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

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the three earths as the heaven is above them, must have been
conceived and denoted by the phrase “below the three earths,” and
that the latter expression did not merely mean an interterranean
ground. When we meet with two such phrases as the heaven “above
the three earths,” and the region “below the three earths,” in the يig-
Veda, phrases, which cannot be mistaken or misunderstood, the
hypothesis that the Vedic bards were not acquainted with the nether
world at once falls to the ground.
Mr. Wallis seems to think that since rajas is said to be divided
three-fold, like the earth, and since the highest rajas is mentioned as
the seat of waters, there is no scope in the Vedic division of rajas for
a region beneath the earth; for the three rajas are exhausted by
taking them as the rajas of the earth (pârthivam), the rajas of the sky
(divo rajah) and the highest (paramam) rajas, the seat of waters. But
this objection is quite untenable, inasmuch as six different rajas are
also mentioned in the يig-Veda (I, 164, 6). We can, therefore,
suppose that there were three rajas above the earth and three below
it, and so meet the apparent difficulty pointed out by Wallis. The three
rajas can in some places be also interpreted to mean the earthly
rajas, the one above the earth and the one below it, (X, 82, 4). In I,
35, 2, the Savitṛi is described as moving through the dark rajas
(krishnena rajasâ), and in the next verse we are told that he comes
from the distant (parâvat) region, which shows that the dark rajas and
the parâvat region are synonymous;, and that the sun ascends the
sky after passing through the dark rajas. Again the use of the word
“ascend” (ud-yan or ud-âcharat, I, 163, 1; VII, 55, 7), to describe the
rising of the sun in the morning from the ocean, shows,, by contrast,
that the ocean which the sun is said to enter at the time of setting (X,
114, 4) is really an ocean underneath the earth. In I, 117, 5, the sun is
described as sleeping in “the lap of Nir-riti,” and “dwelling in dark
ness”; while in 1, 164, 32 and 33, the sun is said to have traveled in
the interior of heaven and earth and finally gone into Nir-riti, or as
Prof. Max Müller renders it, “the exodus