A Concise History of Science in India c6.3

c6.3

Such cycle of events in the life processes on the one hand and the regularity in the heavenly phenomena on the other inevitably led to a time sense. At the same time these suggested methods of marking and measuring time to an intelligent priestly class wherever human civilizations sprang up and had their normal course of development. This priestly class, as is well known, had a dominant role to play in human societies, with powers to regulate religious and, not infrequently, the secular life of their fellow members. Everywhere they evolved an elaborate and complicated system of rituals and sacrifices to be performed with perfect regularity in time. This naturally imposed on them the task of measuring and dividing time or, in other words, of evolving a suitable calendar and consequently of studying astronomical phenomena. This is true as much of the temple priests of Thebes, Nineveh, Sumer and Akkad as of the Brāhmaṇas of Vedic India.