The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c8.11

c8.11

इह तु वर्षाशरद्धेमंतवसंतग्रीष्मप्रावृषः षड्ऋतवो भवंति ।...। ते तु भाद्रपदाधेन द्विमासिकेन व्याख्याताः। तद्यथा। भाद्रपदाश्वयुजौ वर्षाः। कार्तिकमार्गशीर्षौ शरत्। पौषमाघौ हेमंतः। फाल्गुनचैत्रौ वसंतः। वैशाखज्येष्ठौ ग्रीष्मः। आषाढश्रावणौ प्रावृडिति। all the months are assigned to their respective seasons. The second paragraph, however, makes no mention of the *ayanas*, the year, or the lustrum. It is therefore evident that the writer of the second paragraph, whosoever he may be, wished to note that the seasons and their corresponding months mentioned in the first paragraph had ceased to represent the actual state of things in the writer's time and province, and not thinking it desirable or possible to expunge or correct the old paragraph, he added immediately after it a second paragraph describing the seasons as he saw them. The words "*but here*" at its beginning, the assignment of four months to the rainy season, but under two different names of Prâvṛiṣh and Varshâ, to keep up the old *number* of the seasons, and the absence of any reference to the *ayanas*, the year and the lustrum described in the previous paragraph—all point to the conclusion that the second paragraph is of later origin and inserted with a view only to note the changes in the occurrence of events described in the paragraph next preceding it. It might be contended that the second paragraph is that of Shushruta who notices the old order of things in the first. But I need not go into that question here. For in either case it is plain that the passage wherein Phâlguna and Chaitra are assigned to Vasanta is the production of a later writer, whosoever he may be whether Shushruta or any one else, and as far as our present inquiry is concerned we cannot take the passage as an authority for holding that Phâlguna was a Vasanta month in the days of the Taittiriya Sanhitâ. I may however remark, that Vâgbhaṭa who professes to summarise the works of Shushruta and Charaka gives the order and description of seasons as we find it in the first paragraph in Shushruta,[*] without alluding to the changes noted in the second paragraph. We may, therefore, suppose that either the paragraph did not exist in Vâgbhaṭa's time or that he did not regard it as genuine.