Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s20.175

v1.c3.s20.175

(3) The winter solstice in Māgha is assured by a Brāhmaṇa text, for the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa¹²⁶ expressly places it in the new moon of Māgha (*māghasyāmāvāsyāyām*). It is not very important whether we take this with the commentators¹²⁷ as the new moon in the middle of a month commencing with the day after full moon in Taiṣa, or, which is much more likely, as the new moon beginning the month and preceding full moon in Māgha. The datum gives a certain possibility of fixing an epoch in the following way. If the end of Revatī marked the vernal equinox at one period, then the precession of the equinoxes would enable us to calculate at what point of time the vernal equinox was in a position corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha, when the solstitial colure cut the ecliptic at the beginning of Śraviṣṭhās. This would be, on the strict theory, in the third quarter of Bharaṇī, 6¾ asterisms removed from Śraviṣṭhās, and the difference between that and the beginning of Aśvinī= 13⅓ asterisms = 23⅓° (27 asterisms being = 360°). Taking the starting-point at 499 A.D., the assured period of Varāha Mihira, Jones¹²⁸ arrived at the date B.C. 1181 for the vernal equinox corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha—that is, on the basis of 1° = 72 years as the precession. Pratt¹²⁹ arrived at precisely the same date, taking the same rate of precession and adopting as his basis the ascertained position in the Siddhāntas of the junction star¹³⁰ of Maghā, α Leonis or Regulus. Davis¹³¹ and Colebrooke¹³² arrived at a different date, B.C. 1391, by taking as the basis of their calculation the junction star of Citrā, which happens to be of uncertain position, varying as much as 3° in the different textbooks. But though the twelfth century has received a certain currency as the epoch of the observation in the Jyotiṣa,¹³³ it is of very doubtful value. As Whitney points out, it is impossible to say that the earlier asterisms coincided in position with the later asterisms of 13⅓° extent each. They were not chosen as equal divisions, but as groups of stars which stood in conjunction with the moon; and the result of subsequently making them strictly equal divisions was to throw the principal stars of the later groups altogether out of their asterisms.¹³⁴ Nor can we say that the star ζ Piscium early formed the eastern boundary of Revatī; it may possibly not even have been in that asterism at all, for it is far remote from the Chinese and Arabic asterisms corresponding to Revatī. Added to all this, and to the uncertainty of the starting-point—582 A.D., 560 A.D., or 491 A.D. being variants¹³⁵—is the fact that the place of the equinox is not a matter accurately determinable by mere observation, and that the Hindu astronomers of the Vedic period cannot be deemed to have been very accurate observers, since they made no precise determination of the number of days of the year, which even in the Jyotiṣa they do not determine more precisely than as 366 days, and even the Sūrya Siddhānta¹³⁶ does not know the precession of the equinoxes. It is therefore only fair to allow a thousand years for possible errors,¹³⁷ and the only probable conclusion to be drawn from the datum of the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa is that it was recording an observation which must have been made some centuries B.C., in itself a result quite in harmony with the probable date of the Brāhmaṇa literature,¹³⁸ say B.C. 800-600.