Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.37

c9.37

This agreement is the more remarkable, that the Brahmins, by their own rules for computing the motion of the fixed stars, could not have assigned this place to Aldebaran for the beginning of the Calyougham, had they calculated it from a modern observation. For as they make the motion of the fixed stars too great by more than 3" annually, if they had calculated backward from 1491, they would have placed the fixed stars less advanced by 4° or 5°, at their ancient epoch, than they have actually done. This argument carries with it a great deal of force; and even were it the only one we had to produce, it would render it, in a high degree, probable, that the Indian Zodiac was as old as the Calyougham.