The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c6.13.4

c6.13.4

Schrader has himself observed that the conception of the year in the primeval period was formed by combining the conceptions of the seasons[†] If so, it would not be difficult, even for these primitive Aryans, to perceive that the period of twelve full moons fell short of their seasonal year by twelve days. Dr. Schrader again forgets the fact that it is more convenient, and hence easier and more natural, to make the year begin with a particular season or a fixed position of the sun in the heavens, than to have an ever-varying measure of time like the lunar year. Lewis, in his Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, quotes Geminus to shew that "the system pursued by the ancient Greeks was to determine their months by the moon and their years by the sun,"[‡] and this appears to me to have been the system in force in the Indo-Germanic, or at any rate in the primitive Vedic period. There is no other conclusion that we can fairly draw from the facts and passages noted above.