Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/19

 from the first lunation after new moon, but in spring it lasts only for four days ending on the tenth lunation from pratipada. The Autumnal festival again, though reckoned in the Sastras as the later of the two, is performed in a more elaborate manner than the Vernal. The year of the early Hindus commenced with the Vernal Equinox, and the signs of the Zodiac together with the constellations or groups of stars, which compose them, have their beginning according to Hindu calculation in the Vernal Equinox, the moment of the commencement of the sun's ascension to the northern hemisphere or the region of the gods; and the inhabitants of that hemisphere possibly thought of celebrating the festival in honour of Virgo at the time of the Vernal Equinox, which it might be supposed was in earlier days none other than α. Virginis. Owing to the retrograde motion in space of the solar system as regards its position in relation to the fixed stars, in other words, owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes the equinoctial points have gradually retrograded and changed places. In the hypothetical days when the sun was in the constellation Virgo the spring possibly prevailed, and when in Aries the autumn took possession of the earth.

Next, it might be asked whether the spring festival had the precedence of the autumnal, because in the ruder days of astronomical science the group of stars forming Virgo, visible in the evenings of spring, first attracted the notice of the observing, and suggested the idea of worshipping tangible representations of the same, and thus gave rise to the Vasantotsava or Vasanti Puja, which was first