The Arctic Home in the Vedas c8.s1.39

c8.s1.39

The Two Dawns: Uṣhasā does not here mean Uṣhasā-naktā or ‘Day and Night,’ as supposed by Mr. Griffith, but denotes two dawns, as such, the third, the fourth &c. being mentioned in the following verses. Sāyaṇa says द्वे ह्युषसौ, एका सृष्टिकालिना ‘प्रथमा’ इतिपूर्वमंत्रोक्ता, अपरा प्रतिदिनसंचारिणी, meaning that the first dawn is the dawn which appeared at the beginning of the creation and the second the diurnal one, as we see it. But Sāyaṇa had to abandon this explanation later on. The couple of Dawns obviously includes the first Dawn mentioned in the first verse, which, with its successor, now forms a couple. Since groups of two, three, five or thirty dawns are mentioned as moving together, they cannot be the dawns of consecutive days, that is, separated by sunlight, as with us in the tropical or the temperate zone.