The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c11.16

c11.16

Some of the reasons given above may be doubtful, but on the whole I am inclined to hold that the Vedic Ṛishis were not as ignorant of the broad astronomical facts as they are sometimes represented to be. They seem to have watched and observed the sun and the moon during their yearly course, noted the bearing of the motions on the division of time, fixed the length of the solar year and endeavoured to make the lunar correspond with it. The Nakshatras and their rising and setting also appear to have been duly observed. It was perceived that the sun and the moon and such of the planets as they had discovered never travelled out of a certain belt in the heavens, called *rita*; while the eclipses of the sun and the moon also received due attention and notice. Men, who were acquainted with these facts, would naturally be able to fix the beginning of the months and the year by the stars that rose at the time, and though we cannot suppose the Vedic bards to have been in the possession of any accurate astronomical instruments, yet it was not difficult for them to decide roughly by simple observation when the day and the night were equal, or when the sun turned to the north, either from the solstitial or from the equinoctial point. The knowledge implied by these observations may appear to be too much for a Vedic poet in the opinion of those who have formed their notions of primitive humanity from the accounts of savages in Africa or the Islands of the Pacific. But as observed before we must give up these *a priori* notions of primitive humanity in the face of evidence supplied by the hymns of the Rigveda. It is on this evidence that we have to form our judgment of the primitive Aryan civilization, and if that evidence is found conflicting with our prepossessions the latter must be given up. In what follows I shall therefore assume the capacity of a Vedic bard to make the simple observations above mentioned.