The Vedic fathers of geology

64 Tune Vepic Fatuers Or Geonoey.

Rig- Veda, the pre-eminently oldest! of them all, affords ample testimony in regard to the facts alleged.

For, the Rishis of the Rig-Vedic period speak of the ever-lasting Dawns, long days, long nights, and even of six monthly day and six ‘monthly night of the year, as if they had personally observed these phenomena and witnessed the neidents as they had occurred. We, shall, therefore, examine and analysea few of them, for arriving at the right conclusion. In the Rig-Veda ( V. 79.9), the Dawn ( gfateat ) is asked not to

1 In regard to this, Professor Max Maller says that, ‘The principal charm of Vedic antiquities’ is “its independent originality”, (Rig-Veda. vol. IV. p. XXXVIII, 1862), and declares that the Rig-Vedas are “The spring-heads of the thought, of the language, and of the Poetry of India, which rise from depths inaccessible to foreign tributaries, and whose earliest course we may follow step by step in the literature of the Brahmanas with greater accuracy than is the case in the early history of any other nation.

(Rig-Veda. vel. IV. p. LX XT).

He also gives emphatic expression to the tho) ght that “The Rig-Veda is the most ancient-book of the A’ryan world’, and “the sacred hymns of the Brahmans stand unparalleled in the literature of the whole world, and their preservation might well be called miraculous,”’

( Rig-Veda. vol. IV. p. LXXX).