Astronomy and Cosmology

Author(s): L C Jain
Publisher: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharti Sansthan Jaipur

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of stars, although details are not available.92 The sun, the moon and the moving planets have their solstices (ayanas), but the nakgatras and the stars have no laws for solstice:s.93
RELATIVE MOTION OF THE SUN
The motion of the sun is 1830 celestial parts per muhūrta. Thus the full stretch of 54900 parts are described in 30 muhūrtas or 24 hours. This is the mean motion. The ketu, an invisible planet moves along with the sun under it at a depth of four standard fingers below, causing the eclipse at periodic intervals. All the astral bodies are described to move leaving a distance of 1121 yojanas from the celestial axis ( Meru ) so far as the Jambūdvipa is concerned.94
The solar and lunar zodiac ( Cāra kşetra) has an extension of
yojanas.95 Out of this, 180 yojanas are covered in the Jambūdvipa
by the sun and the moon, whereas the remaining stretch lies in the Lavaņa ocean,96 In the Tiloyapannatti, the description of 15 roads of the moon,
92. Cf. T.P., II, 7.896. The miscellaneous stars are of two kinds; moveable
and immoveable. Cf. ibid. 7.494. Cf. also ibid., 7.497. 93. Cf. ibid., 7.498 and 7.499. 94. Cf. T. P., II, 7.201, & T. S., 4.345. 95. Needham and Ling remarks regarding Chinese and Babylonian zodiacs
are important, "Now in these texts there is never mention of any zodiac or of constellations lying along the ecliptic; the earliest documentary evidence of this conception occurs e just after-420. On the other hand, the Seleucid Babylonian cuneiform texts of the —3rd and -2nd centuries give great prominence to the zodiac, and use ecliptic. coordinates exclusively. Finally, the thirty-six Old Babylonian asterisms were confused with the Egyptian decans and twelve of them ousted to make room for the zodiacal constellations. One might fairly surmise, therefore, that the equatorial moon-stations of East Asia originated from Old Babylonian astronomy before the middle of the -- 1st millennium and probably a long time before.” Cf, op. cit., III,
p. 256. 96. Cf. T. S., 4.374.
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