The Book of Akbar 52.3

52.3

If the precession of the equinoxes account for the difference between the Tables, why stop short at the Hindu observations? A. F. calculates that these were made 1190 years before Ulugh Beg's, i.e., about 1336 before Fathu-l-lah cast Akbar’s horoscope. According to Babar (Erskine 51.) the Hindu Tables were made at Ujjain in the time of Vikramaditya, i.e., cir. 57 B.C. According to Tod, (Rajputana) Hindu astronomers now follow the Tables of Jai Singh which were made in 1728. (See Dr. Hunter's paper, Asiatic Researches V, 177.) But why did not he or Fathu-l-lah carry the calculation further back and ascertain the position of the constellations of the Zodiac at the time, say, of the birth of Adam or at least, of Enoch or Idris who, according to Muhammadans, is the father of astronomy? Some astrologers professed to know the position of the stars at the time of the Creation and held that Adam was born under 1° Capricorn (See infra, for A. F.’s account of Adam). And at all events A. F., who seems to have accepted the chronology according to which Adam was born about 7000 before his own time, could have had no difficulty in calculating the position of the constellations at that period, allowing one degree for every seventy years.