The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.95

v1.c17.95

Another and, at first sight, more promising attempt has been made to fix a date from internal evidence. It has been argued by Jacobi⁴ on the strength of two hymns in the Rigveda that the year then began with the summer solstice, and that at that solstice the sun was in conjunction with the lunar mansion Phalgunī. Now the later astronomy shows that the lunar mansions were, in the sixth century a.d., arranged so as to begin for purposes of reckoning with that called Açvinī, because at the vernal equinox at that date the sun was in conjunction with the star ζ Piscium. Given this datum, the precession of the equinoxes allows us to calculate that the beginning of the year with the summer solstice in Phalgunī took place about 4000 b.c. This argument must be considered further in connexion with the dating of the next period of Indian history; but, for the dating of the Rigveda, it is certain that no help can be obtained from it. It rests upon two wholly improbable assumptions, first, that the hymns really assert that the year began at the summer solstice, and, second, that the sun was then brought into any connexion at all with the Nakshatras, for which there is no evidence whatever. The Nakshatras are, as their name indicates and as all the evidence of the later Saṃhitās shows, lunar mansions pure and simple.