Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/201

Rh or the lunar mansions, is also recognized, and some of the constellations of the lunar mansions are named. It would appear from this that the Nakshatras were observed and named in the Vedic Age, but it was in the later period that the lunar zodiac was finally settled.

As might be expected, considerable progress was made in the Brahmanic Period. Astronomy had now come to be regarded as a distinct science, and astronomers by profession were called Nakshatra Darsa and Ganaka. The twenty-eight lunar mansions are also enumerated in the Black Yajur-Veda, and a second and later enumeration occurs in the Atharva Samhita and in the Taittiriya Brahmana, while sacrificial rites were regulated by the position of the moon with reference to these lunar asterisms.

Besides astronomy, other branches of learning were also cultivated in the Brahmanic and Epic Period. Thus in the Chhandogya Upanishad we find Narada saying to Sanatkumara, "I know the Rig-Veda, sir, the Yajur-Veda, the Sanaa-Veda, as the fourth the Atharvana, as the fifth the Itihasa Purana, the Veda of the Vedas (grammar); the Pitrya (rules for sacrifices for the ancestors); the Rasi (the science of numbers); the Daiva (the science of portents); the Nidhi (the science of time); the Vakovakya (logic); the Ekayana (ethics); the Deva Vidya (etymology); the Brahma Vidya (pronunciation, prosody, and similar subjects); the Bhuta Vidya (the science of demons); the Kshatra Vidya (the science of weapons); the Nakshatra Vidya