The Arctic Home in the Vedas c9.35.1

c9.35.1

I shall close this chapter with a short discussion of another Circum-Polar characteristic, I mean the southern course of the sun. It is previously stated, that the sun can never appear over-head at any station in the temperate or the frigid zone, and that an observer stationed within these zones in the northern hemisphere will see the sun to his right hand or towards the south, while at the North Pole the sun will seem to rise from the south. Now the word dakshina in Vedic Sanskrit denotes both the ‘right hand’ and the ‘south,’ as it does in other Aryan languages; for, as observed by Prof. Sayce, these people had to face the rising sun with their right hands to the south, in addressing their gods, and hence “Sanskrit dakshina, Welsh dehau and Old Irish des all mean at once ‘right hand’ and ‘south.’”¹ With this explanation before us, we can now understand how in a number of passages in the Rig-Veda Western scholars translate dakshina by ‘right side,’ where Indian scholars take the word to mean ‘the southern direction.’ There is a third meaning of dakshinâ, viz., ‘largess’ or ‘guerdon,’ and in some places the claims of rich largesses seem to have been pushed too far. Thus when the suns are said to be only for dakshinâvats in I, 125, 6, it looks very probable that originally the expression had some reference to the southern direction rather than to the gifts given at sacrifices.