar dawn they become not only intelligible, but peculiarly appropriate, as such a dawn in its daily circuits must come to the point from which it started every twenty-four hours. All these passages taken together, therefore, point out only to one conclusion, and that is that both the Rig-Veda and the aittirîya Saṃhitâ describe a long and continuous dawn divided into thirty dawn-days, or periods of twenty-four hours each, a characteristic found only in the Polar dawn.