The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c8.44

c8.44

But, apart from the origin of the libration theory, I think it is clear that, if we accept that the Mârgashîrsha full-moon was ever a new-year's night, in the sense that the winter solstice occurred at that time, we are inevitably landed on an absurdity. By the ordinary proces of *reductio ad absurdum*, we are thus compelled to abandon the theory that the full moon in Mârgashîrsha once began the year at the winter solstice. Native scholars and astronomers, who did not realize the absurdity, accepted the theory of the libration of the equinoxes as the only possible way of reconciling the two statements in their sacred books. We now know that the equinox cannot be placed 27° behind Revati, unless it be either in the beginning of the present cycle of the precession of the equinoxes or about 600 years hereafter, and we should have no difficulty in rejecting the premises that give us such a conclusion. Perhaps it may be urged that the full-moon night in Mârgashîrsha might have been called the new-year's night in some other sense.∗ Yes, it might be; but what evidence is there that any native scholars ever thought of it? None that I know of. There are only two beginnings of the year known in ancient Hindu literature. I have shown that the winter solstice could not have occurred on the full-moon in Mârgashîrsha, and by the same method we can prove the improbability of the vernal equinox falling on that day. For if we suppose the Mârgashîrsha full-moon to be the new-year's night, in the sense that the vernal equinox occurred on that date, we must make the asterism of Abhijit coincide with the vernal equinox. This gives us about 20,000 years B. C. for the period when these positions could have been true. The author of the Bhâgavata Purâṇa appears to have had some such theory in his mind when he paraphrased (xi. 16. 27) the above quoted verse in the Gîtâ by "I am Mârgashîrsha of the months, Abhijit of the Nakshatras," and the late Kṛiṣhṇa Shâstri Godbole took this statement for a record of a real tradition! This illustrates the danger of relying on traditions in later books, without tracing them to their source in the oldest works we possess.