Ancient calendars and constellations

by Emmeline M. Plunket

All this information gained from the cuneiform tablets concerning the science of astronomy in Western Asia must undoubtedly affect the judgment of enquirers into the history of the same science in India.

Now that it is clearly proved that 3,000 B.C. and earlier the twelve-fold fanciful signs of the Solar Zodiac were known to the inhabitants of Babylonia, it cannot any longer be asserted dogmatically that the inhabitants of India must have waited till 300 B.C. to learn this twelve-fold division from Grecian astronomers after the date of Alexander’s conquest.

But again as regards the fixation of the initial point of the distinctively Indian Lunar Zodiac, or circle of the Nakshatras, at the “end of Revatî, and the beginning of Açvinî,” that is to say, at a point not far from the first degree of Aries—cuneiform tablets teach us the important fact that long before the equinoctial point coincided with any of the degrees of Aries, that constellation was the leader of the Zodiacal series—inasmuch as the month Bar zig-gar (Accadian) the “Sacrifice of righteousness,” that is, the month when the sun was in conjunction with Aries, always in the tablets appears as the 1st month of the year.[52]

[52] This fact is admitted (see art. “Zodiac,” sub-heading “first sign,” Encyclopædia Britannica). But it is a fact opposed to the hitherto received opinion touching the necessary connexion of the equinoctial point and of the initial point of the Zodiac. “A prehistoric reform” of the calendar is supposed, and corrections of the ancient texts to suit this reform, are suggested. Until traces of such reform and corrections can be shown to exist, the evidence of the tablets may still be cited as pointing to a year counted from the sun’s entry into Aries, in the earliest ages of Babylonian civilization.

These late revelations of archæology seem to strike at the root of the main arguments relied on by the advocates of the Grecian and modern origin of astronomic science in India; and this being the case, it is possible to turn with unbiassed minds to a consideration of the teachings of Sanscrit literature, and endeavour to learn from them what is the real truth as to the acquaintance of ancient Indian authors with the figures of the Zodiac and other astronomic phenomena.

The opinion has been very generally adopted, as has been said, that in the Rig Veda there is no mention of any of the twelve figures of the Solar Zodiac. Some few writers have contended that occasional references to these figures are to be met with, and this question has been argued on etymological grounds. My entire ignorance of the Sanscrit language prevents me from at all following the arguments employed in this discussion. And here it may be said, and said with good reason, that for the discussion of points connected with Vedic literature, writers ignorant of the language in which the Vedas were composed are but ill equipped for the task. At every step I keenly feel my own disqualifications; but many translations and commentaries on the Rig Veda are in existence; and without entering into etymological questions, it has seemed to me that broad astronomic explanations of some of the myths might be supplied, if only the possibility of the Vedic Rishis having been acquainted with the strange figures of the celestial sphere should be admitted. In this paper I am anxious to draw the attention of those who can study Vedic texts in their original language to these possible explanations. Those only who know Sanscrit are really qualified to judge finally whether the suggestions here made can be sustained on further enquiry into the Vedas. If the interpretations of Vedic myths here proposed are correct—no doubt corroboration will be found for them in the Sanscrit names and epithets of mythic personages. If no such corroborations are to be met with, the probabilities in favour of the correctness of the astronomic interpretations will be greatly diminished.

But to return to our subject. It is sometimes argued that the Vedic bards could not have been acquainted with the twelve-fold division of the Zodiac, as otherwise these great constellations would surely have claimed at their hands clear and outspoken notice. With this argument I cannot fully agree. Even before pointing out the important place which I believe astronomical phenomena hold in the Rig Veda, I would draw attention to the fact that according to the generally received and non-astronomic explanation of the myths, it is necessary to suppose that still more striking and important natural phenomena than those connected with the constellations of the Zodiac—phenomena with which the Vedic bards must certainly have been acquainted—were almost entirely ignored by the authors of the Rig Veda. It is true that some great scholars claim on linguistic grounds a solar origin for much Vedic imagery and nomenclature; yet when the hymns are examined in translations, and the notes and commentaries which accompany these translations are studied, the impression left on the mind of any reader unacquainted with Sanscrit must be that very little attention or honour is given to sun, moon, or stars, in comparison to that so freely lavished on the elements of fire, air and water, and on the mysterious properties of the juice of the Soma plant.

The beauty of the dawn is almost the only celestial glory that appears to appeal with any insistence to the imaginations of the Vedic Rishis.

If out of the more than one thousand hymns of the Rig Veda, not one is addressed to the moon, and on the most liberal calculation considerably less than a hundred to the sun, under any aspect, it need not be cause for wonder if the constellations of the Zodiac are not remembered. The poets of the Rig Veda, however ignorant of astronomy, and at whatever age they lived, must have sometimes lifted their eyes above the sacrificial fire and its smoke, above the rain and storm-clouds, above their altars and libations of Soma. They must have often seen “the sun when it shined” and “the moon walking in brightness,” and if they so rarely hymned these great luminaries with whose appearance and existence they so certainly were acquainted, it would prove no ignorance on their part of the twelve-fold division of the Zodiac and its quaintly imagined figures, were it indeed the case that all mention of these figures is absent from the Rig Veda.

But as has been stated above, my desire is to draw attention to possible astronomic interpretations of many of the Vedic myths, and the adoption of such interpretations would necessarily entail a reversal of the dictum that all mention of the twelve-fold Zodiac is absent from the Rig Veda.