Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.10

c9.10

7. With the constellations, that distinguish the twenty-seven equal spaces, into which their Zodiac is divided, the astronomers of India, have connected none of those figures of animals, which are among us, of so ancient, and yet so arbitrary an origin. M. Le Gentil has given us their names, and configurations.⁵ They are formed, for the most part, of small groups of stars, such as the Pleiades or the Hyades, those belonging to the same constellation being all connected by straight lines. The first of them or that which is placed at the beginning of their Zodiac, consists of six stars, extending from the head of Aries to the foot of Andromeda, in our Zodiac, and occupying a space of about ten degrees in longitude. These constellations are far from including all the stars in the Zodiac. M. Le Gentil remarks, that those stars seem to have been selected, which are best adapted for marking out, by lines drawn between them, the places of the moon in her progress through the heavens.