The Arctic Home in the Vedas c9.3

c9.3

And first regarding the long night,—a night of several days' duration, such as makes the northern latitudes too cold or uncomfortable for human habitation at present, but which, in inter-glacial times, appeared to have caused no further inconvenience than what might result from darkness, long and continuous darkness for a number of days, though, by itself, it was not a desirable state of things, and the end of which must have been eagerly looked for by men who had to undergo such experience. There are many passages in the Rig-Veda that speak of long and ghastly darkness, in one form or another, which sheltered the enemies of Indra, and to destroy which Indra had to fight with the demons or the Dāsas, whose strongholds are all said to be concealed in this darkness. Thus in I, 32, 10, Vritra, the traditional enemy of Indra, is said to be engulfed in long darkness (*dīrgham tamaḥ āshayad Indra-shatruḥ*), and in V, 32, 5, Indra is described as having placed Shushṇa, who was anxious to fight, in ‘the darkness of the pit’ (*tamasi harmye*), while the next verse speaks of *sūrye tamasi* (lit. sunless darkness), which Max Muller renders by ‘ghastly darkness.’¹ In spite of these passages the fight between Vritra and Indra is considered to be a daily and not a yearly struggle, a theory the validity of which will be examined when we come to the discussion of Vedic myths. For the present it is sufficient to note that the above expressions lose all their propriety, if the darkness, in which the various enemies of Indra are said to have flourished, be taken to be the ordinary darkness of twelve, or, at best, of twenty-four hours’ duration. It was, in reality, a long and a ghastly or sunless darkness, which taxed all the powers of Indra and his associate Gods to overcome.