This intensified activity of the sun caused effects on the earth which might have been described by modern man as remarkable, but to his earlier ancestor as supernatural or divine. From the viewpoint of this simple hypothesis the records of ancient religions have been studied by this author to see if there is any confirmation of this idea. In pursuit of these speculations the oldest Aryan book, the Rig Veda, is investigated here. For the Hindu religion the Rig Veda compares to the Old Testament of the Bible. Even more the hymns of the Rig Veda are like the book of Psalms expanded to a size as large as the whole Bible.
An amazing picture of the ancient world presents itself if we examine this text with our viewpoint. One finds himself searching out the details of the hymns rather than dismissing them as nonsense. The Rig Veda gives such a confirmation of the hypothesis above that one needs to do little more than arrange in order the hymns that need to be quoted to give the reader a new understanding of the ancients.
It was truly a different world on which the sun rose in those ancient times. Dawn herself was important to the ancients; a large number of hymns are addressed to the Goddess Dawn who is also named Usas and Morning in the English text .The word translated "dawn" into English meant something different to the ancient Hindu than the word "dawn" does to us however; for according to our hypothesis and to our text, the sun appeared much differently when it arose in earlier days. Having had so much mass ejected in solar flare-like phenomena, the solar system was filled with a dust which settled in a flat disk shape in the ecliptic plane of the circling planets. A remainder and a reminder of this dust is visible today in the zodiacal light.
At the time just before the rising sun, a faint glow of light shines today from just above the eastern horizon at the position where the sun will soon come up. Though hardly noticeable today, in earlier times this glow of zodiacal light extended upward in a narrow band through the constellations of the zodiac forming an arc in the night sky which dimmed at points farthermost from the sun. This band of light was the disk of zodiacal dust viewed from the edge. The ancients, then saw their Dawn as a rather narrow shaft of light that steadily rose upwards from the horizon before sunrise. Though no time limits are given in the Vedas, it must have often taken hours for this shaft of light to continue its climb before the sun appeared. This pathway of reflected light would be visible rising upward and then bending southward of the zenith at its maximum length before the sun rise hid the night sky from view. It was composed of a white light except near the sun where it was red. It was spectacular as the verses quoted in this chapter intend to show.
First, let us choose a couple simple verses that suggest the Dawn was rising like a shaft of light. This idea will be supported in the hymns throughout this chapter. "Heaven's daughter" is the reddish colored part of the zodiacal light nearer the sun in the following.
2) Eastward is seen the Banner of the Morning, the Banner born to give Heaven's Daughter glory. (7LXVII)One might say that describing the dawn as rising like a banner was the customary manner of poetically describing the first light of day. Like all customs, however, there must have been a reason at one time for their existence. In fact even before the hymnist had chosen a banner to characterize the Dawn, someone earlier yet must have chosen just this shape to be produced and displayed in order to imitate what he saw in the sky.
2) Eastward the flag of Dawn hath been uplifted,...(7LXXVI)
The above verses are not expected to confirm our hypothesis, but they do favor it. This will be true of most all the verses taken alone. The reader will always need to reserve his judgement expecting more information to be given to narrow the possibilities down to a particular picture. Rather than ask if a verse confirms a viewpoint, one should ask if it is consistent with a viewpoint.
From Chapter 2: Sacrifice
A recent abstract from an article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics reads:
Correlative evidence accumulating since 1926 suggests that there must be some physical coupling mechanism between solar activity and thun-derstorm occurrence in middle latitudes. Such a link may be provided by alteration of atmospheric electric parameters through the influence of cosmic ray decreases and\or high energy solar protons associated with active solar events. Galactic cosmic ray decreases tend to enhance the electric field at low heights.Instead of only protons hitting our upper atmosphere from our sun as mentioned above, we might expect other elements as well settling down to the earth's surface in ancient times in order to compose the heavenly Dew or ambrosia of the gods. We might guess the electric fields on the earth had increased in magnitude.
What all this leads to can be surmised when reading the Rig Veda. The atmosphere was such that it occasionally produced what we call St. Elmo's fire today. This phenomenon of electricity occurs when the atmospheric electric fields are enhanced over a broad area. Before taking passages from the Rig Veda about this, let us read about a few rare cases of St. Elmo's fire described by people today who have experienced this phenomenon....
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