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

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months and then growing old was about to die or reach the ocean, to
which the waters were speeding. In other words, this means that the
sun, who was borne on waters for ten months, was about to go into
the lower watery regions as explained in the chapter VI. But to
proceed with the subject in hand, the idea of the cosmic circulation of
aerial waters, is not confined to the Indian, the Iranian or the Greek
mythology. In the Egyptian mythology, Nut, the goddess of the sky, is
sometimes “represented by a figure in which the band of stars is
accompanied by a band of water”; and Sir Norman Lockyer tells us
that “not only the Sun-gods, but the stars, were also supposed to
travel in boats across the firmament from one horizon to the other.”*
The Jewish idea of the firmament in the midst of waters, the waters
above being after wards separated from the waters below the
firmament, is already referred to above. There is, therefore, nothing
strange or surprising if we find in the Vedas and in the Avesta more
or less clear references to the circulation of aerial waters through the
upper and the lower celestial hemispheres of the universe. It is an
idea which is found in the ancient mythology of every other nation,
and nothing but false prejudice can deter us from interpreting the
simultaneous movements or the liberation of waters and light,
described in the Vedic hymns, on the theory of the cosmic circulation
of aerial waters.
But even after accepting the theory of the cosmic circulation of
celestial waters and the simultaneous release of waters and dawn, it
may be asked how the Arctic theory comes in, or is in any way
required, to explain the Vṛitra legend. We may admit that the waters
imprisoned by Vṛitra by shutting up the passages through the rocky
walls that surround them, may be taken to mean the celestial waters
in the world below the three earths; but still, the struggle between
Indra and Vṛitra may, for aught we know, represent the daily fight
between light and darkness, and it may be
* See Lockyer’s Dawn of Astronomy, p. 35.