The Arctic Home in the Vedas c9.26

c9.26

We have seen that days and nights are represented by two distinct typical couples in the Rig-Veda Ushâsâ-naktâ and Ahanî; and that if the distinction is not unmeaning we must take this to be the description of the days and nights within the Arctic Circle. Whether *Ahanî* means a couple of Day and Night distinct from *Ushâsâ-naktâ* in every place where the word occurs, it is difficult to say. But that in some places, at least, it denotes a peculiar couple of the Day and Night, not included in, and different from, *Ushâsâ-naktâ* is evident from IV, 55, 3. Now if *Ahanî* really means the couple of the long day and the long night, as distinguished from the ordinary days and nights, there is another way in which these two couples can be differentiated from each other. The ordinary days and nights follow each other closely, the day is succeeded by the night and the night by the day; and the two members of the couple, representing these days and nights, can not be described as separated from each other. But the long night and the long day, though of equal duration, do not follow each other in close succession. The long night occurs about the time when the sun is at the winter solstice, and the long day when he is at the summer solstice; and these two solstitial points are separated by 180°, being opposite to each other in the ecliptic. This character of *Ahanî* seems to have been traditionally known in the time of the *Âranyakas*. Thus the Taittirîya *Âranyaka*, I, 2, 3, in discussing the personified Year,¹ first says that the Year has one head, and two different mouths, and then remarks that all this is ‘season-characteristic’, which the commentator explains by stating that the Year-God is said to have two mouths because it has two *Ayanas*, the northern and the southern, which include the seasons. But the statement important for our purpose is the one which follows next. The *Âranyaka* continues “To the right and the left side of the Year-God (are) the bright and the dark (days); and the following verse refers to it:—‘Thy one (form) is bright, thy another sacrificial (dark), two Ahans of different forms, thou art like Dyau. Thou, O self-dependent! protectest all magic powers, O Pûshan! let thy bounty be here auspicious."¹ The verse, or the Mantra, here referred to is Rig. VI, 58, 1. Pûshan is there compared to Dyau and is said to have two forms, dark and bright, like the Ahanî. These dark and bright forms of Ahanî are said to constitute the right and the left side of the Year-God, that is, the two opposite parts of the body of the personified year. In other words the passage clearly states that the dark and the bright part of Ahanî, do not follow each other closely, but are situated on the diametrically opposite sides of the year. This can only be the case if the couple of Day and Night, represented by Ahanî, be taken to denote the long night and the long day in the Arctic regions. There the long night is matched by the long day, and while the one occurs when the sun is at the winter-solstice, the other occurs when he is at the summer-solstice. The two parts of Ahanî are, therefore, very correctly represented as forming the right and the left side of the Year-God in the Âranyaka, and the passage thus materially supports the view about the nature of Ahanî mentioned above.