Note 94 — CHAPTER 6
Reading edition
The horse’s return after a year evidently indicates an astronomical revolution, or the sun’s return to the same point in the ecliptic. This return from his southern declination must have been always a day of rejoicing to the Scythic and Scandinavian nations, who could not, says Gibbon, fancy a worse hell than a large abode open to the cold wind of the north. To the south they looked for the deity; and hence, with the Rajputs, a religious law forbids their doors being to the north.