Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 100

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JONE, 1919
136). He writes" .... in the absence of any evidence as to the real origin of the nakshatras, the priority of Kritikás has been insoluble. But the Babylonian hypothesis of their origin still remains the most plausible and for an ingenious argument I would refer to a comparatively recent article by Lehmann Haupt. If so, then the effort to prove the origin of the position of Kittikás by Indian literature must he unsuccessful."
I have not been able to get a copy of ZDMG. (L.xvi) containing this ingenious argument. But from the way in which Prof. Keith writes I am inclined to think that he does not attach much value to it. Now that Prof. Keith has chosen to revive a theory long given up, he should, in fairness, bring together all the fresh evidence that Babylonian researches might have brought to light since 1882 and discuss their evidentiary value and at least show that the theory is not so baseless as Mexmüller had pronomced it to be. It is an important question involving wide issues and deserves more than a digressive hit that the Professor has chosen to give it.
To a Jay mind it would appear that there is nothing in common betwen the Indian, eeliptic of the twenty-seven nakshatras and the Babylonian zodiac. (1) The former is lunar; the latter, by all accounts, was solar. (2) In the earliest Indian literature where it is found, taat is, the Brahmanas, there is no attempt to divide the 27 nakshatras into 12 sections and allot two or three to each section and there is no reference to the planets. "The Chaldæans chose three stars in each sign to be the Councillor gods' of the planets." (3) The first sign (whether Aries, so far as records go, or Taurus, as later traditions indicate, coincided with the vernal equinox. There is no evidence in Indian literature to show that the Indians began their year with the vernal equinox before the introduction of the Alexandrian School of astronomy into India about the fourth or the fifth century A.D. (4) There is not the slightest evidence in the Brahmaņa literature to show that the Brahmavâdins of the Brdhmana period were aware of the twelve signs of the Babylonian or the later Indian solar zodiac or any pictorial representations of these signs, such as the Ram, the Bull, etc., or that the words mesha, Vrishabha, etc., were used technically to denote the signs of a solar zodiac. (5) In Babylonia 'we find a week of seven and another of fire days' (Ency. Brit., 11th ed., Vol. 3, p. 167). The Brahmanas know neither, but have instead a period of 6 days (Skaraha), five of which made a month. (6) In Babylonia, the 12 months were named after the 12 zodiacal signs. In the Brahmaras, the 12 months are named after the 12 nakshatras at or near which the moon successively became full. (7) The Brâhmaņic asterismal system,commenced with the Pleiades. There is nothing to show that the first sign in Babylonia was headed by this asterism.
Maxmüller wrote in 1882: "Now the Babylonian zodiac was solar, and, in spite of repeated researches, no trace of a lunar zodiac has been found, where so many things have been found, in the Cuneiform inscriptions. But supposing even that a Junar zodiac had been discovered in Babylon, no one acquainted with Vedic literature and with the ancient Vedic ceremonial would easily allow himself to be persuaded that the Hindus had borrowed that simple division of the sky from the Babylonians . . . . Surely it would be a senseless hypothesis to imagine that the Vedic shepherds or priests went to Babylonia in search of a knowledge which every shepherd might have acquired on the banks of the Indus ......" And after thirty years' further Balylonian research and exploraljon, the
· Encyclopædia Britannica (edition of 1911, art: "Zodiao").
Vide, for instance, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, July 1917, p. 499, footnote :".... Only the Roman Calendar and the year of Nabonidus rockon from the spring. Dr. Fleet thought that BrAbmans Inust have visited Rome. Perhaps so; but it is more probable, rthink, that they took the spring equinox for their starting point from the year of Nabonidus. When the Alexandrian astronomers reformed their Calendar in the reign of Diocletian, they based their reform upon the Nabonidus era; and these astronomers were the teachers of the Indians."
India-What Can It Teach Us? (first edition, pp. 126, ete.)