Page:Durga Puja - With Notes and Illustrations.djvu/25

 the months and the asterisms coincided, and when Suratha (the sun) might be regarded as having been born in the ace of Chitra one of the asterisms in Virgo (a Virginis) the star which first appeared above the horizon on the evening of the first of Baisakha, the commencement of the year. The authors of the Sastras might have also had the idea of the junction of the sun in a. Virginis, with the moon in Asvini a. Areitis as the proper moment for commencing the year and all calculations of the Hindu calendar. The Hindus have divided the path of the sun in the heavens into twelve signs or compartments of the zodiac. These signs of the zodiac are occupied by twenty-seven asterisms or mansions of the moon, and the months of the Hindu year have been named after the mansions, in which the full moon of the solar month is supposed to take place. In the hypothetical conjunction the full moon is supposed to have happened in the lunar mansion Asvini, when the sun was in Aries. But at that time the rule of naming the month after the position of the full moon in the asterism was not known, and hence the period of the sun's stay in Aries was called by some name other than Asvina. The Vaidic names of the months (for masa or month literally means the measure of the moon and is derived from the satellite) or more accurately of the periods of the sun's stay in the twelve signs of the zodiac are Agrahyana, Taisha, Sahas, Tapasya, Madhu, Madhava, Sukra &c., and not Margasirsa, Pausha, Magha &c.

Usha the goddess Dawn, plays a most important part in the Rig Veda. "She goes to every house, she thinks of the dwelling of man, she does not despise the small or the