The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.43.5

c8.43.5

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;