The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c12.26

c12.26

I do not mean to lay down hard-and-fast limits of each of these periods of antiquity, nor do I intend to say anything about the period which must have elapsed before the Vedic Aryas were able to fix their calender in the Aditi period. The beginning of the Aryan civilization must undoubtedly be placed a long time before the people were able to conceive and determine the calender. But I do not wish to enter here into these speculations. I take my stand only upon what we find recorded in the Vedic works, and hence all that I mean is that if the astronomical allusions, references, facts, and legends in the Vedic works can have any meaning, we cannot materially shorten the periods I have here indicated. We may not rely on vague traditional beliefs amongst one nation alone, but when we find that the traditions of India, Greece, and Iran, agree in their important features, and can be explained satisfactorily only by placing the vernal equinox in Orion, and when we have an express authority for doing so in the Rigveda, I do not think that we can reasonably refuse to accept the conclusions deduced therefrom. It is true that we have determined the oldest Vedic periods from the traditions we find recorded in the Rigveda, and, strictly speaking, it is the periods of the traditions and not of the hymns into which they have been incorporated. But this does not, in my opinion, materially affect the conclusions we have arrived at above regarding the ancient period of the Vedic literature. I don't mean to deny that the hymns may not have been sung some time after these traditions and legends were originally conceived, or that after they were first sung the hymns might not have been somewhat modified *in form* in passing from mouth to mouth before they became settled in the form in which we now posses them. But though so much may be legitimately conceded, I think that it is impossible to hold that the hymns were composed thousands of years after the stories narrated in them were first conceived. For, as a matter of fact, we find that the Rigveda hymns had already become antiquated and unintelligible in the days of the Taittirîya Sanhitâ and the Brâhmaṇas. The Taittirîya Sanhitâ places the vernal equinox in the Kṛittikâs, and I have shown that we must fix its date at about 2500 B. C. If the hymns of the Rigveda Sanhitâ were unintelligible at this time, they must have been sung several centuries before it. The comparison of the Taittirîya with the Rigveda Sanhitâ further shows that while the first mentions three year-beginnings—one current and two old—the second only mentions one.