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A History of Sanskrit Literature c35.s1: 1. The Pre-scientific Period

A History of Sanskrit Literature c35.s1

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English

1. The Pre-scientific Period

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THERE is a definite breach of continuity in Indian thought on astronomy, with which astrology and mathematics are ever closely connected.¹ In the Vedic period we find extremely little sign of astronomical study; the year is vaguely reckoned, and the twenty-seven or twenty-eight Nakṣatras, moon stations, are of dubious origin. At the close of the Vedic period we have more elaborate works on the calendar evinced in Sūtra notices and summed up in the *Jyotiṣa Vedāṅga*,² preserved in two versions, for the *Yajurveda* and the *Ṛgveda*; we find here a calendar arranged on the basis of a five-year Yuga, with a 366-day year, notices of the position of the sun and moon at the solstices, and at new and full moon with regard to the Nakṣatras. Some further development of a purely Indian type is found in the case of works like the *Gārgī Saṁhitā*, of which we have fragments, the astronomical hints of the *Vṛddha Gargasaṁhitā*, the fragment of Pauṣkarasādin preserved in the Weber MS., the Nakṣatra and other Pariçiṣṭas of the *Atharvaveda*, and the *Paitāmaha Siddhānta* recorded by Varāhamihira. The Jain texts, chiefly the *Sūryaprajñapti*,³ though they develop a fantastic view of their own, are essentially of this type. The epic, the Purāṇas, the Smṛtis, and old writers such as Parāçara known from fragments are of the same type.

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¹ See G. Thibaut, *Astronomie, Astrologie und Mathematik* (1899); Kaye, *Hindu Astronomy* (1924).

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² Ed. A. Weber, ABA. 1862; *Pandit*, N.S. xxix.

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³ See Thibaut, JASB. xlix. 108 ff.

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The characteristics of this period are a general ignorance of the mean motions of the sun and moon, resulting in faulty appreciation of the length of years and months; a total ignorance of the true motion as opposed to mean motion; the teaching of an equal daily increase or decrease of the length of the day; dividing the sphere into twenty-seven or twenty-eight Nakṣatras; entertaining fantastic ideas of the constitution of the earth and the universe, and a determination on false premisses to work out large numerical calculations. All save the Jain texts assume that the winter solstice fell at the beginning of the Nakṣatra Dhaniṣṭhā, but this datum is quite insufficient to enable us to fix in any way the date of the works. They contribute to the scientific period two ideas of great importance, if of no value: the conception of great Yugas, during which a complete change of the heavenly bodies is carried out, so that a new Yuga begins with all of them in the same places as the preceding Yuga; and the conception of the lunar day, Tithi, which is a thirtieth part of a synodical month, a strange and not convenient unit.

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In one sphere, however, distinctly interesting results were attained in geometry as a result of the care taken in the measurement of altars. These results are enshrined in the Çulbasūtras, works which are of the late Sūtra period, possibly of *c.* 200 B.C., though this is mere guesswork. They are concerned with the construction of squares and rectangles; the relation of the diagonal to the sides; the equivalence of rectangles and squares; and the construction of equivalent squares and circles. We find the Pythagorean problem stated generally, but there is nothing to show how far it was fully understood and what exactly was the Indian conception of the irrational. The question of influence on Pythagoras or influence of Greece or Egypt on India has been much discussed¹ without proving any dependence in either case. But in any event the theories of the Çulbasūtras for whatever reason had apparently no effect on the later progress of geometry.

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¹ Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1910, pp. 519–21; Kaye, JRAS. 1910, pp. 749–60; Thibaut, *op. cit.*, p. 78.

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