History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.159.1

v6.c82.159.1

Great controversies have raged over the question whether the Indian nakṣatras are indigenous or were borrowed from some other people. The great French astronomer Biot held that Indians borrowed the nakṣatra system from the Chinese and Whitney followed Biot There were others who held that Indians borrowed them either from the Babylonians or the Arabs I cannot enter here into the merits of these discussions The Arabs themselves admit that they borrowed their astronomy from Indian Siddhāntas and there is hardly anything to show that they knew the complete nakṣatra system as early as at least 1500 B. C. Therefore, we may leave the Arabs out of account altogether (vide Thibaut in *Grundriss* p. 14) Great scholars are often blinded by prejudices and shut their eyes to basic facts. The Chinese system of Sieu had at first only 24 and then it became one of (it is said) 28 at about 1100 B C. (as said by Thibaut in Grundriss p. 13.) There are no clear traces in the Vedic texts that nakṣatras were held to be 24 during the times of those texts. We should not accept at their face value the assumptions of the antiquity of astronomy in China that are sometimes advanced (vide ‘East and West’, Rome, vol. VI. p. 288.) Besides, neither in Babylonia nor in China were the asterisms thoroughly integrated with the religious system.