Indian Antiquary Vol 41

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 52

48
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1912.
Whether or not the meaning of the first two paragraphs of the Krishna-Yajurvéda is, as I have presumed it to be, this much is certain, that the Vedic poets were quite familiar with various kinds of years and knew how to adjust them with each other, and that the detailed description of calendars given in the Sûtras is but a copy of Vedic calendars and not a later invention.
II. The Calendar.
Having thus proved the existence of a calendar during the Vedic times, I may now proceed to frame that calendar and its various forms out of the materials scattered here and there in the Sutras and Brahmanas. The general name by which the various forms of the Vedic calendar were known seems to have been Gavâm-Ayana. It is only one of many forms of the Vedic calendar that I attempted to explain in my essay entitled Garam-Ayana,' the Vedic Era, published in 1908. Therein I have pointed out: (1) that the word go, cow,' means the intercalary day, ie, that day which is the product of the four quarter-days at the end of four successive solar years, each of 365 days; (2) that the term Gavâm-Ayana or "Cows' Walk" means a series of such intercalary days, on each of which the Vedic poets regularly performed cyclic sacrifices; and (3) that in the Mahad-Uktha or Great Litany of Rigvêdic hymns they kept a record of 460 or 465 intercalated days as having clapsed.
As the evidence I adduced in support of this theory is of an indirect and hypothetical nature, scholars have hesitated to accept it, and have opined that the passages which I explained in the light of this theory could bear other and perhaps more rational interpretations, and that my theory was rather an ingenious contrivance than a discovery of the real design of the Vedic poets. Probably no theory that is not based upon direct evidence is ever accepted; mfne can be no exception, and would share the fate of other theories if, like them, it had no direct evidence to support it. But the Nidana-Sutra of the Sama-réda seems to supply the want. From this Sûtra we learn. that Gavam-Ayana is a name given to the year which contained some intercalated days inserted either in its middle or at its close. It appears that the number of days intercalated differed with different schools of Vedic astronomers, and depended upon the difference between any two kinds of years selected for adjustment with each other. The school which had adopted the synodic lunar year of 354 days and the sidereal solar year of 366 days seems to have added to every lunar year a Dvâdaśâha or period of twelve days, during which they performed a sacrifice with recitation of a Sâma-chant of twelve verses on the last day. With the school which had adopted the sidereal lunar year of 351 days, i.e., the year of thirteen months of 27 days each, and adjusted it with the Savana year of 360 days, the number of days added was nine. Those who had adopted the Savana year of 360 days and adjusted it with the solar year of 365 days, seem to have been adding 21 days to every fourth Sâvana year. In this way there seems to have been during the Vedic period a variety of different astronomical schools, whose chief religions function was the performance of a grand sacrifice during each period of their respective intercalary days. A regular account of the 'cows' or intercalary days which each school counted and observed is found preserved under the general title of Gavam-Ayana, "the walk of cows or intercalary days." The term Gavâm-Ayana seems to have been originally intended to be a name of only to intercalary days; but in the course of time it appears to have also been used to signify that year which contained intercalary days added to it, no matter whether the number of days so added, or counted as having been added, amounted to a year or more than a year. These and other important points connected with the Vedic calendar are clearly explained both in the Nidana-Sútra and in the Srauta-Sutra of Lâtyâyana; and it is a matter for regret that, important as these works are for elucidating the much-vexed question of Vedic chronology, they have so long escaped the notice of oriental scholars. It is true that the Sutras in general abound in elliptical and technical obscurities which sometimes render their meaning uncertain and vague; still, so far as their main idea or purport is concerned, they leave us in no doubt whatever.