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369 DECEMBER, 1895.) DATE OF THE EARLIEST VEDIC PERIOD. -
The sixth chapter, “Orion and his Belt," continues the same argument, and with eridences to which we must take equal exception. Agraháyana and its derivatives are again brought forward for explanation, and its hayana is made out to come probably from ayana, with an indifferent h prefixed (for which various supporting facts are adduced, as hiny and inv) and the vowel lengthened ; and thus agrahāyani is identified with igrayani, the sacrifice of first fruits while the latter is further on identified with the name Orion. The number of the planets is found to be “fixed at nine" (with anticipation, it is to be inferred, of the discovery of Uranus and Neptune), since there are nine grahas or dips' of liquid oblation at the sacrifice (the common name of a planet being also graha). The sacred thread of the Brâh mans comes from Orion's belt as its prototype; and the belt, staff, and antelope's skin of the Brahmanic pupil commencing bis Vedic study go back equally to Orion's trappings. The chapter has no direct bearing upon the main question of the work, and these details are quoted only as illustrating the degree of the author's prepossession in favor of his theory of the immense importance of Orion. And the first part of chapter VII., “Ribhus and Vrishakapi," is of the same character. It is suggested that the means - turiyena brahmana (R.-V. v. 46, 6), by the fourth prayer' which the sage Atri employed successfully in bringing the eclipsed sun back into the sky, was perhaps a quadrant or some similar instrument. Planets are recognized in brihaspati, in óukra and manthin, and in vena, both vena and bukra ( = cypris) being names of Venus - and so on. Then the principal part of the chapter is devoted to the discussion of a couple of obscure legends from the Rig Veda. At i. 161, 13, we read thus: “Having slept, se Ribhus, ye asked : Who, O Agohya, bath awakened us ?! The he-goat declares the dog to be the awakener; in a year thus to-day bave ye looked out (i. e., opened your eyes);" and iv. 33, 7, says that the Ribhus slept twelve days as guests with Agohya. If, now (as has been suggested also by others), the Ribhus are the divinities of the season (which is reconcilable with some of their described attributes, though by no means with all); and if Agohya, lit. "the unconcealable one,' is the son; and if the twelve days of recreation are the twelve that must be added to the lunar year to fill it out to a solar one (one, unfortunately, of 366 days, which neither Vedic tradition nor astronomy sanctions); and if “in a year" (savivatsare) means distinctly at the end of the year' (which might be if the sleep had been of a year's length, but is far less probable, if not impossible, supposing it to have been of twelve days only) - then the dog that roased them (or, at least, was accused of having done so by the hegoat, whom Mr. Tilak this time interprets to be the sun), presumably in order to recommence their duties at the beginning of a new year, may have been Canis Major (although this is nowhere called a dog in Hindu tradition, the Hindus, as we saw above, having lost that feature of the original Indo-European legend); and this would imply the sun's start upon his yearly round from a vernal equinox in the neighbourhood of Orion, at four to five thousand years before Christ. Doubtless it will be generally held that a conclusion depending on so many uncertainties and improbabilities is no conclusion at all. If it were already proved by sound evidence that the Hindus began their year, at the period named, from an observed equinox at that point in the heavens, then the interpretation of the legend offered by our author might be viewed as an ingenious and somewhat plausible one; but such an interpretation of such a legend is far too weak a foundation to build any belief upon.
As for the Vishakapi Hymn (R.-V. x. 86), the use made of it in the chapter seems utterly fanciful and unwarranted. Of all who have attempted to bring sense out of that strange and obscure passage of the Rig Veda, no one is less to be congratulated on bis success than Mr. Tilak. His discussion of it is only to be paralleled with the endeavour to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, and does not in the least call for examination or criticism in detail. Nor need we spend any words upon the final chapter, "Conclusions," in which the theories and suggestions of the work are gathered and presented anew, without added evidences, in their naked implausibility. Our own conclusion must be that the argument is wholly unacceptable, and that nothing has been brought forward, either by him or by Jacobi, that has force to change the hitherto current views of Hindu antiquity.
