The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.181

Language: English

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As with the Rigveda, attempts have been made to show that these dates are much too low and that astronomical data enable us to carry the Brāhmaṇas much further back. The lists of the Nakshatras all begin with Kṛittikās, and we know that in the sixth century A.D. the constellation which then headed the Nakshatras was chosen because the vernal equinox took place when the sun was in conjunction with that Nakshatra. From the precession of the equinoxes, we are enabled to arrive at the conclusion that the position of Kṛittikās at the vernal equinox must have taken place in the third millennium B.C. This has been supported by a passage in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa where it is said that Kṛittikās did not move from the eastern quarter at that time. But we have no evidence whatever to connect the sun and the Nakshatras at this period, and the notice regarding the position of Kṛittikās cannot be taken seriously in a work which shows so little power of scientific observation of facts as the Çatapatha. Moreover if, as it is probable, the Nakshatra system was borrowed ready made, we cannot even conjecture for what reason Kṛittikās was placed first. More promising is a definite notice contained in the Kaushītaki Brāhmaṇa and repeated in the *Jyotisha*, a late Vedic work on astronomy, if indeed it can be dignified with this title, that the winter solstice took place at the new moon in Maghās. From this datum results varying from 1391–1181 B.C. were early deduced by different investigators;

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but these conclusions can claim no scientific value, as they rest on assumptions as to the exact meaning of the passage which cannot be justified. The possible margin of error in the calculations is at least five hundred years; and we are therefore reduced to the view that this evidence only indicates that the observation which is recorded was made some centuries B.C. The same conclusion can be drawn from the fact that in quite a number of places the month Phālguna is called the beginning of the year. In the view of Jacobi, this shows that the year began with the winter solstice at full moon in Phalgunī, and thus would correspond with his view that in the Rigveda the sun at the summer solstice was in Uttara-Phalgunī. But, in this case also, the result is unacceptable; for it is nowhere stated that the beginning of the year was dated from the winter solstice. The most probable explanation is that the full moon in Phalgunī was deemed to be the beginning of the year, because it marked, at the time when it was so termed, the beginning of spring. Since the new moon in Maghā was at the winter solstice, the full moon in Phalgunī would fall about a month and a half later in the first week of February, which is compatible with Feb.

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7, the *Veris initium* in the Roman calendar, and which is a perfectly possible date for about 800 B.C., especially when it is remembered that the division of the year into three periods of four months was always a rough one, and the beginning of spring had to be placed early so as to allow of the rains, which are definitely marked out by the fall of the first rain, to fill the period from about June 7 to October 7. With this explanation the theory, that the mention of the full moon in Phalgunī as the beginning of the year records an observation of the fourth millennium B.C., disappears, and still more the theory that the mention of the month Caitra as the beginning of the year carries us back to the sixth millennium. Nor can any more trust be put in the argument that the mention in the late marriage ritual of the Dhruva, a fixed star shown to the bride and bridegroom as a symbol of constancy, points to an observation made at a period when there was a real fixed pole star, *i.e.* in the third millennium B.C. We do not even know whether this part of the rite goes back to the period of the Brāhmaṇas; and, even if it did, for so little scientific a purpose there was no need of anything save a fairly bright star not too distant from the pole. Ingenious therefore as all these arguments are, they must be dismissed as affording no real certainty of correctness. The most that can be said is that they tend to support the period 800–600 B.C.

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as a reasonable date for the period of the civilisation of the Brāhmaṇas¹.