History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.159.2

v6.c82.159.2

In Vedic times one was not entitled to perform solemn sacrifices unless he had already set up sacred fires on certain nakṣatras Further, the months (Māgha, Phālguna, Caitra &c ) were named after certain nakṣatras and exist only in Sanskrit, not in Greek, Latin or Chinese. The deities that were deemed to preside over the nakṣatras from such ancient days as those of the Tai S. and Tai. Br. are almost all of them exclusively Vedic and have no counterparts in Babylonia or China. Besides, though thousands of cuneiform tablets have been found in Babylonia no one has, so far as I know, pointed to a single tablet where all the nakṣatras appear in an orderly series of 27 or 28, as we find in Vedic Saṁhitās. It is at least clear that long before the Taittirīya Saṁhitā the Vedic people had fixed the number of the nakṣatras (at 27 or 28), their names and order and their presiding deities and had made the nakṣatras a most integral part of their sacrificial system. Furthermore, almost all of the Indian names of nakṣatras are significant or have ancient legends connected with them. For example, Ārdrā means ‘wet’ and the nakṣatra was called Ārdrā because when the sun was in it rains set in. Punarvasu was probably so called because the grains of paddy or barley sown in the ground sprout up as new wealth after being buried; Puṣya, was so called because the young sprouts grow and become nourished;