History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.436

v6.c82.436

It would be necessary to say something about the signs of the Zodiac. The word Zodiac is derived from a Greek word 'Zodion' meaning 'little animals' and means literally a 'circle of animals'. In Herodotus I. 70 it is used in the sense of 'figure painted or carved'. It was then applied to one of the figures imagined as formed by certain star-groups in the belt of the heavens. The Zodiac is a belt in the sky about 16 degrees broad, divided in two by the ecliptic, in which the Sun, Moon and planets move. The expression 'signs of the Zodiac' may be used in two senses,⁸⁸¹ viz. (1) the 12 groups of constellations which are found sown in the vicinity of the ecliptic (the path of the Sun) irregular in position, unequal in extent and in brightness, (2) the twelve equal artificial divisions of the belt each extending to 30 degrees of longitude It is generally held that the first meaning alone can be the earlier of the⁸⁸² two. Meissner points out that the most ancient Babylonian observation text belonging to the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar (567 B. C.) knows only the figures or pictures of the constellations, while the twelve equal divisions occur first of all in a text of the reign of Darius II (about 418 B C.). Nothing definite is known about the first formation of these picture-signs nor is it known who gave these fanciful names to stars There is hardly any doubt that the picture names were due to popular fancy and not to men of science. The names were probably given at different times. Meissner states that the picture signs are already mentioned in part in a Hittite text of the 13th century B C and are also to be found on boundary stones of the same period.