Hindu Achievements in Exact Science: A Study in the History of Scientific Development c14.4

c14.4

1. Lunar zodiac: The earliest astronomy of the Hindus is believed to have been borrowed from the Babylonians. This consisted in the conception of the lunar zodiac with twenty-seven *naksatras* (constellations). But this elementary division of the sky, suggested by the passage of the moon from any point back to the same point, may have been original to the Hindu priests, as Colebrooke and Max Müller believe. The Saracens, however, learned their *manzil* (twenty-eight constellations) from the Hindus in the eighth century.