The Arctic Home in the Vedas c9.18.2

c9.18.2

and if so, the phrases *viṣurūpe*, *virūpe*, or *nānā vapūṃṣi* used in connection with the couple of Day and Night must be taken to mean something different from ‘bright and dark’, if these expressions are not to be considered as superfluous or tautological. Sāyaṇa interprets these phrases as referring to different colours (*rūpa*), like black, white, &c., and some of the Western scholars seem to have adopted this interpretation. But I cannot see the propriety of assigning different colours to Day and Night. Are we to suppose that we may have sometimes green, violet, yellow or blue days and nights? Again though the word *rūpa* lends itself to this construction, yet *vapūṃṣi* cannot ordinarily be so understood. The question does not, however, seem to have attracted the serious attention of the commentators; so that even Griffith translates *viṣurūpe* by ‘unlike in hue’ in I, 123, 7. The *Naktoṣhāsā* are described as *virūpe* also in I, 113, 3, but there too Sāyaṇa gives the same explanation. It does not appear to have occurred to any one that the point requires any further thought. Happily, in the case of Rig. I, 113, 3, we have, however, the advantage of consulting a commentator older than Sāyaṇa.