Indian Antiquary Vol 41

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

Page 87

APRIL, 1912.)
THE VEDIC CALENDAR
83
It should be noted how the periods of 12, 86, 100, and 1000 years are connected with Prajapati, the Saktyas, the Sadhyas, and the Visvassiks, respectively. If the above four passages had been meant to be mere formulæ rather than traditional statements of the actual practice of Prajapati and the three priestly schools, then there would bave been no necessity to mention them. There is no reason why the author of the Tandyamahdbrahmana should go so far as to connect : formula, if it was a mere formula at all, with the Sadhyas, whom he has clearly described as a school of ancient priests. It follows therefore, that the periods of 12, 36, 100, and 1000 years are years of the Vedic era, actually counted by Prajapati and the three successive priestly schools in terms of the number of times they intercalated twenty-one days or cows." It is thus clear that the Vedic poets were quite familiar with the true olar year of 3654 days and were adjusting the savaba year to it by adding 21 days once in every four years, and that they kept an account of the number of intercalations, calling it the Gavâm-Ayana or “Cows' Walk." If there is still any doubt as to the precise significance of the term Gavam-Ayana, it will be removed by the evidence which I may perhaps set forth in a subsequent article on the Vedic era and chronology.
III-The Ayanas or Sattras. The word Ayana literally means "going, movement'; and when combined with such words as qaram, of cows', and jyotishdm, of lights', it means the movement of cows' and the movement of the heavenly) lights'. We have already seen how the Vedic poets used to call the first day of their Shadana or six-days' period by the name jyotis, light', and the second day by the name go, cow'. It follows, therefore, that the terms Garlim-Ayana and Jyotisham-Ayana inean the march of days'. The question is: what daya? ordinary days or special days ? Almost all oriental scholars seem to regard the days ag ordinary ones. And the sacrificial year of 360 or 361 days described in all the Srauta-Sutras under the name of Glavam-Ayana, with special chants, recitations, and rites for each day, has been accordingly taken by them to mean an ordinary year.
But there is evidence to indicate that this is not the senso in which the Vedic poets used the term. We have already seen how, in describing the four forms of Garâm-Ayana, the author of the Nidana-Sutra has specified the suppression and intercalation of days as the chief feature of the Ayanas. We are told to suppress or omit nine days from the savana year of 360 days in order to form a sidereal lunar year of 351 days, which is a year of 18 months each of 27 days. We are also told of the synodic lunar year of 354 days with an impliance of 12 intercalated days, and of the cycle of 37 or 38 months with 18 intercalated days, towards their adjastment with the sidereal solar year of 366 days. We are not told, however, the precise meaning of the term Gavam-Ayana. From the way in which the author of the sutra has explained the four forms of Garâm-Ayana, we may interpret it in three different ways: we may take it to mean the four ordinary years, the sidereal lunar year of 351 days, the synodic lunar year of 854 days, the savana year of 360 days, and the sidereal solar year of 866 days; or we may take it to mean the suppressed period of nine days, and the intercalary periods of 12, 18, and 21 days, of which the intercalary period of 21 days is, as we have already seen, mentioned in a later chapter of the same sútra, 45 But Latyayana seems to take the term in the sense of an intercalary period : in chapters 5 to 7 of the fourth book of his Srauta-Satra, he proposes to discuss the varieties of Gavâm-Ayans, and describes the rites and recitations pertaining to the periods of 12 and 21 days; while in the 8th chapter of the same book, he proceeds to discuss the varieties of Jyotisham-Ayana, and enumerates the various kinds of years and the intercalary days necessary to adjust them. From this it is cloar that of the three terms. Samvatsara, Jyotishim-Ayana, and Garêm-Ayana, the first means an ordinary year of 351,
** It is probable that though based upon different units of intercelary days, these three cycles are here expressed in terms of the unit of twenty-one intercalary days, as though these ayelio years were consecutivo year.
5 See Chapter 11, above.