Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s20.216

v1.c3.s20.216

Biot, the eminent Chinese scholar, in a series of papers published by him between 1839 and 1861,¹⁶¹ attempted to prove the derivation of the Nakṣatra from the Chinese Sieou. The latter he did not regard as being in origin lunar mansions at all. He thought that they were equatorial stars used, as in modern astronomy, as a standard to which planets or other stars observed in the neighbourhood can be referred; they were, as regards twenty-four of them, selected about B.C. 2357 on account of their proximity to the equator, and of their having the same right ascension as certain circumpolar stars which had attracted the attention of Chinese observers. Four more were added in B.C. 1100 in order to mark the equinoxes and solstices of the period. He held that the list of stars commenced with Mao (= Kṛttikās), which was at the vernal equinox in B.C. 2357. Weber,¹⁶² in an elaborate essay of 1860, disputed this theory, and endeavoured to show that the Chinese literary evidence for the Sieou was late, dating not even from before the third century B.C. The last point does not appear¹⁶³ to be correct, but his objections against the basis of Biot's theory were reinforced by Whitney,¹⁶⁴ who insisted that Biot's supposition of the Sieou's not having been ultimately derived from a system of lunar mansions, was untenable. This is admitted by the latest defender of the hypothesis of borrowing from China, Léopold de Saussure,¹⁶⁵ but his arguments in favour of a Chinese origin for the Indian lunar mansions have been refuted by Oldenberg,¹⁶⁶ who has also pointed out¹⁶⁷ that the series does not begin with Mao (= Kṛttikās).