Artic Home of the Aryans by Lokamanya Bal ... - Mandhata Global

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here a distinct allusion either to a hundred sacrifices performed or to
a hundred continuous nights required for securing a complete victory
over the powers of darkness in the nether world, and which nights (or
rather one long night of hundred days) may well be described as
breaking off and bringing back the succession of ordinary days and
nights, inasmuch as the long night immediately follows and precedes
the period of sunshine in the Arctic regions.
But a far more striking corroboration of the above view is
furnished by certain passages in the Avesta which describe the fight
of Tishtrya with the demon of draught called Apa osha or “the burner”
in the Parsi scriptures. In the يig-Veda the fight of Indra with Vṛitra
(Vritra-tûrya) is often represented as “a struggle for waters” (uptûrya),
or as “the striving for cows” (go-ishti), or “the striving for day”
(div-ishti) and Indra is said to have released the cows or waters, and
brought on the dawn or the sun by killing Vṛitra (I, 51, 4; II, 19, 3).
Now India, as Vritra-han, appears as Verethraghna in the Avesta; but
the fight for waters is therein ascribed not to Verethraghna but to
Tishtrya, the star of rain. It is he, who knocks down Apaosha and
liberates the waters for the benefit of man, “with the assistance of the
winds, and the light that dwells in the waters.” In short Tishtrya’s
conquest over Apaosha is an exact parallel of Indra’s conquest over
Vṛitra as described in the يig-Veda; and as the legends are
interpreted at present, they are said to refer to the breaking up of the
clouds and the bringing on of the rains on the earth. Tishtrya being
supposed to be the star of rain. But this theory fails to account for the
fact how the recovery of the dawn and the rising of the sun, or the
bringing on of light, were included amongst the effects of Indra’s
victory over Vṛitra. It will be shown in the next chapter that the
struggle for waters has very little to do with rain, and that the fight for
waters and the fight for light are really synchronous, being two
different versions of the same story. In short, both of these legends
really represent the victory of the powers of light over darkness.
Shushna or “the scorcher”