The History of Indian Literature c9.216

c9.216

²⁶⁹ This assertion of Biot’s has not been confirmed; the Chinese list commences with Chitrá (*i.e.*, the autumnal equinox), or Uttarâsháḍhás (the winter solstice), both of which rather correspond to an arrangement in which Revatí passes as the sign of the vernal equinox; see my first Essay on the Nakshatras, p. 300.—Cf. here also the account of the twenty-eight lunar asterisms, contained in a letter from Wassiljew to Schiefner (see the latter's German translation of the Preface to Wassiljew's Russian rendering of Táranátha's history of Buddhism, pp. 30–32, 1869), and communicated, according to the commentary on the Buddhistic Lexicon Mahávyutpatti, from the book Sannipáta (Chinese Ta-tsi-king). According to this account, it was the astronomer Kharoshṭha (ass's-lip)—a name which, as well as that of Xarustr, who, as Armenian authorities state, originated the science of astronomy in Chaldæa, Wassiljew compares with Zoroaster, but in which I am inclined rather to look for the Kraushtuki whose acquaintance we make in the Atharva-Pariś. (see *Lit. C. Bl.*, 1869, p. 1497)—who arranged the constellations in the order quoted in the Dictionary in question, that is, beginning with *Kṛittiká*. Afterwards there came another Ṛishi, Kála (Time!), who set up a new theory in regard to the motion of the constellations, and so in course of time Chitrá came to be named as the first asterism. To all appearance, this actually proves the late, and Buddhistic, origin of the Chinese Kio-list; see *Nakshatras*, i. 306.