changing.
6. Here she shows herself, the very first of many.
9. Let these new morning dawns now, as before
Wealth and good days will shine upon us.» (RVI.124).
Turning to the goddess Dawn, the ancient Rigveda hymn singers constantly emphasized those new continuous dawns had come, foreshadowing the coming of the sun. Anthems read:»
I. When the morning light comes on…
6. We have reached the other side of this darkness.» (RVI.184).
They chant «All mornings, when continuous dawns were lit» (PB. I.171), and they say:
«In truth, it has been many days,
During which until sunrise
You, oh dawn, were visible to us!
Many dawns did not enlighten to the end.
Oh, give, Varuna, we shall dawn to the light of day.»
Here, the singer of the ancient Aryan anthem turns to the powerful lord of the heavenly ocean, the keeper of cosmic law and truth on earth God Varuna with a request to help survive the long thirty-day dawn and survive until the day. He is asking:
«Oh give us a long, dark night,
See your end, oh night!»
It is interesting that in the Vedas and in the Avesta, memories of the polar night, which lasts no more than 100 days a year, have been preserved. So in the Indian service there is a rite of reinforcing the warrior god and thunder Indra with the ritual drunken drink «Soma» during his struggle to free the sun from captivity, which lasts one hundred days. In the Avesta, priests also reinforce the warrior-god, the liberator of the sun, one hundred nights; it must be shown that the legend of the struggle to free the sun from long captivity, the idea of which could be inspired only by a polar night, is one of the leading Vedic mythologies.
So about Indra it is said that he «gave birth to the sun, the sky, the morning dawn» (R.V.I.32); «revealed darkness with the morning dawn, the sun» (R.V.I.62); «revealed the luminary for the aria» (R.V.II.11); made so that «the earth became visible to the sky» (R.V.II.12); he «stretched out the light through both worlds! He overthrew the darkness.» (P.V.II.17); «found in the darkness a great luminary» (R.V. II.31).
Indra is called the «invader of the sun that begets days» (R.V. II.34), it is said that he «lit the morning dawn, the sun lit, wishing» (R.V. II.44), thanks to him «through the blind, wild darkness became visible» (R.V. IV.16).
And since the end of winter comes with the end of the polar night, the snow melts, all nature comes to life, the rivers that have dropped ice make noise, Indra is the liberator of the sun, also called the «liberator of waters», and that with the liberation of the sun, with its return to heaven water is liberated, many hymns of the Rigveda and Avesta say. So, for example, it is alleged that «Iidra with the help of light took water out of the darkness,» «water flowed by his will» (R.V. I.33), he killed a snake, the waters protected by which «stood constrained,» he did «swollen rivers» (R.V.I, 32; II. II). One of the hymns dedicated to Indra says:
«4. When through the songs the sun was found, beautiful in appearance, When they lit a great light early in the morning, the most courageous, in an effort to help husbands did,
What through the blind wild darkness it became possible to see.
7. He broke Vritra, which closed the water.
Earth, unanimous, supported your club.
So set in motion the streams directed to the sea. (R.V.V.16.693)».
Northern Lights
In the most ancient Indian traditions, which B. Tilak and E. Jelacic paid attention to, there is a very vivid description of the aurora, which strikes with its realism and amazing accuracy. In one case, these are the sages (rishis) of Ekat, Dvat, Trita (First, Second, Third), who, in order to contemplate the Supreme Deity, go to the north of the Milk Sea, where there is a radiant Shvetadvipa (White Island) and there they «penetrate into the millennial, eternal god.» But they do not see him, because they were blinded by his radiance «similar to thousands of simultaneously flaming suns.» Blinded by this spectacle, the rishis heard spilling sounds.
In another, the Rishis of Narada (we note that the highest peak of the Subpolar Urals is called Naryad) also reached the great White Island and called on God, which appeared to him «visible in the universal sawn-off shotgun… as if like a month spiritually pure, and at the same time, as it were, quite different from a month, and as if refractory, and shine as if mentally flashing stars: like a rainbow of a wing of a parrot and as if crystal sparkling; like a blue-black smear, and like gold piles; the colors of the coral branch then, like a white gleam; here is golden-eyed, there is similar to beryl; like a blue sapphire, in places similar to smaragd; there are the colors of the peacock’s neck, in places similar to a pearl thread. So the eternal, holy, hundred-headed, thousand-headed, thousand-footed, thousand-headed, thousand-bellied, thousand-armed took so many different colors and images, and invisible in places,» and the space around rang.
For comparison, it makes sense to give a description of the aurora made in 1856—57 by the famous ethnographer S. V. Maximov: «was riveted to a wonderful, unprecedented spectacle, now opening from a dark cloud. It instantly burst and instantly shone with dazzling colors, a whole sea of flowers that poured from one to another and, as if sparks streamed endlessly from above, sparks from below, from the sides… Here it will pour over the whole roundabout with azure, green, purple, all the colors of a beautiful rainbow, here will play topazes, yachts, emeralds… You can’t understand anything, you can’t figure anything out for one whole impression – everything gets in the way and gets confused. Ripples in the eyes and it hurt. Let your eyes rest on the side, but there they meet the former darkness, framing a wonderful, unprecedented sight. Turns again to him, but already there appeared new species. As if a huge, omnipotent forge was launched: and you just do not see workers, you do not hear hammers beyond range, myopia.
You see one huge bugle, sparks running in it and all this burns with such a bright light that you hardly have to see in another of the wonderful spectacles of a wonderful nature, except for the northern lights, live at least thirty, fifty years. So I thought at that time and involuntarily went to memory unconsciously learned in childhood, now with a visual comparison, the striking poems of Lomonosov, who was familiar with the beauty of the phenomena of the polar sky in early youth:
«His face hides the day,
Fields covered dark night
A black shadow ascended the mountains,
The rays bent away from us
An abyss has opened, the stars are full:
There is no number to the stars, the bottom to the abyss.
Dawn is raising from the midnight countries:
Doesn’t the sun put his throne there?
Does not the ice float the sea fire?
This cold flame has covered us
Xie entered into the night upon earth!
Oh you fast sight
Piercing the book of eternal rights,
Say you are so troubled
What a bright night ray will fall:
What is the thin flame in the firmament smashed?
Like lightning without formidable clouds
Seeks from the earth to the zenith?
How can it be that frozen steam
In the middle of winter a fire started?
There argues greasy haze