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JAIN JOURNAL
The Värähisamhità also explains the problem more clearly but stating that when the Moon passes into the shadow of the Earth, lunar eclipse occurs and when it passes into the solar sphere (Süryamandala) below the Sun, there takes place the solar eclipse.20 When the Moon, existing in the seventh rāśi of the Sun, does not pass any more to the north-south direction on its celestial journey, it passes into the shadow of the Earth by coming eastwards.21 At the time of the solar eclipse the Moon covers the sunlight by staying below the Sun, coming like a piece of cloud from the west. This is the cause that there take place the solar eclipses of different kinds at every country and become perceptible. 22
According to modern astronomy, “Since the Earth and the Moon are opaque and illuminated by sunlight, each is accompanied on its orbital motion by a shadow which is ordinarily invisible and which extends into space in a direction opposite to that of the Sun. Occasionally the Moon passes into the Earth's shadow and is darkened by a lunar eclipse, at certain other times its shadow falls upon the Earth, darkening the Sun for favourably situated observers, and so producing a solar eclipse. Evidently, a lunar eclipse can occur at full Moon and a solar eclipse only at new Moon.”23
The Jaina views on the causes of the lunar and solar eclipses need a careful study for scientific verification in the light of other Indian and modern astronomical views on this problem to find out how far their ideas on the eclipses may be true in regard to their causes and phenomenal effects.
Here it is to be noted that all the astronomical views, Jaina, Brahmanical and modern, on the causes of the eclipses point clearly to one thing in their respective approaches to this problem that the interception of the light of the luminous body by the intervention of another body between it and the eye or between the luminous body and what illuminates it causes eclipses, although they differ from one another in explaining the causes of eclipses from the respective angles of scientific observations.
20 bhucchayam svagrahane bhaskaramarkagrahe pravisatinduh I pragrahanamatah
pascannendorbhanosca purvadhat II 8 II, Varahisamhita, edited by Pandit Baladeva Misra, 5th adhyaya, v. 8, p. 22, published
by Gangavisnu Sri Krasnadasaji, Kalyan, Bombay, VS. 1983. 31 suryat saptamarasau yadi codagdaksinena nati gatah I candrah purvabhimukhas
chayamaurvim tada visati (10), Channaminim, tad
Varahisamhita, v. 10. 19 candro' adhahsthah sthagayati ravimambudavatsamagatah pascat I
pratidesamatascitram drstivasadbhaskaragrahanam (II). Astronomy, ch. 7, p. 143, John Charles Duncan, Ph.D., fifth edition, published by Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955.
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