The History of Indian Literature c9.217

c9.217

To me, however, the most probable view is that these lunar mansions are of Chaldæan origin, and that from the Chaldæans they passed to the Hindús as well as to the Chinese. For the מַזָּלוֹת of the Book of Kings, and the מַזָּרוֹת of the Book of Job,²⁷⁰ which the Biblical commentators erroneously refer to the zodiac, are just the Arabic مَنَازِل, ‘mansions;’ and here even Biot will hardly suppose a Chinese origin. The Indians may either have brought the knowledge of these lunar mansions with them into India, or else have obtained it at a later time through the commercial relations of the Phœnicians with the Panjáb. At all events, they were known to the Indians from a very early period, and as communication with China is altogether inconceivable at a time when the Hindús were perhaps not even acquainted with the mouths of the Ganges, Chinese influence is here quite out of the question. The names of some of these asterisms occur even in the Ṛik-Saṃhitá (and that under peculiar forms); for example, the *Aghás*, *i.e.*, *Maghás*, and the *Arjunyau*, *i.e.*, *Phalgunyau*—a name also applied to them in the Śatapatha-Bráhmaṇa—in the nuptial hymn, *maṇḍala* x. 85. 13; further, *Tishya* in *maṇḍala* v. 54. 13, which, however, is referred by Sáyaṇa to the sun (see also x. 64. 8). The earliest complete enumeration of them, with their respective regents, is found in the Taittiríya-Saṃ- hitá; a second, which exhibits considerable variation in the names, betokening a later date, occurs in the Atharva-Saṃhitá and the Taittiríya-Bráhmaṇa; the majority of the namès are also given in Páṇini. This latter list contains for the most part the names employed by the later astronomers; and it is precisely these later ones that are enumerated in the so-called Jyotisha or Vedic Calendar (along with the zodiacal signs too!). To this latter treatise an importance has hitherto been attributed to which its contents do not entitle it. Should my conjecture be confirmed that the Lagadha, Lagata, whose system it embodies, is identical with the Lát who is mentioned by Albírúní as the author of the ancient Súrya-Siddhánta [see, however, p. 258 n.], then it would fall in the fourth or fifth century of our era; and even this might almost seem too high an antiquity for this somewhat insignificant tract, which has only had a certain significance attached to it on account of its being ranked with the Veda.*