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DECEMBER, 1895.)
DATE OF THE EARLIEST VEDIO PERIOD.
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further on? And are we to suppose that the couple move and start their new life in the rains ? That is certainly the least auspicious time for such an undertaking, and no safe model for the earthly weddings of which it is supposed to be the prototype. On all accounts, there is here no foundation on which to build important conclusions.
Nor shall we be able to find anything more solid in Prof. Jacobi's next plea, which is derived from the proscriptions of the Grihya-satras as to the time when a Vedic student is to be received by his teacher, and to commence study. Sankhiyana sets this at the season when the plants appear: that is to say, at the beginning of the rains; and it is pointed out that the Buddnists also fix their season of study and preaching in the same part of the year. But Pâraskara puts the initiation of the student at the full moon of the month Srâvana, which ('Sravaņa being B, a, y Aquila) would have been first month of the rains in the second millennium before Christ; while Gobhila sets it, alternatively, in the month Bhadrapada, which would have occupied the same position more than two thousand years earlier, or when the vernal equinox was at Orion. The author further points out that the Ramayana (a comparatively very late authority) designates Bhadrapada as the month for devoting one's self to sacred study; and that the Jains (whom one would think likely to be quite independent of Brahmanic tradition) do the same. The reason for fixing on this particular season Prof. Jacobi takes to be the fact that "the rainy months, during which all out-of-doors occupation ceases, are the natural time of study;" and then he makes the momentous assumption that the designations of Sråvaņa and Bhadrapada can be due only to traditions from older periods, when those months began the rainy season respectively. On this point cautious critics will be little likely to agree with him. If the systematic study (memorization) of Vedic lore began as early as 4000 B. C, and could be carried on only in-doors, and so was attached closely to the in-doors rainy season, we should expect to find it attached throughout to the season, and not to the month, and especially in the case of the Jains : that these also abandoned the rains is one indication that the consideration was never a constraining one. And the orthodox Vedio student did not go to school for a limited time in each year, but for a series of years of uninterrupted labour; and on what date the beginning should be made was a matter of indifference, to be variously determined, according to the snggestions of locality and climate, or other convenience or to the caprice of schools, which might seek after something distinctive. I cannot possibly attribute thu smallest value to this part of our author's argumentation,
Weare next referred by him to the connection established by several of the Brahmaņas between the Phalguni's (,, etc., Leonis) and the beginning and end of the year. The Taittirya-Sarkkitá (vii. 4, 8) and the Panchavissa-Brákinara (v. 9, 8) say simply that “the full-moon in Phalguni is the mouth (mukha, i. e., beginning ') of the year;" this would imply a position of the sun near the western of the two Bhadrapada's (a Pegasi, etc.), and determine the Phålguna month, beginning 14 days earlier, as first month. The Kushitaki- Bráhmana (v. 1) makes an almost identical statement, but adds to it the following : "the latter (eastern) Phalgu's are the month, the former (western) are the tail :" and the Taittiriya-Bráhmana (i. 6, 2) virtually comments on this, saying that "the former Phalgunt's are the last night of the year, and the latter Phalguni's are the first night of the year." The SatapathaBrahmaņa (vi. 2, 2, 18) puts it still a little differently:"the full moon of Phalguni is the first night of the year - namely, the latter one; the former one is the last [night]." All this, it seems, can only mean that, of two successive (nearly) full-moon nights in Phalguni, the former, when the moon is nearer the former Phalguni, is the last night of one year, and the other the first night of the next year; and the only conclusion to be properly drawn from it is that the full-moon of the month Phålguna divides the two years. But Prof. Jacobi, by a procedure which is to me quite unaccountable, takes the two parts of the statement as if they were two separate and independent statements, inferring from the one that Phalgana was recognized by the Brahmaņas as a first month, and from the other that the summer solstice was determined by them to lie between the former and latter Phalguni's - as if the sun in the Phalguni's entered
