[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India)](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930) › v6.c82.159 # History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.159 History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.159 - **Language:** English ### [v6.c82.159.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.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. ### [v6.c82.159.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.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; ### [v6.c82.159.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.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. ### [v6.c82.159.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.v6.c82.159.4) Another reason for discounting the theories of Biot, Weber and Whitney may also be advanced viz the researches of Tilak in his 'Orion' (particularly pp. 61-95) and of Prof. Jacobi have at least made this clear that the Kṛttikā series is not the oldest arrangement of the nakṣatras known to Indians, but that the Indians had once an older arrangement, which placed Mṛgaśīrṣa at the vernal equinox. Those who are interested in these somewhat novel and rather barren controversies raised by Biot, Weber and others may read Weber's 'der vedischen Nachrichten von den Naksatras', two volumes, I. A. vol. 23 pp. 154-159 (Jacobi on the 'date of the Ṛgveda'), pp. 238-249 (Buhler's note on Jacobi's theory and Tilak's Orion, I. A. pp. 85-100 (Thibaut on 'antiquity of Vedic civilization') and pp. 361-369 (Whitney), I. A. 48 pp. 95-97. The word 'nakṣatra' is derived by Yāska⁷³⁶ from the root 'naks' meaning 'to go', while the Śatapatha Br. (II 1. 2. 17-18) and Tai Br. II 7 18 derive it as from \*na\* plus \*kṣatra\* and Pāṇini (VI 3 75) accepts this derivation. The word 'nakṣatra' (m) is applied even to the Sun in Ṛg. VI. 67. 6. Tai. Br. teaches how one is to mark the nakṣatra on which one has to perform a religious act, viz. he should mark about dawn and before the first rays light the sky the part of the sky where the nakṣatra appears and when the sun appears the nakṣatra would be to the west of the sun, at which time he should perform what he has to do. ### [v6.c82.159.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.v6.c82.159.5) It is stated that sage Matsya established into eminence Yajñesu and Śatadyumna by this method (Tai. Br. I. 5. 2 1.) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.v6.c82.159](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.kane-1930.v6.c82.159) · Pramāṇa