The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c8.13

c8.13

There is thus no reliable authority, that I am aware of, for holding that Phâlguna, in the days of the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ, was a Vasanta month, and Sâyaṇa's explanation does not in consequence hold good at least in this case. The explanation is further inconsistent with the fact that in several Brâhmaṇas and Sûtras the full-moon night in the month of Phâlguna has been pronounced to be the *first night* of the year. The Shatapatha Brâhmaṇa (vi. 2. 2. 18) says "the Phâlgunî full-moon is the first night of the year." The Taittirîya (i. 1, 2, 8) and the Sânkhyâyana (iv. 4 and v. 1)* Brâhmaṇas contain similar passages, while the Gopatha Brâhmaṇa (i. 19) after stating that the Uttarâ and the Pûrvâ Phalgunî are respectively the beginning and the end of the year, adds "just as the two ends of a thing meet so these two termini of the year meet together."† I have already quoted a passage from the Tâṇḍya Brâhmaṇa to the same effect. The Sûtra-writers, though not so explicit, do however distinctly state that the annual sacrifices "should be commenced either on the Chaitrî or the Phâlgunî full-moon night,"‡ thus clearly indicating that these were regarded as the beginnings of the year. If these passages mean anything, we must hold that the Phâlgunî full-moon night was once considered to be actually the first night of the year, or to put it in a modern form the new year's night. We cannot assign this position to it by simply assuming, as Sâyaṇa has done, that the night occured sometime during the two months of Vasanta. Sâyaṇa, it appears, was aware of this objection and so in commenting on the passage from the Taittirîya Saṃhitâ, quoted in the last chapter, he attempts to explain the position of the Phâlgunî night by reference to the above mentioned passages in the Brâhmaṇas; while with respect to the Chaitrî, he quietly observes that "this *too* is the mouth of the year as it falls during the season of Vasanta."* But an explanation that admittedly fails in one case must fail in the other, for the Chitrâ and the Phâlgunî nights are described together, in the *same* passage and in the *same* words, as the beginnings of the year.