Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/1023

Rh denoted a necklace of twenty-seven pearls, and the fundamental equality of the parts was figured in an ancient legend, by the compulsion laid upon King Soma (the Moon) to share his time impartially between all his wives, the twenty-seven daughters of Prajápati. Everything points to a native origin for the system of nakshatras. Some were named after exclusively Vedic deities; they formed the basis of the sacrificial calendar of the Brahmins; the old Indian names of the months were derived from them; their existence was pre-supposed in the entire structure of Hindu ritual and science. They do not, however, obtain full recognition in Sanskrit literature until the Brāhmana period (7th or 8th century ). The Rig-Veda contains only one allusion to them, where it is said that “Soma is placed in the lap of the nakshatras”; and this is in a part including later interpolations.

Positive proof of the high antiquity of the Hindu lunar zodiac is nevertheless afforded by the undoubted fact that the primitive series opened with Krittikā (the Pleiades) as the sign of the vernal equinox. The arrangement would have been correct about 2300 ; it would scarcely have been possible after 1800 We find nowhere else a well-authenticated zodiacal sequence corresponding to so early a date. The reform by which Krittikā, now relegated to the third place, was superseded as the head of the series by “Açvini” was accomplished under Greek influence somewhere near the beginning of the Christian era. For purposes of ritual, however, the Pleiades, with Agni or “Fire” as their presiding deity, continued to be the first sign. Hindu astronomy received its first definite organization in the 6th century, with results embodied in the Sūrya-Siddhanta. Here the “signs” and the “constellations” of the lunar zodiac form two essentially distinct systems. The ecliptic is divided into twenty-seven equal parts, called bhogas or arcs, of 800′ each. But the nakshatras are twenty-eight, and are represented by as many “junction stars” (yogātāra), carefully determined by their spherical co-ordinates. The successive entries of the moon and planets into the nakshatras (the ascertainment of which was of great astrological importance) were fixed by means of their conjunctions with the yogātāras. These, however, soon ceased to be observed, and already in the 11th century, al-Bīrūnī could meet with no Hindu astronomer capable of pointing out to him the complete series. Their successful identification by Colebrooke in 1807 had a purely archaeological interest. The modern nakshatras are twenty-seven equal elliptical divisions, the origin of which shifts, like that of the solar signs, with the vernal equinox. They are, in fact, the bhogas of the Sūrya-Siddhānta. The mean place of the moon in them, published in all Hindu almanacs, is found to serve unexceptionally the ends of astral vaticination.

The system upon which it is founded is of great antiquity. Belief in the power of the nakshatras evidently inspired the invocations of them in the Atharva-Veda. In the Brāhmana period they were distinguished as “deva” and “yama,” the fourteen lucky aster isms being probably associated with the waxing, the fourteen unlucky with the waning moon. A special nakshatra was appropriated to every occurrence of life. One was propitious to marriage, another to entrance upon school-life, a third to the first ploughing, a fourth to laying the foundation of a house. Festivals for the dead were appointed to be held under those that included but one star. Propitiatory abstinences were recommended when the natal asterism was menaced by unfavourable planetary conjunctions. The various members of the body were parcelled out among the nakshatras, and a rotation of food was prescribed as a wholesome accompaniment of the moon’s revolution among them.

The nomenclature of the Hindu signs of the zodiac, save as regards a few standard aster isms, such as Açvini and Krittikā, was far from uniform. Considerable discrepancies occur in the lists given by different authorities. Hence it is not surprising to meet in them evidence of foreign communications. Reminiscences of the Greek signs of Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, Capricornus and Pisces are obvious severally in the Hindu Two Faces, Lion’s Tail, Beam of a Balance, Arrow, Gazelle’s Head (figured as a marine nondescript) and Fish. The correspondence does not, however, extend to the stars; and some coincidences adverted to by Humboldt between the nakshatras and the zodiacal animals of Central Asia are of the same nominal character. Mexican loans are more remarkable. They were apparently direct as well as indirect. The Aztec calendar includes nakshatra titles borrowed, not only through the medium of the Tatar zodiac, but likewise straight from the Indian scheme, apart from any known intervention. The “three footprints of Vishnu,” for example, unmistakably gave its name to the Mexican day Ollin, signifying the “track of the sun”; and both series further contain a “flint weapon,” a “stick,” and a “house.” Several houses and couches were ranged along the Hindu zodiac with the naive idea of providing resting-places for the wandering moon.

Relative Antiquity of Hindu, Chinese and Arabian Systems.— Relationship of a more intimate kind connects the Hindu lunar mansions with those of the Arabs and Chinese. The resemblance between the three systems is indeed so close that it has been assumed, almost as axiomatic, that they must have been framed from a single model. It appears nevertheless to have become tolerably clear that the nakshatras were both native to India, and the sieu to China, but that the manāzil were mainly of Indian derivation. The assertion, paradoxical at first sight, that the twenty-eight “hostelries” of the Chinese sphere had nothing to do with the moon’s daily motion, seems to convey the actual fact. Their number, as a multiple of four, was prescribed by the quaternary partition of the heavens, fundamental in Chinese astronomy. It was considered by Biot to have been originally twenty-four, but to have been enlarged to twenty-eight about 1100, by the addition of determinants for the solstices and equinoxes of that period. The essential difference, however, between the nakshatras and the sieu is that the latter were equatorial, not elliptical, divisions. They were measured by the meridian-passages of the limiting stars, and varied in amplitude from 2° 42′ to 30° 24′. The use of the specially observed stars constituting or representing the sieu was as points of reference for the movements of sun, moon and planets. They served, in fact, and still serve (though with astrological ends in view), the precise purpose of “fundamental stars” in European astronomy. All that is certainly known about the antiquity of the sieu is that they were well established in the 3rd century Their initial point at the autumnal equinox marked by Kio (Spica Virginis) suits a still later date; and there is no valid evidence that the modern series resulted from the rectification of an older superannuated arrangement, analogous to the Krittikā sequence of nakshatras. The Hindu zodiacal constellations belong then to an earlier epoch than the Chinese “stations,” such as they have been transmitted to our acquaintance. Yet not only were the latter hn independent invention, but it is almost demonstrable, that the nakshatras, in their more recent organization, were, as far as possible, assimilated to them. The whole system of junction stars was doubtless an imitation of the sieu; the choice of them by the Hindu astronomers of the 6th century was plainly instigated by a consideration of the Chinese list, compiled with a widely different intent. Where they varied from it, some intelligible reason can generally be assigned for the change. Eight junction stars lie quite close to, seven others are actually identical with, Chinese determinants; and many of these coincidences