The Arctic Home in the Vedas c9.35.3

c9.35.3

Let us take a lesson from this story, and not interpret *dakṣiṇā*, either by ‘right-hand side’ or by ‘largess,’ in every passage in the Rig-Veda. There may not be distinct passages to show that the sun, or the dawn, came from the south. But the very fact that Uṣas is called *Dakṣiṇā* (I, 123, 1; X, 107, 1), and the sun, the son of *Dakṣiṇā* (III, 58, 1), is itself very suggestive, and possibly we have here phrases which the Vedic bards employed because in their days these were old and recognised expressions in the language. Words, like fossils, very often preserve the oldest ideas or facts in a language; and though Vedic poets may have forgotten the original meaning of these phrases, that is no reason why we should refuse to draw from the history of these words such conclusions may legitimately follow from it. The fact that the north is designated by the word *ut-tara*, meaning ‘upper,’ and the south by *adha-ra*, meaning ‘lower,’ also points to the same conclusion; for the north cannot be over-head or ‘upper’ except to an observer at or near the North Pole.