History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.159.3

v6.c82.159.3

Āśreṣā or Āśleṣā, because the grown-up plants of paddy or barley grow high enough to embrace each other; Maghā, because the paddy or other plants are putting forth the standing crop which is wealth in itself; Kṛttikā, because they (being six or seven), look like the skin of the spotted deer on which a religious student was to sit for Vedic study. In these circumstances the burden to prove borrowing of the nakṣatra system by Indians was very heavy on those who affirmed it. What is the evidence? There is very little evidence except prejudice and speculation The main tangible evidence they can and do rely on is that the Chinese or Babylonians had also 28 nakṣatras as the Indians had. But these scholars, though very learned and far-seeing in their own way, never stopped to consider how from China and Babylon the nakṣatras could reasonably be supposed to have been derived by Indians more than 3500 years ago (on a most modest estimate) and allowed to be the very centre and basis of their religion of sacrifices, what were the means for the communication of the thoughts and ideas underlying the nakṣatra system and why one may not surmise that the real state of things was the other way about (viz the Babylonians and Chinese derived the system from the ancestors of Indians) or that all systems were derived from a common prehistoric source.