Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/399

Rh sacred fire that constantly burnt in their houses; and as they were not only the sacrificers of the community but were also its time-keepers, these two functions appear to have blended into one by assigning the commencement of the several sacrifices to the leading days of the year on the natural ground that if the sacrifices were to be performed, they must be performed on the principal days of the year. Samvatsara and Yajna therefore came to be regarded as convertible terms.

Let us now examine the principal parts of the year alias the sacrifice. The Savana or the civil day, as its etymology shows, was selected as the natural unit of time. 30 such days made a month and 12 such months or 360 Savana days made a year. Now, a month of 30 civil or savana days cannot correspond with a lunar synodical month and so a day in some of the Savana months was required to be omitted to secure the concurrence of the civil and lunar months. The year of 360 Savana days was thus practically reduced to a lunar year of 354 civil days or 360 tithis. But a further correction was necessary to adjust the lunar with the solar reckoning of time. The commencement of the cycle of the seasons was, therefore, the only means to correct the calender and the ancient Aryans hit upon the device of the intercalary days or month for the purpose.

It appears that the early Vedic priests were ignorant of the motion of the equinoxes. The early Aryans must have determined the position of the sun in the ecliptic by observing, every morning, the fixed star nearest to it. Under such system, the year would naturally be over when the sun returned to the