Ancient calendars and constellations

by Emmeline M. Plunket

For the interpretation of the Vedic hymns to the Aswins I would make the provisional suggestion, that when these hymns were composed, the year was so counted from the new moon following and not from that preceding the arrival of the sun at “the end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.” In support of this provisional theory, let us first read the summing up of the Aswinī myths, and of the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding them, according to the present modes of explanation; and then let us consider the astronomic method of interpretation above proposed.

We read that[76] “Next to Indra, Agni, and Soma, the twin deities named the Aśvins are the most prominent in the Rig Veda, judged by the frequency with which they are invoked. They are celebrated in more than fifty entire hymns and in parts of several others, while their name occurs more than 400 times. Though they hold a distinct position among the deities of light and their appellation is Indian, their connexion with any definite phenomenon of light is so obscure, that their original nature has been a puzzle to Vedic interpreters from the earliest times. This obscurity makes it probable that the origin of these gods is to be sought in a pre-Vedic period.... The Aśvins are young, the T. S. (Taittirīya Sanhitâ) even describing them as the youngest of the gods. They are at the same time ancient. They are bright, lords of lustre, of golden brilliancy, and honey-hued.... They possess profound wisdom and occult power. The two most distinctive and frequent epithets of the Aśvins are dasra, ‘wondrous,’ which is almost entirely limited to them, and nāsatya, which is generally explained to mean ‘not untrue....’ Their car ... moves round heaven. It traverses heaven and earth in a single day as the car of the sun and that of Uṣas (the Dawn) are also said to do.... The time of their appearance is often said to be the early dawn, when ‘darkness still stands among the ruddy cows’ and they yoke their car to descend to earth and receive the offerings of worshippers. Uṣas (the Dawn) awakes them. They follow after Uṣas in their car. At the yoking of their car Uṣas is born. Thus their relative time seems to have been between dawn and sunrise. But Savitṛ (the sun) is once said to set their car in motion before the dawn. Occasionally the appearance of the Aśvins, the kindling of the sacrificial fire, the break of dawn, and sunrise seem to be spoken of as simultaneous. The Aśvins are invoked to come to the offering not only at their natural time, but also in the evening or at morning, noon, and sunset.... In the A. B. (Aitareya Brahmana) the Aśvins as well as Uṣas and Agni are stated to be gods of dawn; and in the Vedic ritual they are connected with sunrise.... The Aśvins may originally have been conceived as finding and restoring or rescuing the vanished light of the sun. In the Rig Veda they have come to be typically succouring divinities.” ... Again, at p. 51, the writer adds, “Quite a number of legends illustrating the succouring power of the Aśvins are referred to in the Rig Veda.” Here follows an enumeration of many miraculous “protections,” and cures,—and then[77] “The opinion of Bergaigne and others that the various miracles attributed to the Aśvins are anthropomorphized forms of solar phenomena (the healing of the blind man thus meaning the release of the sun from darkness), seems to lack probability. At the same time the legend of Atri may be a reminiscence of a myth explaining the restoration of the vanished sun. As to the physical basis of the Aśvins, the language of the Ṛṣis is so vague that they themselves do not seem to have understood what phenomenon these deities represented ... what they actually represented puzzled even the oldest commentators mentioned by Yāska. That scholar remarks that some regarded them (the Aśvins) as Heaven and Earth (as does the S. B.—Satapatha Brahmana), others as Day and Night, others as sun and moon, while the ‘legendary writers’ took them to be ‘two kings, performers of holy acts.’ Yāska’s own opinion is obscure.”

[76] Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 49.

[77] Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 53.

In contrast to all these vague and often contradictory explanations, the astronomical suggestion made at [page 137] may to some appear too matter-of-fact and prosaic. But that a firm and scientific base should underlie mythical and imaginative similes does not in reality detract from their poetic excellence. Indeed, an added fitness, and therefore an added beauty, is to be recognized in the Aswin hymns, when we can think of them as addressed to well-known and beneficent deities presiding over the new year—deities who manifested themselves in the earliest dawn of the new year’s morning under the form of two beautiful and easily to be recognised stars, and to whom their worshippers appealed for “protection,” through the unknown dangers of the future year.

I give two diagrams to illustrate the fact that the time of the rising of the stars α and β Arietis must necessarily, on such a new year’s festival as above proposed, have taken place in some years before the first intimation of dawn, in others a few minutes before the time of sunrise.

It is of course to be borne in mind that the Vedic years were luni-solar. The actual point therefore on the ecliptic at which the conjunction of sun and moon-or new moon-took place, and from which each year was counted, varied in different years to the extent of nearly 30 degrees. The diagram, [Plate XII.] Figs. 1 and 2, represents the maximum and minimum distance between the rising of the Yoga stars of the Nakshatra Aswinī, and of the sun on the 15th or full-moon’s day of the first month of a luni-solar year; counted from the first conjunction of sun and moon following the sun’s arrival at the “end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.”

PLATE XII.

The Vedic Aswins and the Indian Calendar.