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

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found in the Avesta. There Thrâetaona, who bears the patronymic
epithet Âthwya (Sans. Âptya), is described as slaying the fiendish
serpent Azi Dahâka, who is said to be three-mouthed and six-eyed
(Yt. XIX, 36.39; V, 33-34). But what is still more remarkable in the
Avestic legend is that Thrâetaona in his expedition against the demon
is said to have been accompanied by his two brothers who sought to
slay him on the way.* The Avestic legend thus fully corroborates the
story of the Shâtyâyanins quoted by Sâyana and when the two
accounts agree so well we cannot lightly set aside the story in the
Brâhmana, or hold that it was woven out of stray references in the
يig-Veda. But in the absence of the Arctic theory, or the theory of
long darkness extending over nearly four months or a third part of the
year, European Scholars have been at a loss to understand why the
deity should have been named “the Third”; and various ingenious
theories have been started to explain how Trita, which ordinarily
means the third, came to denote the deity that was thrown into a pit
or well in a distant land. Thus Prof. Max Müller thinks that the name
of the deity was originally Tṛita (तृत) and not Trita (िञत) and he derives
the former from root trî (तृ) to cross. Tṛita (तृत) which, by-the-by, is not
a regular grammatical form though found in the Âtharva Veda VI, 113,
I and 3, would thus mean “the sun crossing the ocean,” being in this
respect comparable to tarani which means “the sun” in the later
Sanskrit literature. In short, according to Prof. Max Müller, Tṛita (तृत)
means the “set sun”; and the story of Trita (िञत) is, therefore, only a
different version of the daily struggle between light and darkness. But
Prof. Max Müller’s theory requires us to assume that this
misconception or the corruption of Tṛita (तृत) into Trita (िञत) took place
before the Aryan separation, inasmuch as in Old Irish we have the
word triath which means the sea, and which is phonetically
* See Spiegel, Die Arische Periode, p. 271, quoted by Macdonell in his
Vedic Mythology, § 23. Also compare S. B. E. Series, Vol. XXXIII, p. 222,
note 2.