The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c7.23

c7.23

Some scholars, however, have boldly raised the question, what authority is there to hold that the position of the solstitial colure was recorded in the Vedânga Jyotisha from actual observation? It is conceded that the position of the solstitial colure might have been incorporated in the Jyotiṣha from real traditional information, but it is at the same itme contended that the language of the treatise and the methods given therein create doubts about the antiquity claimed for the work on the strength of the position of the solstitial points given therein. "I feel bound to remark," says Prof. Max Müller, "that unless there was internal evidence that the Vedic hymns reached back to that remote antiquity this passage in the Jyotiṣha would by itself carry no weight whatever¹." The existence of the different versions of the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣha and the obscurity into which some of its verses are still shrouded render it rather difficult to meet the above objection, especially as it is a side attack on the antiquity of the work with an admission that the position of the colure might have been recorded in the work from real traditions current in the time of its author. It is, however, needless to answer this objection, inasmuch as there is ample confirmatory evidence in the Vedic works themselves which not only bears out the statement in the Vedāṅga Jyotiṣha, but takes us back into still remoter antiquity.