It is unnecessary now to further pursue the pros and cons of what
has hitherto been said and written on the vexed questions as to the
originality and antiquity of astronomy in India, and especially as to
the Indian acquaintance with the twelve-fold divisions of the Zodiac,
and the date of the fixation of the initial point in their Zodiac. We
have seen that by the majority the Grecian and modern theory is the
favoured one.

Within the last quarter of a century, however, an unexpected
reinforcement has come into the field, in aid of the disheartened and
nearly silenced minority, who still believe in a great antiquity for
the science of astronomy in India.

The researches of archæologists in Western Asia have of late brought
to our knowledge vast hoards of information concerning the ancient
inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria, and the surrounding highlands
and plains; amongst other matters, concerning the science of astronomy
possessed by these peoples.

In 1874, a Paper entitled _The Astronomy and Astrology of the
Babylonians_ was read by Professor Sayce before the “Society of
Biblical Archæology,” and since that date other Papers, by various
authors, dealing with the subject have appeared in the same Society’s
_Proceedings_. Also in the _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, articles
have been contributed by such writers as Epping and Strassmaier,
Oppert, Mayer, Mahler, Jensen, Lehmann, and others, in which the
calendars and astronomical methods in use in Mesopotamia are discussed.

Epping and Strassmaier’s _Astronomisches aus Babylon_ and Jensen’s _Die
Kosmologie der Babylonier_, are important volumes devoted to these same
matters.

Whatever else concerning the subject of all these writings remains
uncertain and open to discussion, some facts are clearly established.
We now know that the inhabitants of Babylonia in a remote age
(certainly as early as the fourth millenium B.C.) were acquainted with
the twelve divisions of the Zodiac, and that these divisions were
imagined under figures closely resembling in almost every instance
those now depicted on our celestial globes. The calendar used by
the Accadians, and later by the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians,
was indeed based on the observance of the Zodiacal constellations
and of the journeyings through them of the sun and moon. The varying
positions of the planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
are also noted by references to the Zodiacal asterisms: and not only
Zodiacal, but several of the extra-Zodiacal ancient constellations are
represented on the monuments.

All this information gained from the cuneiform tablets concerning
the science of astronomy in Western Asia must undoubtedly affect the
judgment of enquirers into the history of the same science in India.

Now that it is clearly proved that 3,000 B.C. and earlier the
twelve-fold fanciful signs of the Solar Zodiac were known to the
inhabitants of Babylonia, it cannot any longer be asserted dogmatically
that the inhabitants of India must have waited till 300 B.C. to learn
this twelve-fold division from Grecian astronomers after the date of
Alexander’s conquest.

But again as regards the fixation of the initial point of the
distinctively Indian Lunar Zodiac, or circle of the Nakshatras, at the
“end of Revatî, and the beginning of Açvinî,” that is to say, at a
point not far from the first degree of Aries--cuneiform tablets teach
us the important fact that long before the equinoctial point coincided
with any of the degrees of Aries, that constellation was the leader of
the Zodiacal series--inasmuch as the month Bar zig-gar (Accadian) the
“Sacrifice of righteousness,” that is, the month when the sun was in
conjunction with Aries, always in the tablets appears as the 1st month
of the year.[52]

  [52] This fact is admitted (see art. “Zodiac,” sub-heading “first
  sign,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_). But it is a fact opposed to
  the hitherto received opinion touching the necessary connexion of
  the equinoctial point and of the initial point of the Zodiac. “A
  prehistoric reform” of the calendar is supposed, and corrections of
  the ancient texts to suit this reform, are suggested. Until traces
  of such reform and corrections can be shown to exist, the evidence
  of the tablets may still be cited as pointing to a year counted
  from the sun’s entry into Aries, in the earliest ages of Babylonian
  civilization.

These late revelations of archæology seem to strike at the root of the
main arguments relied on by the advocates of the Grecian and modern
origin of astronomic science in India; and this being the case, it
is possible to turn with unbiassed minds to a consideration of the
teachings of Sanscrit literature, and endeavour to learn from them what
is the real truth as to the acquaintance of ancient Indian authors with
the figures of the Zodiac and other astronomic phenomena.

The opinion has been very generally adopted, as has been said, that
in the Rig Veda there is no mention of any of the twelve figures of
the Solar Zodiac. Some few writers have contended that occasional
references to these figures are to be met with, and this question
has been argued on etymological grounds. My entire ignorance of the
Sanscrit language prevents me from at all following the arguments
employed in this discussion. And here it may be said, and said with
good reason, that for the discussion of points connected with Vedic
literature, writers ignorant of the language in which the Vedas were
composed are but ill equipped for the task. At every step I keenly feel
my own disqualifications; but many translations and commentaries on
the Rig Veda are in existence; and without entering into etymological
questions, it has seemed to me that broad astronomic explanations
of some of the myths might be supplied, if only the possibility of
the Vedic Rishis having been acquainted with the strange figures of
the celestial sphere should be admitted. In this paper I am anxious
to draw the attention of those who can study Vedic texts in their
original language to these possible explanations. Those only who know
Sanscrit are really qualified to judge finally whether the suggestions
here made can be sustained on further enquiry into the Vedas. If the
interpretations of Vedic myths here proposed are correct--no doubt
corroboration will be found for them in the Sanscrit names and epithets
of mythic personages. If no such corroborations are to be met with,
the probabilities in favour of the correctness of the astronomic
interpretations will be greatly diminished.

But to return to our subject. It is sometimes argued that the Vedic
bards could not have been acquainted with the twelve-fold division
of the Zodiac, as otherwise these great constellations would surely
have claimed at their hands clear and outspoken notice. With this
argument I cannot fully agree. Even before pointing out the important
place which I believe astronomical phenomena hold in the Rig Veda,
I would draw attention to the fact that according to the generally
received and non-astronomic explanation of the myths, it is necessary
to suppose that still more striking and important natural phenomena
than those connected with the constellations of the Zodiac--phenomena
with which the Vedic bards must certainly have been acquainted--were
almost entirely ignored by the authors of the Rig Veda. It is true that
some great scholars claim on linguistic grounds a solar origin for
much Vedic imagery and nomenclature; yet when the hymns are examined
in translations, and the notes and commentaries which accompany these
translations are studied, the impression left on the mind of any reader
unacquainted with Sanscrit must be that very little attention or honour
is given to sun, moon, or stars, in comparison to that so freely
lavished on the elements of fire, air and water, and on the mysterious
properties of the juice of the Soma plant.

The beauty of the dawn is almost the only celestial glory that appears
to appeal with any insistence to the imaginations of the Vedic Rishis.

If out of the more than one thousand hymns of the Rig Veda, not one is
addressed to the moon, and on the most liberal calculation considerably
less than a hundred to the sun, under any aspect, it need not be cause
for wonder if the constellations of the Zodiac are not remembered.
The poets of the Rig Veda, however ignorant of astronomy, and at
whatever age they lived, must have sometimes lifted their eyes above
the sacrificial fire and its smoke, above the rain and storm-clouds,
above their altars and libations of Soma. They must have often seen
“the sun when it shined” and “the moon walking in brightness,” and if
they so rarely hymned these great luminaries with whose appearance
and existence they so certainly were acquainted, it would prove no
ignorance on their part of the twelve-fold division of the Zodiac and
its quaintly imagined figures, were it indeed the case that all mention
of these figures is absent from the Rig Veda.

But as has been stated above, my desire is to draw attention to
possible astronomic interpretations of many of the Vedic myths,
and the adoption of such interpretations would necessarily entail a
reversal of the dictum that all mention of the twelve-fold Zodiac is
absent from the Rig Veda.

Those who have studied this wonderful and mysterious collection of
hymns most constantly and deeply are obliged to confess that it is
still very imperfectly understood, and though it is agreed unanimously
that the Gods of the Veda are personifications of the phenomena of
nature, yet as to the exact phenomena underlying the various Vedic
myths there is among scholars much difference of opinion. It is
impossible not to feel in reading the hymns and the many speculations,
notes, and comments appended to them, that notwithstanding all the
labour and research bestowed on the work, much of this ancient Veda
still remains a cypher, for the right understanding of which the modern
reader does not possess the key.

Guided by the teachings of archæology, I now make the suggestion that
the key to this cypher may perhaps be found in crediting the authors
of the Veda with a somewhat advanced knowledge of astronomy, and an
acquaintance with the, to us, apparently fanciful constellations of the
celestial sphere and Zodiac; and in assuming that the figures of the
“ancient constellations” often supplied the basis of Vedic imagery.

To pursue this possible clue towards the understanding of the myths, it
were much to be desired that all students should be acquainted with the
names and positions in the heavens of the forty-five constellations--so
well distinguished by the epithet “ancient”--and that they should
master some of the more easily observed conditions of their diurnal
and annual apparent movements, as also those of the sun and moon,
and further that they should have learnt what changes in the scenery
of the heavens have been brought about by the slow movement known to
astronomers as the “precession of the equinoxes.”

Classical and philological scholars have however so rarely time and
attention to spare from their own intensely interesting and important
studies that as a rule astronomical phenomena are not much observed or
considered by them. The accompanying diagrams drawn from a celestial
precessional globe may, it is hoped, enable those, who have not as
yet devoted thought to such subjects, to judge for themselves of the
reasonableness or otherwise of the following astronomic suggestions
concerning the most important of the Vedic gods.

According to A. A. Macdonell--who in his late work _Vedic Mythology_
has summed up clearly and compendiously the opinions of a host of
scholars on the nature of the Vedic gods--Indra is the favourite
national god of the Rig Veda; he is celebrated in 250 hymns, a greater
number than that “devoted to any other god, and very nearly one-fourth
of the total number of hymns in the Rig Veda.”[53]

  [53] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 54.

What may be called the central myths related of Indra, stripped of all
epithet and ornament, relate that, invigorated by copious draughts of
Soma, Indra fights with, overcomes, and drives from heaven and earth
a demon called Vritra or Ahi, who is represented under the form of a
dragon, serpent or water snake. Indra also searches for, finds, and
releases cows which had been stolen from the gods (or according to
some commentators, from the angirasas, or priests). Indra bestows on
his worshippers all the blessings of plenty, especially he is the
dispenser of rain.

According to the usual non-astronomic explanations of these myths,
Indra, an “atmospheric god,”[54] is “primarily the thunder god” who
conquers “the demons of drought or darkness,” or again, “Indra[55] is
a personification of the phenomena of the firmament, particularly in
the capacity of sending down rain. This property is metaphorically
described as a conflict with the clouds which are reluctant to
part with their watery stores until assailed and penetrated by the
thunder-bolt of Indra; ... the cloud is personified as a demon named
Ahi or Vritra ... a popular myth represents him (Indra) also as the
discoverer and rescuer of the cows, either of the priests or of the
gods which had been stolen by an _Asura_ named Pan̂i or Vala.”

  [54] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 66.

  [55] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Introduction, pp. xxx.-xxxi.

Macdonell, alluding to the same incident, observes:[56] These “cows
released by Indra may, in many cases, refer to the waters, for we
have seen that the latter are occasionally compared with lowing
cows. Thus Indra is said to have found the cows for man when he slew
the dragon.... But the cows may also in other cases be conceived as
connected with Indra’s winning of light, for the ruddy beams of dawn
issuing from the blackness of night are compared with cattle coming out
of their dark stalls. Again, though clouds play no great part in the
Rig Veda under their literal name (_abhra_, etc.), it can hardly be
denied that, as containing the waters, they figure mythologically to
a considerable extent under the name of cow (_go_), as well as udder
(_ūdhar_) ... thus the rain-clouds are probably meant when it is said
that the cows roared at the birth of Indra.”

  [56] _Vedic Mythology_, p. 59.

At the close of the section devoted to Indra, Macdonell refers to
the probably pre-Vedic origin of the Indra myths. He says:[57] “The
name of Indra occurs only twice in the Avesta. Beyond the fact of his
being no god, but only a demon, his character there is uncertain.
Indra’s distinctive Vedic epithet _vrtrahan_ [Vritra-slayer] also
occurs in the Avesta in the form of _verethraghna_, which is, however,
unconnected with Indra or the thunderstorm myth, designating merely
the God of Victory. Thus it is probable that the Indo-Iranian period
possessed a god approaching to the Vedic form of the Vrtra-slaying
Indra. It is even possible that beside the thundering god of heaven,
the Indo-European period may have known as a distinct conception a
thunder-god, gigantic in size, a mighty eater and drinker, who slays
the dragon with his lightning bolt.”

  [57] _Vedic Mythology_, p. 66.

In reading the Indra hymns in the Veda, and in trying to fit them to
the explanation given in the passages quoted, a constant and very
disagreeable strain is put on the imagination; it must, for instance,
attempt to grasp and hold, at the same time, two very far apart
opinions as to the nature of the demon Vritra. Vritra is to be thought
of as a demon of darkness, and as a demon of drought; the cows are
clouds, they are also ruddy beams of light!

Darkness and drought are not to be easily bracketed together. Drought
is in all lands, India not excepted, connected with a long continuance
of bright and stainless skies. The appearance then of a little cloud
“like a man’s hand” is the joyously hailed precursor of “the sound of
abundance of rain.”

Again, the driving away of a snake-like cloud is no forcible simile by
which to describe in myth the advent of rain in India--rain which to be
of any use is no mere refreshing shower, but a long-continued downpour
from clouds not hastily dispersed.

Indra’s action first in driving away the cloud-demon Vritra, and then
in seeking for the beneficial cloud cows, is also contradictory.

For the reconciling of many of these contradictions the astronomic
interpretation of the Indra-Vritra myths is as follows:--Indra may
still retain all his atmospheric attributes of sending down rain
but--_Indra is primarily and essentially a personification of the
summer solstice_.

The summer solstice in India is an all-important agricultural epoch; it
brings with it “the rainy season,” the real spring of the Indian year.
Before this season all the land is parched and arid, and vegetation is
at a standstill.

The punctuality of the rains in many parts of India is so exact that
the farmer foretells their arrival not only to the day, but to the
hour. In good years heavy and almost incessant rain lasts for two or
even three months. Indra, as a personification of the season which
so punctually brings the rain, is an atmospheric god, the enemy of
the demon of drought. But Indra is more than this: many praises are
bestowed on Indra in the Rig Veda for deeds which cannot easily be
explained on the simple atmospheric theory. “Indra is the highest
of all” is the refrain of many Vedic verses; “Indra placed the sun
high in the sky,” “Indra tore off one wheel of the sun’s chariot,”
“Indra stopped the tawny coursers of the sun.” Now all these phrases
are at once and clearly to be interpreted if we think of Indra as
the personification of the summer solstice, and especially of the
solstice in India, where at that season of the year the sun attains to
the very zenith, and thus Indra associated with the _sun_ under one
figure of speech is spoken of as “highest of all,” and in a slightly
varied figure associated with the _season_, is said to have “_placed_
the sun high in the sky.” Or again translating into myth the very
meaning of the word solstice or “_the sun being made to stand_,” we
read that Indra “tore off the wheel of the chariot of the sun,” and
“stopped his tawny coursers.” Indra is, I cannot but believe, not
merely an atmospheric god; he is the god of the summer solstice. And
if this should be the case, what then may Vritra be? Is the demon of
the solstitial Indra personified as only a snake-like cloud? It is
impossible to think so. The astronomic interpretation of the myth I
would propose is that--_a snake-like constellation_, not a snake-like
cloud, is the representation of the demon Vritra.

On the celestial sphere many serpents and dragons are represented, but
the far-reaching constellation Hydra exceeds all the others in its
enormous length from head to tail. No very brilliant stars mark the
asterism, nor in the grouping of its stars is there anything especially
snake-like. For some reason other than its appeal to the eye did
astronomers of old invest with all the horrors of the Hydra-form the
monotonous length of this space on the vault of the skies.

This reason may be arrived at, with almost certainty, in studying, with
the help of a precessional globe, the position in the heavens of this
constellation in different ages of the world’s history. So studying, we
shall find that 4,000 B.C.--or to be more precise, one or two hundred
years earlier--Hydra extended its enormous length for more than 90°
symmetrically along one astronomically important (though invisible)
mathematical line--the line of the heavenly equator--and was at the
same date accurately bisected by another equally important mathematical
line, namely the colure of the summer solstice (see Plate IX.).

Almost irresistibly, as it appears to me, the conviction forces itself
on the mind, in considering the position held by the constellation
Hydra 4,000 B.C., that it was at that date that this baleful figure was
first traced in imagination on the sky, there fitly to represent the
power of physical (and may we not suppose also, of moral?) darkness--a
great and terrible power--but a power ever and ever again to be
conquered by the victorious power of light. In astronomic myth this
power was represented as that of the sun at the season of its highest
culmination, the season of the summer solstice. For an observer in the
temperate northern zone all through the long nights of mid-winter, the
whole length of the dreadful Hydra was at the date named visible above
the horizon. The dark midwinter season was therefore the time of the
Hydra’s greatest glory. At every season of the year, except at that
of midsummer, some portion of the monster’s form was visible during
some part of the night. But at the summer solstice no star in the
constellation might show itself for ever so short a time.[58]

  [58] Plate IX. represents the constellations above the horizon, _but
  invisible at noon at the midsummer solstice_. It therefore represents
  those above the horizon, _and visible at midwinter midnight_.

[Illustration: PLATE IX.

Position of the Sun amongst the Constellations at Summer Solstice,
4,000 B.C. Observer in Lat. 40° N. Constellations between the lines H Z
and Z H invisible all through the night of Summer Solstice.

[_To face p. 118._]

The supposed latitude of the observer in Plate IX. is 40° N., a
latitude considerably to the north of any part of India; but it is to
be remembered that the Indra-Vritra myth cannot be claimed with any
certainty as a purely and originally Indian myth, for, as Macdonell
points out (as quoted above), there is a probability that “the
Indo-Iranian period possessed a god approaching to the Vedic form of
the Vrtra-slaying Indra,” and that “it is even possible that beside the
thundering god of heaven, the Indo-European period may have known as a
distinct conception a thunder-god, gigantic in size, a mighty eater and
drinker, who slays the dragon with his lightning bolt.”[59]

  [59] V. p. 114.

For the _origin_ of this world-wide myth, therefore, we should not
look to the tropical Indian Zone; but it is in Indian latitudes that
we should look for an explanation of the physical phenomena _hymned by
Vedic bards in the distinctly Indian development of the Indra-Vritra
myth_. I believe that in thus tracing the course of the Indra story
from temperate to tropical latitudes, we shall find a reason for the
contradictory attributes assigned to the demon Vritra, namely those of
darkness and drought.

In northern latitudes winter is distinctly the _dark_ season; in
tropical India there is little or no perceptible difference between
the darkness of winter and summer. But in India winter is distinctly
the dry season. Midsummer is the all-important season of the rains.
Indra’s conquest over Vritra, or the arrival of solstitial rains,
marked by the disappearance of the constellation Hydra from the sky,
was mythologically in the Vedas described as Indra’s conquest over the
demon of _drought_, but still traditionally--for the power of tradition
is great--even in India Indra retained the attributes of the conqueror
over the demon of _darkness_.

[Illustration: PLATE X.

Portion of Sun at Summer Solstice, 3,000 B.C. Observer in Lat. 23° N.

Constellations between the lines H H Z and Z H H invisible all through
the night of Summer Solstice.

[_To face p. 121._]

At Plate X. a drawing is given of the southern heavens and of the
constellations--invisible at midsummer and visible at midwinter, above
the horizon of an observer in latitude 23° N. at the date 3000 B.C.,
a thousand years later than the date referred to in Plate IX. For
reasons which will appear more clearly when we come to the discussion
of the Soma myth, it is to about this date that I would attribute the
composition of many of the Vedic hymns.

But if Indra is to be considered as representing the summer solstice,
and Vritra as representing the constellation Hydra, we must surely
expect some astronomic interpretation for Soma--Soma by which the
mighty Indra is invigorated and enabled to triumph gloriously over
the demon. According to non-astronomic explanations, “the concrete
terrestrial plant and the intoxicating juice extracted therefrom” are
considered to be the basis of the mythology of Soma. It is admitted
that in post-Vedic literature Soma is a regular name of the moon, which
is regarded as being drunk up by the gods, and so waning. Some writers
point to the possibility that even in the Rig Veda, “in the Soma hymns
there may occasionally lurk a veiled identification of ambrosia and the
moon, ... but on the whole, with the few exceptions generally admitted,
it appears to be certain that to the seers of the Rig Veda the god Soma
is a personification of the terrestrial plant and juice.”[60]

  [60] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 113.

One German writer, Hillebrandt, very strongly upholds the view that
Soma in the Rig Veda “often personifies the moon,”[61] and especially
according to him is this the case in the 114 hymns of Maṇḍala IX.,
all addressed to Soma pavamāna, or “purified Soma,” prepared for and
quaffed by Indra to invigorate him for the Vritra combat.

  [61] _Vedic Mythology_

That Soma in the Rig Veda is primarily the moon, and that the moon is
symbolized and always more or less directly referred to in the Vedic
hymns to Soma, fits in, as must be evident to the readers of this
paper, with the astronomic theories advocated in it. If we consider
that Indra’s conquest over Vritra represents the god of the summer
solstice, with his bright weapons, conquering, and driving from heaven
and earth the constellation Hydra, we can easily understand how in this
contest Indra might be strengthened by copious draughts of Soma, _i.e._
by the bright light of the full moon flooding the heavens with radiance
and enfeebling all but the brightest stars.

But a further confirmation of the lunar character of Soma, and an
elucidation of the imagery of the Soma pavamāna hymns of Maṇḍala
IX., are to be found if--still crediting the Vedic Rishis with a
knowledge of the ancient constellations--we study the position of these
constellations at the date 3,000 B.C. (see Plate XI.)[62] At that
date the full moon of the midsummer or solstitial season was always to
be observed in the constellation Aquarius. With this thought in our
mind as we read the mystical hymns of Maṇḍala IX., in which Soma is
so often described as rushing impetuously to the vase or pitcher, and
as surrounded by celestial waters, with many other such expressions,
we easily recognise an allusion to the _midsummer full moon in the
constellation Aquarius_; and when further we read the legend so
often repeated, that the eagle brought the Soma to Indra, or to the
sacrifice, we have only to look at the celestial globe to see the eagle
(Aquila) directing its flight towards the pitcher of Aquarius--and to
remember that the very night before the moon attained the celestial
vase, it would have been on the same meridian as the constellation
Aquila; and the imaginative Vedic bard might then describe it as borne
along by the eagle,--one of the most glorious constellations in that
part of the sky.

  [62] Lunar dates are variable. The full moon _nearest_ to the summer
  solstice might have been observed somewhat to the east or the west of
  its position in the diagram, but always in the constellation Aquarius.

[Illustration: PLATE XI.

Position of Moon amongst the Constellations at Summer Solstice, and of
the Sun at Winter Solstice, 3,000 B.C. Observer in Lat. 23° N.

[_To face p. 124._]

In one hymn especially devoted to the legend of the Soma-bearing eagle
(or hawk), allusion to the small but well-marked-out constellation
Sagitta (the arrow) may be detected. In Wilson’s translation of Maṇḍala
IV. 27 (vol. iii. p. 174), we read: “When the hawk screamed (with
exultation) on his descent from heaven, and (the guardians of the
_Soma_) perceived that the _Soma_ was (carried away) by it, then, the
archer Kriṣánu, pursuing with the speed of thought, and stringing his
bow, let fly an arrow against it.”

Now to turn to another important Vedic deity, Agni.

Agni is classed, according to Macdonell, amongst terrestrial gods,
but he points out that in some passages he is to be identified with
the sun. Wilson describes Agni as comprising[63] “the element of
_Fire_ under three aspects: 1^{st}, as it exists on earth, not only as
culinary or religious fire, but as the heat of digestion and of life,
and the vivifying principle of vegetation; 2^{nd}, as it exists in
the atmosphere, or mid-heaven, in the form of lightning; and 3^{rd},
as it is manifested in the heavens, as light, the sun, the dawn, and
planetary bodies.” And--having enumerated various deities who in the
hymns appear as manifestations of the sun--he adds, “still, however,
the sun does not hold that prominent place in the _Vaidik_ liturgy
which he seems to have done in that of the ancient Persians, and he is
chiefly venerated as the celestial representative of Fire.”

  [63] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Introduction, vol. i. pp. xxvii.-xxviii.

The classification of Agni as a terrestrial god, given by Macdonell,
and the order of his “aspects,” as given by Wilson, are not in
accordance with the theory here advocated, nor, according to Macdonell,
is it the classification or order always adhered to by Vedic
authorities.

For some very puzzling myths concerning Agni, I believe an astronomic
interpretation may be given, and thereby the position of Agni in the
_first_ place, rather than in the _last_, as a celestial god, may be
established.

  The Vedic deity Apām Napāt--the son of Waters, is classed by
  Macdonell as an atmospheric god, and he says,[64] “In the last
  stanza of the Apām napāt hymn, the deity is invoked as Agni, and
  must be identified with him,” and again,[65] “Agni’s origin in the
  aerial waters is often referred to. The ‘son of waters’ has, as has
  been shown, become a distinct deity.” Then turning to other legends
  regarding Agni he says, “In such passages the lightning form of
  Agni must be meant. Some of the later hymns of the Rig Veda tell a
  legend of Agni hiding in the waters and plants, and being found by
  the gods.... In one passage of the Rig Veda also it is stated that
  Agni rests in all streams; and in the later ritual texts, Agni in the
  waters is invoked in connexion with ponds and water-vessels. Thus,
  even in the oldest Vedic period, the waters in which Agni is latent,
  though not those from which he is produced, may in various passages
  have been regarded as terrestrial.... In any case the notion of Agni
  in the waters is prominent throughout the Vedas.”

  [64] _Vedic Mythology_, p. 70.

  [65] _Ibid._, p. 92.

To explain this legend, Wilson makes other suggestions. He writes:[66]
“The legend of his (Agni’s) hiding in the waters, through fear of the
enemies of the gods, although alluded to in more than one place, is
not very explicitly related ... the allusions of the _Súktas_ (hymns)
may be a figurative intimation of the latent heat existing in water,
or a misapprehension of a natural phenomenon which seems to have made
a great impression in later times--the emission of flame from the
surface of water either in the shape of inflammable air, or as the
result of submarine volcanic action.”

  [66] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Introduction, vol. i. p. xxx.

It cannot but be admitted that these myths are puzzling, and that to
account for the notion so prominent throughout the Vedas of “Agni
in the waters,” the various suggestions of “lightning,” “latent
heat existing in water,” “the emission of flame from the surface of
the waters, either in the shape of inflammable air or as the result
of submarine volcanic action,” are inadequate to explain the fact
that Agni, whose very name “is the regular designation of fire”[67]
should in the hymns be so closely associated with water. Nor are the
difficulties concerning “Agni in the waters” to be overcome by the
tempting and poetic suggestion, put forward by some writers, that in
these passages reference is made to the sun rising in the morning out
of the ocean, and again hiding itself beneath the waves at sunset. The
composition of the Rig Veda is attributed to Aryan settlers “scattered
over the Punjaub and regions lying to the west of the Indus”: by such
settlers the sun could never have been seen _rising_ out of the ocean,
for no ocean bounded their horizon on the east. Even the phenomenon of
the sun hiding itself at evening in the water, could only have been
observed by those who lived on the western _coast_, and it is therefore
not easy to imagine why sunrise and sunset should in India have been so
closely and constantly associated with a sea horizon.

  [67] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 88.

But if once the acquaintance of the originators of the Agni myths with
the Zodiacal figures is admitted, the astronomic interpretation of
those relating to Agni in the waters is not difficult; it is as follows:

Agni is the personification of fire, but his chief personification is
as the fire of the sun. _“Agni in the waters” is especially the fire of
the sun in the celestial waters of Aquarius._ 3,000 B.C. the sun was
in conjunction with Aquarius at the time of the _winter solstice_.[68]
Those hymns therefore which dwell upon the myths of Agni hiding himself
in, being born in, and rising out of the waters, may be considered as
hymns referring to _the sun at the winter solstice in conjunction with
the constellation Aquarius_, and therefore as hymns especially suitable
for use on the occasion of a great yearly festival held at that season
of the year.

  [68] The position of the sun at the _winter solstice_ 3,000 B.C. was
  identical with that represented at Plate XI. as the position of the
  full moon at the _summer solstice_.

European writers often describe the mid-winter sun as _hiding_ itself,
or as every day withdrawing itself more and more from view. In poetic
similes, the snows of winter often crown the head of the aged out-going
year, while the in-coming year is represented as a _babe_ or _infant_.
The appropriateness of such similes is due to the fact, that our
calendrical new year is fixed within a few days of the winter solstice.
Again, in sober prose, the sun at the time of the winter solstice is
said, having attained its lowest point, _to rise_ or _begin its upward
course_ on the ecliptic. It is therefore not difficult to understand
how the Vedic Rishis, who appear to have combined the characteristics
of poets and of scientific observers of the heavens, should have 3,000
B.C. described _the fire of the solstitial sun, as hiding in, being
born in, and rising out of the celestial waters of the constellation
Aquarius_.

In this Agni myth, as in that of Indra, we may perceive traces of a
pre-Vedic origin. The latitudes in which the Rig Veda was composed are
not those in which attention is forcibly drawn to the diminution of the
strength and visibility of the sun at the winter season. In the Rig
Veda, however, Indra’s conquest over darkness as well as over drought
is celebrated, and the same _traditional_ cause may be assigned for the
description of Agni hiding himself at the time of the winter solstice
in the waters of Aquarius.

Indra, Soma, and Agni no longer hold the important place in the Hindu
Pantheon which they appear to have held in Vedic times, and on the
astronomic theory, this fact may partly be accounted for by noticing
how slow but inevitable changes in the scenery of the heavens, produced
by the precession of the equinoxes, gradually obscured more and more
completely the meaning of the _imagery_ employed in the hymns to these
deities. Indra, if he represents the summer solstice, is indeed still
as powerful as ever, and still triumphs over the demon of drought,
but no longer is that demon well represented by the snake-like
constellation Hydra; for on the night of the summer solstice, after the
sun has set, the whole of Hydra is still above the horizon. No longer
does the mid-summer full moon bathe its brightness in the celestial
waters of Aquarius, nor does the mid-winter sun hide itself in them.
The hymns remain, the phenomena they referred to, exist no longer.

But leaving now the subject of the “ancient constellations” and of
reference to them in the Rig Veda, let us turn to the second section
of the argument in favour of the modern origin of Hindu astronomy as
stated above.[69] It is a claim made for the very modern date of 570
A.D. as that for the fixation of the initial point of the Indian Zodiac
at the “end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.”--This claim I
desire to oppose.

  [69] V. p. 92.

It has been admitted by scholars, but almost with a sort of reluctance,
that mention is made of some of the Nakshatras in a few of the Rig Veda
hymns. The matter is rather avoided than cordially enquired into. It
is, however, a question of great and important interest to ascertain,
if possible, whether the circle of the Nakshatras was known to the
Vedic Rishis, and if it were known, whether the initial point was fixed
there, where as we have read, _all schools of Hindu astronomy agree in
declaring that the planetary motions commenced at the creation_.[70]

  [70] V. p. 93.

We have learnt from Babylonian archæology that we are no longer forced
to assume that only at the date of about 570 A.D. could this initial
point have been fixed by Indian astronomers. It therefore need no
longer be looked upon as an unreasonable quest to search in the ancient
pages of the Rig Veda for indications that this important astronomical
point had been fixed, even before Vedic times, as the starting-point of
a calendrical and sidereal year--and if we should find such indications
in the Rig Veda, they may well out-weigh arguments against the
antiquity of this fixation, based upon passages in later works, such as
the Yajur and Atharva Vedas.

From the Yajur Veda itself, arguments may be drawn in favour of a year
beginning in the month Chaitra,[71] at or before the date of the
composition or compilation of that Veda.

  [71] Chaitra is the month which begins, as closely as a luni-solar
  month may, at the sun’s arrival at the initial point of the Hindu
  Zodiac--the beginning of Aswinī.

In the Taittirîya Sanhitâ (contained in the Yajur Veda) a passage
occurs[72] which is translated and commented upon by B. G. Tilak (_The
Orion, or Antiquity of the Vedas_, p. 46 _et seq._). In this passage
is discussed the superior suitability of three different days on which
worshippers might consecrate themselves for the yearly sacrifice. Not
any one of these three days has any connexion with the _spring equinox_
or the sun’s conjunction with Krittikā. The choice of date for the
yearly sacrifice appears to lie between, first, the “Ekâṣhṭakā (day)”
of some month not named,[73] but one in the “distressed,” or “reversed”
period of the year, _i.e._ the mid-winter season; second, the full moon
of Phalgunī; and third, the Chaitra full moon. B. G. Tilak, after some
pages of comment on the passage referred to, states in his summing up,
amongst others, the following conclusions which he has arrived at.

  [72] Taittirîya Sanhitâ, vii. 4. 8.

  [73] At p. 48 he quotes authorities in favour of the Ekâṣhṭakā (day)
  in this passage meaning the 8th day of the dark half of Mâgha.

“1^{st}, that in the days of the Taittirîya Sanhitâ the winter
solstice occurred before the eighth day of the dark half of Mâgha ...
and that throughout the whole passage the intention of sacrificing
at the beginning (real, constructive, or traditional) of the year is
quite clear: ... 2^{nd}, that the year then commenced with the winter
solstice”: “3^{rd}, that as there can not be three real beginnings
of the year, at an interval of one month each, the passage must be
understood as recording a tradition about the Chitrâ full moon and the
Phalgunī full moon being once considered as the first days of the year.”

This is B. G. Tilak’s conclusion; merely judging from the
_translation_, the passage might, as it seems to me, be understood as
unreservedly recommending the full-moon of Chaitra as the most suitable
for the beginning of the sacrifice, for in the text of the Taittirîya
Sanhitâ it is said of it, “It has no fault whatsoever.”

But in whichever sense the words are understood, this passage from the
Yajur Veda may be set against the hymns and lists in the Yajur and
Atharva Vedas, above alluded to,[74] in which Krittikā is celebrated in
the first, and Aswinī in the twenty-seventh place.

  [74] V. p. 94.

The fact that the evidence as to the beginning of the year “in the
days of the Taittirîya Sanhitâ,” is, as it seems, so uncertain, and
so contradictory to the opinion based on the hymn in the Taittirîya
Brāhmana concerning Krittikā being the leader of the Nakshatras,
seems to add interest to the question whether there are, or are not,
indications in the Rig Veda that the Indian year was counted from the
same point on the ecliptic as at present?[75]

  [75] At present the month Chaitra in most parts of India is the first
  month of the Hindu year. The beginning of the year is measured by the
  return of the sun to the same point in the Zodiac: at present the
  beginning of the Lunar Mansion Aswinī. (See _Indian Calendar_, p. 45.)

And at once, as it seems to me, on turning to the Rig Veda, on page
after page, such indications are to be met with.

The first Nakshatra in the Indian series is named Aswinī (Aswins).
The two chief stars in that Nakshatra are the twin stars, as they may
fairly be called, α and β Arietis--stars of almost equal radiance. The
joyous hymns addressed to the twin heroes, the Aswins, I would claim as
new-year hymns composed in honour of these _stars_, whose appearance
before sunrise heralded the approach of the great festival-day of the
Hindu new year.

The Hindu year is a sidereal year. It is counted at present in most
parts of India from a fixed point on the ecliptic, not from a season.
It is a calendrical not a cosmic year. Only one apparently small change
in the method of counting the years would now require to be made, and
again the Aswins might be hymned by the Hindus as the “wondrous,” and
“not untruthful,” _stars_, marking by their heliacal rising a new
year’s festival--a festival to be held on the 15th, or full moon’s day.

The Hindu year is now counted from the new moon immediately _preceding_
the sun’s arrival at the initial point of the lunar Zodiac. The first
of Chaitra (the first of the light half of Chaitra) never falls later
than the 12th of April, and may arrive a month earlier. If the year
were to be counted from the same initial point, but from the first new
moon _following_ instead of that _preceding_ the sun’s arrival at that
point, there would be the difference of a whole month in the range of
the month Chaitra. The first day of its bright half would then never
arrive before the 12th of April, and might fall a month later.

For the interpretation of the Vedic hymns to the Aswins I would make
the provisional suggestion, that when these hymns were composed, the
year was so counted from the new moon _following_ and not from that
_preceding_ the arrival of the sun at “the end of Revatî and the
beginning of Açvinî.” In support of this provisional theory, let us
first read the summing up of the Aswinī myths, and of the difficulties
and uncertainties surrounding them, according to the present modes
of explanation; and then let us consider the astronomic method of
interpretation above proposed.

We read that[76] “Next to Indra, Agni, and Soma, the twin deities
named the Aśvins are the most prominent in the Rig Veda, judged by
the frequency with which they are invoked. They are celebrated in
more than fifty entire hymns and in parts of several others, while
their name occurs more than 400 times. Though they hold a distinct
position among the deities of light and their appellation is Indian,
their connexion with any definite phenomenon of light is so obscure,
that their original nature has been a puzzle to Vedic interpreters
from the earliest times. This obscurity makes it probable that the
origin of these gods is to be sought in a pre-Vedic period.... The
Aśvins are young, the T. S. (Taittirīya Sanhitâ) even describing them
as the youngest of the gods. They are at the same time ancient. They
are bright, lords of lustre, of golden brilliancy, and honey-hued....
They possess profound wisdom and occult power. The two most distinctive
and frequent epithets of the Aśvins are _dasra_, ‘wondrous,’ which is
almost entirely limited to them, and _nāsatya_, which is generally
explained to mean ‘not untrue....’ Their car ... moves round heaven.
It traverses heaven and earth in a single day as the car of the sun
and that of Uṣas (the Dawn) are also said to do.... The time of their
appearance is often said to be the early dawn, when ‘darkness still
stands among the ruddy cows’ and they yoke their car to descend to
earth and receive the offerings of worshippers. Uṣas (the Dawn) awakes
them. They follow after Uṣas in their car. At the yoking of their car
Uṣas is born. Thus their relative time seems to have been between dawn
and sunrise. But Savitṛ (the sun) is once said to set their car in
motion before the dawn. Occasionally the appearance of the Aśvins, the
kindling of the sacrificial fire, the break of dawn, and sunrise seem
to be spoken of as simultaneous. The Aśvins are invoked to come to the
offering not only at their natural time, but also in the evening or
at morning, noon, and sunset.... In the A. B. (Aitareya Brahmana) the
Aśvins as well as Uṣas and Agni are stated to be gods of dawn; and in
the Vedic ritual they are connected with sunrise.... The Aśvins may
originally have been conceived as finding and restoring or rescuing
the vanished light of the sun. In the Rig Veda they have come to be
typically succouring divinities.” ... Again, at p. 51, the writer adds,
“Quite a number of legends illustrating the succouring power of the
Aśvins are referred to in the Rig Veda.” Here follows an enumeration of
many miraculous “protections,” and cures,--and then[77] “The opinion
of Bergaigne and others that the various miracles attributed to the
Aśvins are anthropomorphized forms of solar phenomena (the healing
of the blind man thus meaning the release of the sun from darkness),
seems to lack probability. At the same time the legend of Atri may be
a reminiscence of a myth explaining the restoration of the vanished
sun. As to the physical basis of the Aśvins, the language of the Ṛṣis
is so vague that they themselves do not seem to have understood what
phenomenon these deities represented ... what they actually represented
puzzled even the oldest commentators mentioned by Yāska. That scholar
remarks that some regarded them (the Aśvins) as Heaven and Earth (as
does the S. B.--Satapatha Brahmana), others as Day and Night, others as
sun and moon, while the ‘legendary writers’ took them to be ‘two kings,
performers of holy acts.’ Yāska’s own opinion is obscure.”

  [76] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 49.

  [77] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 53.

In contrast to all these vague and often contradictory explanations,
the astronomical suggestion made at page 137 may to some appear too
matter-of-fact and prosaic. But that a firm and scientific base should
underlie mythical and imaginative similes does not in reality detract
from their poetic excellence. Indeed, an added fitness, and therefore
an added beauty, is to be recognized in the Aswin hymns, when we can
think of them as addressed to well-known and beneficent deities
presiding over the new year--deities who manifested themselves in the
earliest dawn of the new year’s morning under the form of two beautiful
and easily to be recognised _stars_, and to whom their worshippers
appealed for “protection,” through the unknown dangers of the future
year.

I give two diagrams to illustrate the fact that the time of the rising
of the stars α and β Arietis must necessarily, on such a new year’s
festival as above proposed, have taken place in some years before the
first intimation of dawn, in others a few minutes before the time of
sunrise.

It is of course to be borne in mind that the Vedic years were
luni-solar. The actual point therefore on the ecliptic at which the
conjunction of sun and moon-or new moon-took place, and from which each
year was counted, varied in different years to the extent of nearly 30
degrees. The diagram, Plate XII. Figs. 1 and 2, represents the maximum
and minimum distance between the rising of the Yoga stars of the
Nakshatra Aswinī, and of the sun on the 15th or full-moon’s day of the
first month of a luni-solar year; counted from the first conjunction of
sun and moon _following_ the sun’s arrival at the “end of Revatî and
the beginning of Açvinî.”

[Illustration: PLATE XII.

The Vedic Aswins and the Indian Calendar.

[_To face p. 142._]

It will be seen from the diagram that something more than two hours was
the longest interval that, according to the presumed method of counting
the Vedic year, elapsed between the appearance of α and β Arietis and
of the sun above the horizon.

This astronomic interpretation accounts for the varying times noted in
the hymns for the appearance of the Aswins. It also accounts, as it
seems to me, for the general tone of the hymns, but as regards the long
series of miraculous “protections” of the Aswins, accorded by them to
many sick, aged, and decrepit personages, it does not at first sight
account.

We have seen that Bergaigne and others have opined that the various
miracles attributed to the Aswins are “anthropomorphized forms of solar
phenomena,” and with this view the astronomic interpretation, when
fully followed out to its logical end, agrees.

But at first sight we wonder how the sun at the beginning of the
calendrical year could, _in Vedic times_, be described as in any way
especially sick, aged, or decrepit.

3,000 B.C., when, as we have seen, the winter solstice was in Aquarius,
the Indian calendrical and sidereal year, such as has been supposed,
would have begun at its earliest a month and a half _after_ the
solstice.[78] The sun _at_ the winter solstice, may be, and often
is, described as pale, weak, sick and old; but at the beginning of a
calendrical year, a month and a half _after_ the solstice, the sun
no longer could have been thought of as requiring the miraculous
protection of the heralding Aswins.

  [78] If the Hindu year were _now_ counted from the new moon
  _following_ instead of that _preceding_ the sun’s arrival at
  the initial point of the Zodiac, owing to the precession of the
  equinoxes, the year would begin at earliest twenty-one days after the
  _spring equinox_. Since 3,000 B.C. the seasons have advanced by more
  than two months, as regards their position amongst the stars.

To help in solving this difficulty, recourse may again wisely be had to
Babylonian astronomic lore. The fanciful legends regarding the Aswins,
considered only by themselves, can scarcely yield a sufficiently firm
foundation on which to build the far-reaching theory I now desire
to bring forward concerning them; a theory on all fours with one
I ventured some years ago to propound in reference to Babylonian
astronomy, in a Paper entitled the “Accadian Calendar.”[79] It was
there suggested that the probable date for the origin of that Calendar
was about 6,000 B.C. The fact was pointed out that Aries, in the most
ancient Accadian and Babylonian astronomical works, always appears
as leader of the signs and of the year, and stress was laid on the
unlikelihood that this constellation should have been chosen for this
leading post at a date when the sun’s entry into it did not correspond
with any one of the four well-marked natural divisions of the year,
_i.e._ the solstices or equinoxes. But as on the cuneiform tablets
Aries appears as _leader_ long before the time when the sun sojourned
in that constellation during the first month following _the equinox_,
it was suggested that it was when the _solstitial not the equinoctial_
point coincided with the first degree of Aries, that the Accadian
calendrical scheme had first been drawn up; namely about 6,000 B.C.

  [79] _Proceedings of Society of Biblical Archæology_, January 1892.

A corroboration of the view then put forward is to be drawn from a
further study of the Accadian month names. The first three month names,
in Accadian, referred, as scholars have pointed out, to the first three
constellations of the Zodiac.

(1.) The month of the “sacrifice of righteousness” to Aries.

(2.) The month of the “propitious Bull” to Taurus.

(3.) The month of “the Twins” to Gemini.

The twelfth and thirteenth names in the same series seem to refer
equally clearly to a year originally counted as beginning at the
_winter solstice_. They are called respectively:

“12th. The month of sowing of seed.”--“13th. The dark month of sowing.”

For the sowing of most cereals, late autumn and early winter are the
favoured seasons. Many crops however are sown in early spring. There
might then be a doubt whether “the month of sowing of seed” more
fitly described the spring sowing of seed in the twelfth month of a
luni-solar year, counted from the _equinox_,--or the winter sowing
of seed in the twelfth month of a luni-solar year, counted from
the _solstice_. But when we find this twelfth month followed by a
thirteenth, of which the especial and added epithet is _dark_, there
can, as it seems to me, be little if any doubt that the winter month
whose range in different years extended from 12th of December to 22nd
January is better described by the epithet dark, than the rapidly
brightening month whose range extended from 12th March to 22nd April.

Very curiously, then, and accurately does the Accadian calendar give us
the date of its origin, and of the first naming of its months, as that
when the _winter solstice coincided with the sun’s entry into the first
degree of the constellation Aries_[80]--the date in round numbers of
6,000 B.C.

  [80] The winter solstice now coincides very closely with the sun’s
  entry into Sagittarius. It _precedes_ the sun’s entry into Aries by
  almost a third of the whole circle of the ecliptic.

To this same date it is, as I believe, that the miraculous protections
accorded by the Aswins to the _distressed_ solstitial sun and moon
and earth appear to point, and fully does this view corroborate the
opinion that the Aswin-legends took their rise in pre-Vedic times. They
also, as do the Indra and Vritra myths, refer us for their origin to
a more northern latitude than tropical India. In the tropics the sun
is scarcely less powerful in winter than in summer. The astronomers
who drew up the Accadian calendar, and the myth-makers of the
Aswin-legends, must, according to the astronomic theory, have dwelt in
temperate zones and formulated calendar and myths about 6,000 B.C.

VI

NOTES.--AHURA MAZDA, ETC.

  [Ahura Mazda, a note reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society
  of Biblical Archæology_, February 1900]

Professor Hommel in the March number for 1899 of these _Proceedings_
calls attention in his _Assyriological Notes_ to the name “Assara
Mazas” appearing in a list of Assyrian gods. The section of the list in
which this name appears contains “a number of foreign sounding names”
belonging to gods honoured, presumably, in out-lying portions of the
Assyrian dominions.

Professor Hommel claims “that this god (Assara Mazas) is no other than
the Iranian Ahura Mazda,” and he thus concludes his arguments in favour
of this opinion--“concerning _Assara-mazas_, I should like to remark in
closing this paragraph, that we have here the same older pronunciation
of Iranian words as in the Kassitic _Surias_, ‘sun’ (later _Ahura_
and _Hvarya_, but comp. Sanscrit _Asura_ and _suria_), which is of the
highest importance for the history of the Aryan languages. In the same
Kassitic period, between 1,700 and 1,200 B.C., I suppose was borrowed
by the Assyrians the Iranian god Assara-mazas.”

In a Paper entitled _The Median Calendar and the Constellation Taurus_,
printed in the June number for 1897 of these _Proceedings_, I made a
very similar claim for the derivation of the name of the great god of
the Assyrians--Assur.

The claim put forward was not based only on the resemblance in sound of
“Assur” and “Ahura,” but was in the first place founded on the virtual
identity of the emblems of Assur and Ahura Mazda. For the _origin_ of
these emblems (referring as it was suggested they did to the Zodiacal
constellation Sagittarius) a date as high as 4,000 B.C. was, on
astronomic grounds, assumed, and it was pointed out that at that date
there was no evidence of the existence of the Assyrian nation as a
nation, nor any trace of a Semitic worship of the god Assur; whereas,
on the other hand, as early as 3,800 B.C. there is evidence that a
powerful Aryan race--the Manda--rivalled the power, and threatened the
Semitic rule of Sargon of Agane.

The opinion that the symbol of Ahura Mazda, and of Assur, was of
ancient Aryan origin, naturally suggested the further thought that
the _name_ Assur, so closely resembling the earlier Indo-Iranian form
Asura, of the Iranian Ahura, had, together with the emblem of the god,
been borrowed from the Aryan ancestors of the Medo-Persians by the
Semitic settlers who, early in the second millennium B.C., established
themselves to the north of Babylonia. It may here be pointed out that
no very certain Semitic derivation at present holds the field which
the proposed Aryan derivation would occupy. According to some scholars
it comes from a word signifying “a well-watered plain.” According
to Professor Hommel, the name Assur is derived from a word which
originally meant “the heavenly host.”

Professor Hommel, quoting as his authority the opinions of the Sanscrit
scholar Oldenburg, and reinforcing Oldenburg’s opinions by arguments
from other sources, further maintains the high probability of the
Median god Ahura Mazda having been the representative of the Vedic
Varuna, and also that Varuna was the moon.

Vedic scholars are divided in opinion as to what physical phenomenon is
represented by Varuna. He is very generally supposed to personify “the
vast extent of the encompassing sky,” some say especially the sky at
night-time--others claim him as a solar divinity, whilst Oldenburg, as
we have seen, supposes him to be the moon. It is not to the question,
however, what phenomenon Varuna represented, but to that of the
probability or improbability of his original identity with the Median
Ahura Mazda, that I would now draw attention.

It is said that “the parallel in character, though not in name, of
the god Varuna is Ahura Mazda, the Wise Spirit.” But a variety of
considerations may lead us to entertain the possibility of a Vedic god
other than Varuna being the parallel in character and in _epithet_
of Ahura Mazda; a parallel which is also still more clearly to be
recognized if we adopt the view, above contended for, of the identity
of Assur, the _archer_ god of Assyria, with Ahura Mazda.

The Vedic god Rudra is, like Varuna, an Asura or Spirit. He is
described as “the wise,” and his votaries are encouraged to worship him
“for a comprehensive and sound understanding.” But in one passage the
epithet “asura maha,” so curiously recalling to our ears the name of
the Avestan “Ahura Mazda,” is actually applied to him.[81] As a wise
and great Asura, Rudra seems to be as close a parallel to Ahura Mazda
as Varuna; the resemblance of epithet in the case of Rudra makes the
parallelism closer.

  [81] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala ii., I, 6, Uncertainty prevails
  among scholars as to the exact meaning to be given to the name
  Ahura Mazda. The Rev. L. H. Mills, D.D., under the heading “Zend,”
  writes thus in _Chambers’s Encyclopædia_; “The Supreme Deity Ahura
  Mazdâh, the Living God or ‘Lord’ (_ahu_ = ‘the living,’ ‘life,’ or
  ‘spirit’--root _ah_ = ‘to be’), the Great Creator (_maz_ + _da_ =
  Sansk. _mahâ_ + _dhâ_), or ‘the Wise One’ (_cf._ _su-medhâs_).”
  Again, the same writer in his book on the Gàthàs, published in 1894,
  gives on p. 3 in his “verbatim translation,” “O magni-donator (?)
  (vel) O Sapiens (?),” as alternative meanings for Mazda. Similar
  uncertainty seems to prevail as regards the meaning to be attached
  to the words of the passage in the Rig Veda to which reference has
  been made above, _i.e._, Maṇḍala ii., Súkta i., verse 6. In Wilson’s
  translation of the Rig Veda, vol. ii., p. 211, we read:--“Thou, Agni,
  art Rudra, the expeller (of foes) from the expanse of heaven”: and
  in his note to this passage he says: “_Twam Rudro asuro maho divah_:
  _asura_ is explained śatrúnám nirasitá, the expeller of enemies,
  _divas_, from heaven; or it may mean, the giver of strength....”
  Macdonell (_Vedic Mythology_, p. 75) says that Rudra is called in
  this passage “the great _asura_ of heaven.”

Varuna indeed in Vedic estimation held a much higher and more
commanding position than Rudra, but considering how opposed the Avestan
was to Vedic mythology on important points, we ought not to expect that
the god elevated by the Medians above all others should have held a
very exalted place amongst the Brahmins of India.

But it is when we turn our thoughts not only to Ahura Mazda but to his
Assyrian representative Assur, that the parallelism between him and
Rudra becomes more marked.

Rudra is not only a wise and great Asura, he is above everything else
celebrated in the Rig Veda as an archer. He has “the sure arrow, the
strong bow.”[82] He is “the divine Rudra armed with the strong bow and
fast flying arrows.”[83]

  [82] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11.

  [83] _Ib._, Maṇḍala vii., xiii. (xlvi.), 1.

In the Paper already referred to, it was suggested that an
astronomic observation of the equinoctial colure passing through the
constellations Sagittarius and Taurus was the probable origin of
Median and (as derived from Median) Assyrian symbolism concerning Ahura
Mazda and Assur. This observation could, as was pointed out, only have
been made at the date, in round numbers, of 4,000 B.C.

It is a very tempting enterprise to seek in the mythologies of
European nations for allusions to this same astronomic observation--an
observation made, as we may believe, when the ancestors of the Iranian
and Indian Aryans, and possibly the ancestors of the European nations,
were still, if not all dwelling together, at least within easy
intellectual touch of each other.

In Grecian fable we have the Centaur (the Bull-killer) Chiron giving
his name to the constellation Sagittarius, and in this fable we may,
as it would seem, find a better _astronomic_ explanation of the term
Bull-killer than that usually given concerning the well-mounted
Thessalian hunters of wild cattle. The constellation Sagittarius, an
archer, half man, half horse, is not a figure of Grecian invention.
It is to be met with depicted on Babylonian monuments, unmistakably
the archer of our celestial sphere; and this constellation, when it
rises in the east, always drives below the western horizon--_i.e._,
mythically exterminates, the last stars of the constellation Taurus.

To Chiron, the chief Centaur, the epithet “wise” is especially given,
and “he was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music,
gymnastics, and the art of prophecy”; of these not altogether congruous
attributes Rudra the Vedic god possessed three of the most important.
He was wise, he was an archer, and he was famed as “a chief physician
among physicians.”[84] In a verse, part of which has been already
quoted,[85] worshippers are exhorted to “Praise him who has the sure
arrow, the strong bow, who presides over all sanitary drugs; worship
Rudra for a comprehensive and sound understanding, adore the powerful
divinity with prostrations.”

  [84] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala ii., xxxiii., 4.

  [85] _Ib._, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11.

Apollo the far-darter, Artemis the goddess of the silver bow, also
shared these same attributes, and Grecian legend would lead us to
place them in the same part of the heavens as that allotted to
Chiron--_i.e._, Sagittarius. Apollo prompted Artemis to aim a shaft
from her bow at a point on the horizon, and this point was the head of
the hunter Orion. Now the constellation Orion is exactly in opposition
to the bow stars of Sagittarius; that the legend is astronomical is
plainly to be inferred from its variant form, in which Artemis is
represented as sending a Scorpion to sting Orion to death. The stars
marking the Scorpion’s sting are in very close proximity to the bow
stars of Sagittarius.

Returning to Indian myths, the name of Siva does not occur in the
Rig Veda; but in later Sanscrit works Siva is the representative of
Rudra. In a hymn to Siva,[86] the following passages occur, and it is
difficult to read them and not be reminded of the sculptured figures of
Artemis, crescent-crowned and leading a stag by the horns. (Allowance
must be made, however, for the tendency in Hindu art to multiply the
heads, arms, and features of their gods.)

  [86] Hymn to Siva, prefixed to “An Exposition of the Principles of
  Sanskrit Logic,” by Bodhanundánath Swami, Calcutta.

“I worship the great _Mahesa_, who shines like ten million suns: who is
adorned with triple eyes: who is crowned with the moon: who is armed
with the trident, the bow, the mace, the discus, the goad, and the
noose:

Who is the eternal Lord;

Who is bright as the snowy summit of Mount Kailáçe; whose matted hair
is ablaze with the crescent moon;

Whose hands hold the head of a deer and a battle-axe;

Whose forehead is adorned with the bright half-moon;

Whose fingers are interlaced to typify a deer;

       *       *       *       *       *”

For the explanation of the Roman myths of Dianus and Diana (varying
forms as the dictionary tells of Janus and Jana) we may naturally seek
for the same astronomic origin, as for those concerning the Grecian
archer divinities.

Janus indeed has not, so far as I know, ever been represented as an
archer or a Centaur. The attribute for which he is especially renowned
is that of “opener of the year,” and this attribute, on the astronomic
theory here proposed, would furnish the connecting link between the
varying forms of the Italian deities above mentioned.

The many and still imperfectly understood changes that were made in
the Roman year by successive rulers, have effaced the connexion of
that year with the stars which must have originally presided over its
opening. But Roman tradition embodied in Virgil’s lines speaks of
“the bright Bull” who “with his gilded horns opens the year.”[87] The
golden star-tipped horns of the Bull are as we know exactly opposed
to the westernmost degrees of Sagittarius; and that constellation, in
opposition to the sun, would therefore have marked the opening of just
such a vernal year as that alluded to by Virgil. Whether this vernal
year before the Julian reformation was still the calendrical year in
Rome is, however, very doubtful.

  [87] Virgil, _Georg._, Lib. I., 217, 218.

Janus is represented with two heads, sometimes even with four, “to
typify the seasons of the year.” The _full moon_ in Sagittarius 4,000
B.C. marked the season of the spring equinox--the sun then being in
_conjunction_ with the stars marking the horn tips of the Bull. The
_new moon_ in Sagittarius at the same date marked the autumn equinox.
The _half waning moon_ in Sagittarius marked the season of the winter
solstice: and the half moon of the _crescent or waxing moon_ marked the
season of the summer solstice. The four heads of Janus may thus have
referred to the four seasons marked by the moon in Sagittarius.

The fact that the Indian archer Rudra (= Siva) and the Grecian archer
Artemis, were represented as crowned by the _half_, not the _full
moon_, would refer these myths to an Indo-Iranian, not to a somewhat
later Iranian source. It was not to the reformed Iranian equinoctial
year that they pointed, but to the sun’s triumph at the solstitial
season. In the Roman Janus myth we may rather detect the later Median
influence, and suppose that it referred to a year beginning with the
_full moon_ in Sagittarius, a year opening in the spring, when the
_sun_ was in conjunction with the “gilded horns” of “the bright Bull.”

All these mythological indications, derived from Median, Assyrian,
Indian, and classical sources, though each of them looked at separately
may not speak with much insistence, yet considered together seem to
point us more and more clearly as we study them, to the fact that
about 4,000 B.C. a very important and authoritative observation of the
colures (amongst the Zodiacal constellations) was made, and that upon
this observation much of the mythology of ancient nations was founded.

VII

ANCIENT INDIAN ASTRONOMY

  [Reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
  Archæology_, February 1900]

It is only on Talmudic authority, I think, that astronomy can be denied
a place, and indeed an important place, in researches connected with
Biblical Archæology.

On Talmudic authority we are told that, as a protest against the sun-,
moon-, and star-worship of surrounding nations, the Hebrews were not
permitted to calculate in any way beforehand, or by scientific methods
based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, their days, their
months, or their years.

The end of the day and beginning of the night could only be definitely
ascertained when three stars were visible to the observer. The moon
must have shown its pale sickle to some watcher of the heavens, before
the first of the month could be announced. The beginning of the year,
we are also told, was dependent on the earliness or lateness of the
agricultural season, for three ears of corn, in a sufficiently advanced
state of growth, were to be presented to the priest and waved before
the Lord _on a fixed day of the first month_ of the year.

This is what some passages of the Talmud[88] seem to teach; but from
Old Testament Scriptures, it is not possible to infer these calendrical
restrictions with any degree of certainty. On the contrary, there is
much in the Scriptures to lead us to an opposite conclusion.

  [88] _Bible Educator_, edited by Rev. E. H. Plumptre, M.A., vol. iii.
  pp. 239 and 240. “It may have been with a view to render astrology
  impossible, that the Jews were forbidden to keep a calendar in
  the Holy Land, ... as the length of the lunation, or lunar month,
  is, roughly speaking, twenty-nine days and a half, it is easy to
  know, from month to month, when to expect the crescent to become
  visible. Six times in the year the beginning of the month was
  decided by observation of the new moon.... On two months of the
  year the determination of the new moon was of such importance, that
  the witnesses who observed the crescent were authorized to profane
  the Sabbath by travelling to give information at Jerusalem. These
  occasions were the months Nisan and Tisri.... The Mishna records that
  on one occasion as many as forty pairs of witnesses thus arrived on
  the Sabbath at Lydda. Rabbi Akiba detained them, but was reproved for
  so doing by Rabbi Gamaliel.... When the evidence was satisfactory,
  the judges declared the month to be commenced, and a beacon was
  lighted on Mount Olivet, from which the signal was repeated on
  mountain after mountain, until the whole country was aglow with
  fires.”

On the very first page of the Bible we read of “the greater and the
lesser lights,” and of “the stars also” set in the heavens, to be “for
signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” And scarcely have we
turned this first page, when we meet the statement that “in process of
time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of
his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel
and to his offering.” In the margin the words “in process of time” are
rendered “at the end of days.” In considering this passage we seem to
be brought into touch with a definitely established year; and at once
archæology and astronomy enter into the field of Biblical research, to
tell us of a remotely old calendar--astronomic indications would date
the origin of this calendar at about 6,000 B.C.--and from this calendar
we learn that at “the end of days”--the end of the _dark_ days of the
year--there followed a month of “the sacrifice of righteousness”: a
sacrifice, we may well suppose, of the firstlings of the flock, as the
stars in conjunction with the sun during this first month were imagined
by the institutors of the calendar under the form of a lamb or ram
ready for sacrifice.

To this calendrical first month our attention is again drawn when we
read, in the book of Exodus, of the institution at God’s command of the
Hebrew festival, to be held on the 14th and 15th days of the month Abib.

This month Abib, it is generally assumed, is the equivalent of the
month Nisan, spoken of in some of the later books of the Old Testament.

Astronomy and archæology again claim a hearing on this point. The
month Nisan, the Semite equivalent of the Accadian month Bar zig-gar
(the month of the “sacrifice of righteousness”), we may gather from
the evidence of the cuneiform tablets, had been the first month of
a calendrical year in Babylon for many centuries--for millenniums,
perhaps--before the date of Moses; and therefore archæology would teach
us that the children of Israel were being recalled, from strange
Egyptian modes of reckoning, to the observance of an ancient and
patriarchal year and festival, when they were told that for them Abib
was to be the first month of the year, and that on the 14th of that
month, “a night to be much observed,” they were to sacrifice of the
firstlings of their flock, and were to hold the great festival of the
Passover on the fifteenth day.

If “Abib,” “Nisan,” and “Bar zig-gar” are names used by various nations
to designate one and the same month, Abib could not have been, as
has very generally been supposed, a month varying according to the
uncertain ripening of agricultural crops, and one taking its name from
the _ears of corn_ presented to the priest, and waved before the Lord
on some fixed day of that month; but rather it must have been (as
we know, from Babylonian sources that Nisan was) a well calculated
soli-lunar and sidereal month. Now, if we adopt this view, we must find
some alternative derivation for the month name Abib. Nor is it by any
means difficult so to do.

On the fourteenth night of the first month--Bar zig-gar, Nisan, or
Abib--“a night to be much observed,” or rather, according to the
marginal reading, “a night of observations”--the bright star Spica,
which marks the _ears of corn_ in the Virgin’s hand, rose above the
eastern horizon as the sun set in the west, and at midnight must have
shone down brilliantly on the Hebrew hosts; for Spica is so bright a
star, that even the beams of the full moon riding close at hand could
not have obscured its lustre.

The Indians of to-day name their months from the stars in their lunar
Zodiac which are in _opposition to_, not from those in _conjunction
with_, the sun. The close resemblance of the Arab and Indian lunar
Zodiacal series suggests the thought that the Arabs may have followed
the same system of month _nomenclature_ as the Indians; and if
this were the case it would furnish a reason why Moses, who had so
lately returned from his forty years’ sojourn in Arabia, should--in
recalling the Hebrews to the observance of such a year as that which
was presumably followed by their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob--have yet spoken of the first month of the year according to a
_non-Babylonian_ method of nomenclature, and should have called it
Abib, after the star in _opposition to_ the sun.

If now we adopt the opinion that an astronomic method of counting the
year did in reality obtain amongst the Hebrews, a great difficulty must
present itself to our minds in regard to the generally accepted theory
that only on a _fixed day of the first month of the year_ might the
first reaped handful of corn be waved before the Lord.

The seasons in Palestine are not more punctual than in other countries.
To restrict a husbandman to a fixed day of a year (even such a year as
ours) before which he might not begin to put his sickle into the corn,
would be felt as a hurtful and arbitrary regulation; but to restrict
the husbandman to a fixed day in a luni-solar year would be a still
more hurtful regulation. The beginning of a soli-lunar year may vary
to the extent of a whole month. A late beginning of such a year might
coincide with a very early agricultural season, and _vice versa_ an
early calendrical year might occur in a late agricultural season.

Considerations of this nature may incline us to inquire carefully
whether the “generally accepted theory” (concerning the waving of the
ears of corn before the Lord during the Passover week) rests upon
Scriptural authority or on Talmudic and traditional teaching. As
against an almost unbroken array of commentators, it is possible in
this connexion to quote from the work of a learned Hebrew scholar a
clearly expressed opinion that from the Scriptures themselves, it is
not possible to infer directly a connexion in date between the waving
of the first fruits and the Passover festival.[89]

  [89] _Pentateuque_, Traduction Nouvelle, par Rabbi Wogue (Lazare),
  tom. 3. Discussing an important difference of opinion which exists
  amongst Jewish scholars and commentators as to the exact day of
  the Passover festival, on which the priest was to wave the sheaf
  before the Lord, the writer says: “Le texte porte: ‘Le Lendemain du
  Sabbat,’ indication qui a donné lieu à une dissidence importante
  entre les Pharisiens et les Saducéens.... Nous avons adopté le
  système talmudique, qui a pour lui l’autorité des Septante, des
  targoumîm, de Josephe, et l’usage immémorial de la Synagogue; mais,
  à ne consulter que les textes sans parti pris, nous ne souscririons
  à aucune des deux doctrines. Ni la cérémonie de l’ômer, ni le comput
  des semaines, ne sont mis par nos textes en rapport avec la Pâque,
  mais uniquement avec les moissons, soit ici, soit dans le Deutéronome
  (xvi. 9). Dès la récolte de l’orge, le divin Législateur veut qu’on
  lui fasse hommage des prémices de cette céréale; il n’indique point
  de date, parceque la moisson, pas plus que la vendange, et pas plus
  en Palestine qu’ailleurs, ne commence à jour fixe. Mais une fois
  ouverte, elle se continue sans interruption; et comme les froments,
  en Palestine, sont coupés sept semaines après, les prémices du
  froment doivent être offertes au bout de sept semaines. L’Omer et
  la Pentecôte sont donc mobiles par exception, mais cette dernière
  est relativement fixe. Maintenant de quel ‘Sabbat’ est il question?
  Puisque tout ici est subordonné à _l’ouverture de la moisson_, ce
  sera naturellement le Sabbat qui suit cette ouverture.”

But if our enquiries should lead us to accept, as at least a
probability, the existence in Mosaic times of an astronomically
counted Hebrew year, and if this admission should require us to change
long-held opinions regarding the right observance of Hebrew festivals,
on the other hand, the fact that we might then trace _Arabian_ rather
than _Babylonian_ influence in the name of Abib would have its weight
on the conservative side of the controversy concerning the post or
pre-exilic _date_ of the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.

The fact that in India the months are named after the stars in
opposition to the sun suggested the above proposed explanations of
the Hebrew month name Abib as that of the month when the sun was in
conjunction with the constellation Aries, and in opposition to the star
Spica, marking the Zodiacal ears of corn. But there is a further point
of connexion to be observed between Indian astronomy and Biblical
archæology, namely, that the _first month of the Indian year_ is at
the present date the month during which the sun is in conjunction with
the constellation Aries. This month is called Chaitra, which is the
Sanscrit name of the star Spica, and it is in fact the same sidereally
marked month, which, according to the opinions here advocated, was the
first month of the ancient Accadian, Babylonian, and Hebrew years.

It must, therefore, be a question of interest to Biblical students to
determine, if possible, whether this Indian _first month_ has only
so been counted (as some scholars tell us) since about 570 A.D., or
whether it has so been counted from the same remote time as was the
Accadian month Bar zig-gar, that is, possibly, from about 6,000 B.C.

This question as to the month Chaitra forms part only of a larger
controversy which has been long waged, concerning the antiquity, or
otherwise, of the whole science of astronomy in India.

To this larger controversy I have drawn attention in my Paper,
_Astronomy in the Rig Veda_, read before the Congress of Orientalists
assembled at Rome in 1899. In that Paper, arguments are put forward in
support of the opinion that the Vedic bards possessed an acquaintance
with the science of astronomy, and that much of the imagery of the
hymns bore reference to the constellations of the Zodiac. For the
gods Indra, Soma, Agni, and the Aswins, astronomic interpretations
are proposed; and finally the question, which as it seems to me is
one specially deserving the attention of the Society of Biblical
Archæology--the question of the position of the month Chaitra as first
month of the Indian year in Vedic and pre-Vedic times is discussed,
and the claim that it was, and throughout remote ages had ever been,
virtually the same month as the Accadian Bar zig-gar is insisted upon.

Pursuing further the controversy concerning the antiquity of astronomy
amongst the Aryan races, in the note on “Ahura Mazda” (p. 152),
I proposed an identification of the Vedic Rudra with the Median
god--the god who presided over the Median equinoctial year, marked by
observation of the full moon in the constellation Sagittarius.

Continuing then our enquiries into the astronomic myths of ancient
India, let us turn our attention to the sons of Rudra--the _Maruts_.
They are a group of gods very prominent among Vedic deities, and it
is to be noted that Rudra is oftener alluded to in the Rig Veda as
the father of the Maruts than in almost any other capacity. Now the
Maruts--the stormy troop of Maruts--are celebrated as the companions
and friends of Indra. They are “associated with him in innumerable
passages.” Here, at first sight, it might seem that the proposed
astronomical identification of Indra and Rudra as solstitial and
equinoctial personifications must break down; for how should the sons
of the equinoctial Rudra always appear as the devoted companions of the
solstitial Indra?

On further examination, however, a very interesting explanation of this
difficulty presents itself. From a hymn (quoted at p. 157) to Siva, the
Hindu representative of the Vedic Rudra, we learn that the crescent
half-moon blazes on the forehead of Siva. Now the crescent half-moon,
in the western degrees of the constellation Sagittarius, would, 4,500
B.C., have marked the month of the summer solstice; for the moon,
in its “first quarter” in the first degrees of Sagittarius, must
attain to “full moon” seven days later, either in the constellation
Aquarius or Pisces, and the full moon in one or other of those two
constellations marked the season of the summer solstice somewhat
earlier than 4,000 B.C. The Maruts are often spoken of in the Veda as a
troop, seven in number, or as seven troops of seven, or as three times
seven in number. The astronomical thought therefore suggests itself,
that the seven Maruts represent the seven days that elapsed between
the crescent half-moon, blazing on the brow of Rudra, and the full
moon of the summer solstice, or Soma pavamana--Soma purified in the
celestial waters (see Plate XIII.). And this explanation of the Maruts
does not contradict, but rather agrees with and includes the usual
non-astronomic explanations held regarding them, namely, that they are
_storm winds_; for we know that the days which accompany the setting
in of the solstitial rainy season in India are the days in which the
fierce tropical hurricanes or monsoons prevail.

[Illustration: PLATE XIII.

  Outer circle divided into 360 degrees.

  2nd circle. The names and extent of the twenty-seven Indian
  “Nakshatras” or divisions of the Lunar Zodiac.

  3rd circle. Names and extent of the twelve Indian “Rashis” or
  divisions of the Solar Zodiac.

  4th circle. Proposed three-fold division of the Vedic Lunar Month at
  Season of Summer Solstice.

  Section of 5th circle. Proposed identification of “Maruts” with
  Moon’s course through seven “Nakshatras” at Season of Summer Solstice.

  The Constellations here appear as drawn on the celestial globe;
  they have not been reversed as in the other illustrations, hence an
  apparent, though not real, contradiction ensues.

[_To face p. 174._]

Now let us turn from the Maruts to another, as it seems to me, lunar
and solstitial myth, namely, that of Trita Aptya.

Trita Aptya is a friend of the Maruts, and is said to have appeared on
the same car with them. He is constantly, in the hymns, associated with
Indra, and feats recorded in one passage as performed by Indra, are in
another passage of the same hymn attributed to Trita.

Trita is also often spoken of together with Soma; and in the ninth
Maṇḍala, again and again we read of the ten “maidens, or fingers,” of
Trita preparing the Soma juice for Indra.

All these attributes of Trita, and others to be mentioned later, are
easily explainable on the astronomic theory already propounded in the
identifications of Indra, of Soma, and of the Maruts.

In the name Trita there is certainly a suggestion of the number
_three_, and Macdonell, in his _Vedic Mythology_,[90] brings proof to
show “that it was felt to have the meaning of the third”--that is, in
order of sequence.

  [90] P. 69.

But though the third, in this sense, does not actually carry with it
the meaning of _third of a whole_; yet, to any one in search of an
astronomical explanation of the Trita myth, the reiterated mention
of the ten fingers of Trita quickly suggests the thought of a whole
divided into three chief parts, each part containing ten lesser
divisions--a whole therefore of thirty parts.

Now the lunar month--in reality consisting of twenty-nine and a half
solar days (with some fractions over)--is in Hindu calendrical usage
divided into thirty equal portions of time called “tithis,” which are
considered as lunar days; and here, as it would seem, we arrive at the
physical basis of the Trita myth. Trita Aptya, or Trita in the waters
(or of the waters), appears as the third part of the lunar month--the
part during which the moon is to be seen in the celestial waters; and
as Trita is so closely connected with Indra and Soma pavamana, that
third part must have been the ten lunar days (five before and five
after “the full”) during which the moon is at its brightest, and in the
constellation Aquarius.

If we think of Trita Aptya as a personification of the triumphant third
of the moon’s course through the constellations of the Zodiac at the
season of the summer solstice (see Plate XIII.), and if we remember
that the moon during the ten lunar days contained in that “third”
came to its full in Aquarius or in Pisces, sometimes indeed at the
juncture of these constellations, we shall be able to understand much
of the figurative language of the Veda, which associates Trita with the
stormy Maruts, with the victories of Indra over Vritra, and with the
effulgence of Soma pavamana.

There is a legend concerning Trita not related but alluded to in the
Rig Veda. This legend tells us that Trita was one of three brothers
(Ekata, Dvita, and Trita), and that he was pushed into a well by his
brothers, and over the mouth of the well a circular covering was placed
with intent to keep Trita down and drown him. But through the circular
covering the ever-triumphant Trita burst. Here there can be little
doubt is a mythic description of the temporary disaster of eclipse
overtaking the full moon of the summer solstice in the celestial waters
of Aquarius or Pisces. The circular covering can be nothing else than
the circular shadow of the earth covering the disc of the full moon,
and Trita’s triumph may well remind us of the serene victoriousness of
the moon when it has emerged from eclipse and rides unharmed along the
sky.

In the Zend Avesta Thrita corresponds in many points with the Vedic
Trita. Thraetona also represents Trita under some of his other aspects,
and mention is made of Thraetona’s “two brothers who seek to slay him
on the way.”[91] From these facts it may be inferred that the Trita
myth is pre-Vedic. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find traces
of it in European mythologies. The name of Trita, with only a change
of termination, appears as the Greek Triton, and we may guess at an
allusion in the sculptured forms of Greek and Roman Tritons--half men
and half fish--to the two watery constellations, Aquarius and Pisces,
in which the Vedic Trita Aptya (son of waters) made his abode. The
Roman rendering of these composite figures, especially, may recall
to our minds the Zodiacal basis of the myth--the two fish of Pisces
appearing in Italian art, as the two fish-tails which terminate the
human-headed figure of the Triton. Again Hecate, as has been pointed
out by scholars, bears a close resemblance in name to Ekata. Hecate was
a lunar divinity; she was worshipped and sacrificed to at the close of
the month. We may therefore suppose she represented the waning moon.
She is further said to have been the daughter of Perseus and Asteria.
Looking at the figures of the celestial sphere (see Plate), we may
trace the third part of the moon’s course--the ten days of its waning
appropriated to Ekata--and observe how this portion of its course began
close to the _constellation Perseus_. Thus the Sanscrit Trita myth may
explain the name and parentage of the Grecian Hecate.[92]

  [91] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 69.

  [92] It is not to be supposed that only the month of the summer
  solstice was divided into the three parts, personified by Ekata,
  Dvita, and Trita: the legend of Trita Aptya, that is, Trita in the
  waters (or, of the waters), is necessarily restricted to that season
  in which the moon came to its full in the constellations Aquarius or
  Pisces. Some interesting indications in Indian and Greek mythology
  seem to point to a similar division of other months, but the subject
  is surrounded with uncertainties and difficulties.

A study of ancient European calendars may, on the other hand, eke out
our knowledge concerning the astronomic scheme in which Trita and his
brothers played such important parts. We read that in the Attic year
“each month was divided into three decades,” and the statement may
confirm us in the opinion that, following an almost too mathematically
imagined calendrical method, the ancestors of the Aryan race in remote
ages counted their months, not as containing twenty-nine-and-a-half
solar days, but as a portion of time containing three great equal
divisions, the first, the second, and the third--Ekata, Dvita,
Trita--each of these three parts being again subdivided into ten equal
tithis. If this should have been the case, it would be interesting to
note that the Greeks (and the Romans also, as shown by their cumbrous
system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides) retained the plan of a threefold
division of the months, but lost the originally concomitant arrangement
of the ten equal divisions of each part into tithis, whence much
difficulty ensued for Greeks and Romans alike in counting lunar months
of alternately thirty and twenty-nine days. Indian astronomers, on
the other hand, who retain the accurate and elaborate division of the
month into equal tithis, must have long ago lost the thought of its
originally threefold partition, for the Indians count each month as
composed not of three periods of time, but of _a light and a dark
half_.[93]

  [93] “The Luni-Solar year is used for the regulation of festivals
  and domestic arrangements; it commences at present at the instant
  of conjunction of the Sun and Moon in the Sidereal month Chaitra.
  The Hindu Lunar months invariably consist of thirty Tithis, or Lunar
  days; and the whole month is divided into two equal parts of fifteen
  Tithis each, the one called Shukla or Shuddh Paksha--the bright half
  or increase of the Moon; the other Krishna or Vadya Paksha--the dark
  half or decrease of the Moon.” (_The Indian Calendar_ for the year
  1892.)

To one more lunar Vedic personage let us direct our attention: namely,
to Atri--Atri who, unlike the conquering and ever-victorious Trita, is
chiefly celebrated for his misfortunes. Agni, Indra, and especially
the Aswins, moved by his misfortunes, come to the help of Atri, and
by means of a hundred acts, a hundred devices, they extricate him
from captivity, whether from a dark cavern or from a burning chasm.
They make the time of his captivity even pleasant to him, giving him
refreshing drink.

One of our own poets may help us to understand the Vedic metaphor of
Atri’s darksome cave. In the _Samson Agonistes_ of Milton, the hero,
describing his blindness, says--

    “The sun to me is dark
    And silent as the moon
    When she deserts the night,
    Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.”

Atri is, I believe, a personification of the _New Moon_, and thus we
may understand how he is sometimes described as hidden in a dark cave,
while at other times he is spoken of as in a fiery chasm, when the
uppermost thought in the Vedic poet’s mind is the close conjunction
of the moon at that time with the burning sun. From his dark cave, or
burning chasm, Atri is delivered by the “hundred acts” of worship and
sacrifice which it was the custom in India, as in many other countries,
to offer up at the time of New Moon, especially at the marked festivals
of the winter and summer solstice, or the beginning of the calendrical
year. On one occasion[94] we hear of Atri coming to the assistance of
the sun, which had been hidden by the demon Swarbhānu. This darkening
of the sun is generally understood to refer to a solar eclipse. A solar
eclipse can only take place at the time of new moon. It is a little
puzzling to find Atri, if Atri personifies the new moon, saving the sun
from eclipse instead of being the cause of the disaster; but as in the
Rig Veda Atri always appears as a friend, not an enemy, of the gods of
light--Agni, Indra, and the Aswins--we may suppose that the Vedic bard
chose to represent him as being present at, rather than causing the
sun’s eclipse. It may also be that a certain number of divisions of
lunar time were considered as personified by Atri, and that an eclipse
terminated in the third or fourth of those divisions; so that it could
be said that Atri “by his fourth sacred prayer” discovered the sun.
The passage is no doubt a difficult one; still the fact that Atri was
present at the eclipse of the sun seems to tell rather in favour of
than against the supposition that Atri was a personification of the
time of new moon.

  [94] Wilson’s _Rig Veda_, vol. iii. p. 297, _Maṇḍala_, V. xl. “5.
  When, Súrya, the son of the _Asura_ Swarbhánu overspread thee with
  darkness, the worlds were beheld like one bewildered, knowing not
  his place. 6. When, Indra, thou wast dissipating those illusions of
  Swarbhánu which were spread below the Sun, then Atri, by his fourth
  sacred prayer, discovered the Sun concealed by the darkness impeding
  his functions. 7. (Súrya speaks) Let not the violator, Atri, through
  hunger swallow with fearful (darkness) me who am thine; thou art
  Mitra, whose wealth is truth; do thou and the royal Varuna both
  protect me. 8. Then the Brahman (Atri), applying the stones together,
  propitiating the gods with praise, and adoring them with reverence,
  placed the eye of Súrya in the sky; he dispersed the delusions of
  Swarbhánu. 9. The Sun, whom the _Asura_, Swarbhánu, had enveloped
  with darkness, the sons of Atri subsequently recovered; no others
  were able (to effect his release).”

The four astronomical interpretations here proposed for Rudra, the
Maruts, Trita Aptya, and Atri, are all harmonious with and supplemental
to the four discussed in my Paper read at Rome, and entitled
_Astronomy in the Rig Veda_. They must to a great extent all stand or
fall together. They have been very briefly stated, but if indeed an
astronomic basis does, as suggested, underlie Vedic imagery, Sanscrit
scholars, with the science of etymology at their command, will easily
be able to follow up and pronounce upon the value of the clues here
hazarded.

VIII

THE CHINESE CALENDAR, WITH SOME REMARKS WITH REFERENCE TO THAT OF THE
CHALDEANS

  [Reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
  Archæology, December 1901_]

The Chinese Lunar Zodiac is divided into 28 star groups named Siou.
Gustav Schlegel in his _Uranographie Chinoise_ having enumerated
these 28 siou--or as he translates that term, “domiciles”--says: “La
première chose qui nous frappe en voyant la liste des 28 domiciles,
c’est qu’elle commence par le domicile _Kio_, ou la _Vierge_, preuve
positive que c’était avec ce domicile que l’année a dû commencer
primitivement,”[95] and further on he quotes from “le _Eul-ya_ cette
antique dictionnaire,” as follows: “_L’Ancien des constellations_,
c’est _Kio_ et _Kang_ ... ils sont les chefs des domiciles, et à
cause de cela on les nomme _l’ancien des constellations_: et ‘le signe
d’Ancien des constellations’ est exactement les domiciles _Kio_ et
_Kang_.”[96] Schlegel adds: “Ce nom de _Ancien des constellations_
répond exactement à celui de _Princeps Signorum_ que les astrologues
romains donnerent au _bélier_; à l’époque où cette constellation
était signe de l’équinoxe du printemps. C’est-à-dire que le signe qui
annonçait le commencement de l’année était le premier, le Princeps
signorum, l’Ancien, le Chef, des constellations. Mais ces étoiles de
la Vierge portent encore d’autres noms qui tous out rapport au fait
astronomique que l’astérisme _Kio_ ouvrait l’année. Le ‘Sing-king’ les
nomme les _Chefs des quatre régions_, les _Légions célestes_.... _Elles
président aux métamorphoses de la création: elles sont traversées
par l’écliptique et les sept clartés (7 planets) commencent (leur
révolution) par elles._”

  [95] _Uranographie Chinoise_, p. 79.

  [96] _Uranographie Chinoise_, p. 87.

The concluding words from the Sing-king which I have marked in
italics--giving as they do the opinions held by ancient _Chinese_
writers respecting the first divisions of their Lunar Zodiac--may
remind us of the opinions held by _Indian_ astronomers as to their
first division of the Zodiac.

In Whitney’s comments on the _Sûrya Siddhânta_ he observes:--“The
initial point of the fixed Hindu sphere, from which longitudes are
reckoned, _and at which the planetary motions are held by all schools
of Hindu astronomy to have commenced at the creation_, is the end of
the asterism Revatî, or the beginning of Açvinî.”[97]

  [97] V. p. 93.

It is impossible to read of these two traditions concerning the
initial point of the Chinese and of the Hindu ecliptic series of
constellations, without suspecting some underlying cause common to both
traditions.

The Chinese and Hindu initial points are diametrically opposite to each
other on the ecliptic. Calendrically speaking, such opposite points may
be taken to mark the same season and the same month--as for instance,
in the old Accadian calendar the month names referred to the stars in
_conjunction_ with the sun. The month of the sacrifice of righteousness
corresponded to the month during which the sun was in conjunction with
the sacrificial Ram. This same month counted (theoretically) from the
arrival of the sun at the end of Revati and beginning of Aswinī--the
initial point of the Indian Zodiac--is in India called, after the star
group in _opposition_, Chaitra.

Spica (α Virginis) is the chief star of the Nakshatra Chaitra, and
Spica also is the chief star of the Chinese siou Kio, “l’astérisme,”
which, according to the tradition above recorded, “ouvrait l’année,”
and which (together with the neighbouring “siou Kang), président aux
métamorphoses de la création,” “sont traversées par l’écliptique, et
les sept clartés commencent leur révolution par elles.”

To any interested in the history of the Chinese calendar, or rather to
any interested in the history of the human race, the question as to
the reason for the choice of this point and for the equal honour in
which it was held (as we have seen) by the Accadian, the Hindu, and the
Chinese nations, is a question worthy of close attention.

In former Papers contributed to these _Proceedings_, I have drawn
attention to the many indications in ancient cuneiform and Indian
literature, which seem to point to the conclusion that about 6,000
B.C., in some part of Asia and in a latitude probably as far north
as 40 degrees, a calendar was instituted by “some ancient race of
men,” that this calendar dealt with a year beginning at the season
of the _winter solstice_, and that the stars which at that date were
chosen to mark the solstitial year were those in the first degrees of
the constellation Aries in _conjunction_ with--and the bright star
Spica in _opposition_ to--the sun. I suggested that the Accadians and
later Babylonians, as also the Aryans of India, continued to follow as
star-marks for their years the constellations chosen by the institutors
of this ancient calendar, and that therefore in the course of ages
the beginning of the years of these peoples moved gradually away from
the season of the _winter solstice_, approaching always nearer to
the _vernal equinox_, close to which point we find it “bound” at the
time of the fall of the Babylonian power; while in India, where the
star-mark Spica is still followed, the year now begins about twenty
days after the spring equinox.

Indications in Mesopotamian and Indian literature have seemed to me to
point to the above conclusions. The opposed view, held by most writers
on the subject, is that only at the late date (about the beginning of
our era) when the stars of Aries in conjunction, and the star of Spica
in opposition, marked the _equinoctial_ season, were they adopted
as marks for the beginning of the year by Babylonians and Hindus
respectively.

I think that the position held by the star Spica in Chinese ancient
astronomical tradition may be claimed as telling strongly in favour of
an originally _solstitial_ as opposed to an originally _equinoctial_
beginning of the sidereal years of the Accadian, Hindu, and Chinese
nations, for never has the claim been made that the _Chinese_ years
were counted from the vernal equinox; but on the contrary the opinion
has been very generally held and expressed by Chinese scholars that
at some remote date the new year’s festival was held in China at the
season of the winter solstice.

Gustav Schlegel, one of the latest writers on the subject of Chinese
astronomy, though he admits that, “selon l’opinion générale l’année
chinoise commence toujours avec le solstice d’hiver,” has put forward
a view entirely opposed to this generally held opinion: according to
his theory, the Chinese have from the most remote times counted their
years, as they count them at present--_i.e._, from the new moon nearest
to _the season mid-way between the winter solstice and the spring
equinox_: and as he is convinced--as we have seen--that the beginning
of the Chinese year was originally marked by the asterism Kio, he
demands as the lowest possible date for this origin of the Chinese
calendar, that of 16,916 B.C., when the constellation Kio marked, by
its heliacal rising, the mid-season between solstice and equinox.

Schlegel brings forward many learned and ingenious arguments drawn from
Chinese literature to support this theory. It would be impossible at
second hand, and in a small space, to state fairly his arguments with
a view to rebutting them. His volumes are full of valuable information
concerning the “Uranographie Chinoise,” but it has not seemed to me
when reading and re-reading his work, that the grounds on which he
relies are sufficiently established to support the high claims to
antiquity which he puts forward for the origin of the modern Chinese
method of counting the year from the mid-season between solstice and
equinox.

It has on the contrary seemed to me that on historical grounds a theory
may be arrived at which will furnish a reasonable explanation of the
present somewhat exceptional Chinese calendrical methods, and which
will, if it is accepted, strongly reinforce the grounds for holding the
already general opinion that the year in ancient times in China was
solstitial. That opinion once established must lead us with increased
confidence to attribute the honour traditionally paid by Hindus and
Chinese alike to the initial point of their respective ecliptic series
of star groups to, as I have said, their common acquaintance with a
calendar established on high authority at the date in round numbers of
6,000 B.C.

The year in China is luni-solar, and it is, as has been pointed out,
counted from the season exactly midway between the winter solstice and
the spring equinox.

It is counted from this mid-season and not from the sun’s opposition
to, or conjunction with, any particular star or star group. It is
therefore not a _sidereal_ but a _tropical_ year; and it is estimated
at exactly the same length as is our European Gregorian year.

We here in Europe are not yet tired of congratulating ourselves on the
scientific success attained by Pope Gregory XIII., when in 1582 he,
with the help of many learned men and astronomers, established, as a
reform of the earlier Julian calendar, a method of securely binding all
recurring anniversaries--civil and ecclesiastical--to the exact same
_season_ of the year.

Calculations for the arrangement of the Julian calendar had strained
the scientific powers of the astronomers of Greece and Rome in Cæsar’s
time, but the length of the year estimated by them was twelve minutes
greater than that arrived at by the astronomers of Gregory’s later date.

To find, as we do, in the far east of Asia a people counting the
length of their luni-solar year with the same accurate exactness as
that only attained to as late as 1582 A.D. in Europe, might well
cause us surprise, were it not that history furnishes us with an easy
explanation of this exact identity of Chinese and European calendrical
calculations, by teaching us that the calendar by which the Chinese now
count their years, and by which they have counted them for nearly three
hundred years, was really compiled at Peking by Roman ecclesiastics,
to whom the Gregorian methods were well known, and for whom, indeed,
the study of these methods must have possessed the charm of novelty
added to its intrinsic utility and scientific interest.

Two learned Jesuit Fathers obtained in the 17th century great influence
at the Chinese Court. In 1600 A.D., Matteo Ricci was allowed with his
companions to settle at Peking, where he spent the remainder of his
life in teaching mathematics and other sciences.

In 1610, Johann Adam von Schall, another learned Jesuit Father, “was
sent out partly in consequence of his knowledge of mathematics and
astronomy to China,” and was ultimately “invited to the Imperial
Court at Peking, where _he was entrusted with the reformation of the
calendar_ and the direction of the public mathematical school.”[98]

  [98] _Chambers’s Encyclopædia_, 1901.

Under these circumstances, when we read that “according to the Chinese
work, _Wan-nian-shu_, or ‘Ten thousand-year Calendar,’ in which the
elements of the Chinese calendar from 1624 A.D. until 1921 A.D. are
calculated by the Astronomical Board at Peking, the earliest date of
the Chinese New Year’s Day is January 21st, and the latest February
20th”[99]--when we read this and remember that Johann Adam von Schall
was in 1624 in charge of the reformation of the calendar at Peking, we
need feel no surprise to find “the elements of the Chinese calendar”
calculated in advance for 279 tropical, that is Gregorian, years.
Indeed the influence of the European ecclesiastic in these calculations
is clearly to be recognized in their very form, for we are easily
reminded by it of the “Table to find Easter from the present time
to--such and such a year--A.D. inclusive,” prefixed to our English
Books of Common Prayer. And we may be tempted to smile when we see
the jealously conservative Chinese nation so peaceably--perhaps
unwittingly--accepting a reformation of their calendar at the hands of
foreigners, and contrast with this acceptance the turbulent opposition
with which for so long the introduction of the Gregorian calendar into
many European countries was resisted.

  [99] _On Chronology and the Construction of the Calendar, with
  special regard to the Chinese Computation of Time compared with the
  European._ By Dr. K. Fritsche.

It may well be that the Jesuit Fathers to whom the Emperor entrusted
the reformation of the calendar were themselves not aware of the
magnitude of the reformation they were introducing into Chinese
methods, for they found the luni-solar festival of the new year, as we
may learn from the Chinese literature of that date, occurring close
to that _season_ to which they then so scientifically bound it. But,
according to the theory which in this Paper I am anxious to advocate,
this _season_ midway between solstice and equinox had not been chosen
with definite intention as the first of the year by the Chinese, but
had only been arrived at, in consequence of an age-long following on
their part of a star group, chosen thousands of years earlier, by one
of their ancient emperors, as that from which the beginning of their
year was to be counted. This star group was the Siou (domicile) Hiu,
the eleventh division of their Lunar Zodiac, and it is marked by the
stars β Aquarii and α Equulei. (See diagram.)[100]

  [100] The 28 Siou are not of equal extent, and there are many
  discrepancies in the Chinese tables which profess to give the number
  of degrees attributed to each. In the diagram, therefore, only the
  stars which compose the three adjoining domiciles, Niu, Hiu, and Wei
  are noted, and they are connected by straight lines, according to
  Chinese astronomical custom.

There is in the great History of China a description given of a
reformation of the calendar carried out by the Emperor Tchuen-Hio,
whose date is placed at 2510-2431 B.C. The conjunction of the sun and
moon close to the Siou Hiu is in this description clearly referred to
as a mark given for the beginning of the year. But the fact of this
choice of the star mark Hiu has, for European scholars, been obscured
by a most unfortunate paraphrase made use of by Père de Mailla, the
translator into French of the _Histoire Générale de la Chine_. He gives
us in the passage describing Tchuen-Hio’s reformation the phrase, “15°
du Verseau,” instead of the Chinese expression, “the Siou Hiu.”[101]

  [101] The fact that P. de Mailla has so paraphrased the Chinese
  original has thus plainly been attested by the late Professor Legge.
  In answer to a question addressed to him on the subject, he wrote,
  in December 1894, to Mr. H. W. Greene, Fellow of Magdalen College,
  Oxford, as follows: “In the passage from P. de Mailla’s History, that
  writer is both translating and paraphrasing ‘the star group Hiu.’”

[Illustration: PLATE XIV.

Domiciles Niu, Hiu and Wei, of the Chinese Lunar Zodiac.]

The Siou Hiu extends over some eight or ten degrees of the ecliptic in
the constellation Aquarius; to restrict to _one_ degree the given star
mark was an inaccuracy serious enough in an astronomical statement, but
this inaccuracy is as nothing when compared with the further entire
distortion of facts occasioned by P. de Mailla’s use of the ambiguous
phrase, “15° du Verseau,” ambiguous because it can be taken to refer
either to the fifteenth degree of the _sign_, or of the _constellation_
“du Verseau” (Aquarius).

The Siou Hiu is situated, as stated above, in the _constellation_
Aquarius (see diagram), but astronomers reading P. de Mailla’s
translation have understood the phrase in its technical sense, and have
therefore been led to believe that the Emperor Tchuen-Hio fixed the
beginning of the Chinese year to the 15° of the _sign_ Aquarius; and
as, astronomically and technically speaking, the 15° Aquarius (sign)
has no reference to any star or constellation, but is only that point
of the ecliptic to which the sun attains exactly at the mid-season
between winter solstice and spring equinox, they have taken for granted
that 2,500 B.C. the Chinese year began at that point, and therefore at
the same season as it does at the present time.

But as we now learn on the high authority of Professor Legge that it
was to the _star group Hiu_ that Tchuen-Hio is recorded to have bound
the beginning of the year, we know that if the record is true, the year
in Tchuen-Hio’s time must have begun at the _winter solstice_, and not
at the _mid-season_, between it and the equinox.

When due correction of P. de Mailla’s paraphrase has been made in the
passage recording Tchuen-Hio’s reform, there remains still a difficulty
to be overcome in the account of this event given in the _Histoire
Générale de la Chine_, or rather I should say that it is when we have
corrected P. de Mailla’s paraphrase that this difficulty appears.
For in the history it is stated that it was from the new moon at the
beginning of spring, and near to the star group Hiu, that the year
was then and henceforth to be counted, and this statement contains an
astronomical contradiction. Our knowledge of the precession of the
equinoxes teaches us that the star group Hiu in Tchuen-Hio’s time did
not mark the _beginning of spring_, but rather the very _middle of
winter_. Unless, then, we throw aside as worthless the whole record of
Tchuen-Hio’s reform of the calendar, we are driven to suppose that some
Chinese historian, ignorant of the precession of the equinoxes, and
writing at a date when, owing to that precession, the first new moon of
spring was indeed close to the star group Hiu, and that of the winter
solstice far distant from it--that this historian made what he may well
have considered a necessary correction in the record with which he was
dealing, and substituted the “first day of spring” for the “mid-winter
season.” Nor need we much blame him for making such a correction,
when we find ourselves driven by stress of modern enlightenment to
correct his correction, and to read “mid-winter” where he has written
“beginning of spring.”

Let us now read with due corrections, between square brackets, the
record of Tchuen-Hio’s reformation of the calendar as given in the
_Histoire Générale de la Chine_.

“Tchuen-Hio ... profitant de la paix dont jouissoit l’empire, transféra
sa cour à Kao-yang. Ce fut dans cette ville, que toujours passionné
pour la connoissance des astres, il établit une espèce d’académie,
composée des Lettrés les plus habiles en cette science. On recueillit
toutes les observations anciennes qu’on compara avec les modernes, et
on poussa l’astronomie à un degré de perfection surprenant. Les règles
sûres qu’ils établirent pour supputer les mouvements du soleil, de
la lune, des planettes, et des étoiles fixes, acquirent à Tchuen-Hio
le titre glorieux de restaurateur, et même de fondateur de la vraie
astronomie. C’est une perte que ces règles ne soient pas venues jusqu’à
nous.

“Après plusieurs années de travail, Tchuen-Hio détermina qu’à l’avenir
l’année commenceroit à la lune la plus proche du premier jour du
printems [proche du solstice d’hiver] qui vient vers le 15° du
_Verseau_; [vers le Siou Hiu] et comme il savoit par le calcul qu’il en
avoit fait, que dans une des années de son règne les planettes devoient
se joindre dans la constellation _Che_ (constellation qui occupe 17°
dans le ciel, dont le milieu est vers le 6° des _Poissons_) il choisit
cette année-là pour la première de son calendrier, d’autant plus que
cette même année le soleil et la lune se trouvoient en conjonction, le
premier jour du printems [le jour du solstice d’hiver].”[102]

  [102] Vol. I. p. 33.

It may, of course, be objected to the proposed correction of the
_season_ in this passage as follows: granting that either the star mark
Hiu, or the _spring season_ said to have been chosen by Tchuen-Hio,
must have been erroneously recorded in the _Histoire Générale_, the
probabilities are equal as to which element in the statement is or is
not true. Tchuen-Hio may have chosen the moon nearest to the first day
of spring, and may have named some constellation other than Hiu near to
which this first moon was in conjunction with the sun. The late Chinese
historian, instead of tampering as above supposed with the recorded
_season_, may have substituted the name of the star group Hiu, which
at his date marked the beginning of spring, for that “other” chosen by
Tchuen-Hio.

But the probabilities on this point are in reality not equally
balanced. For, in the first instance, we must take into consideration
the very general opinion that the year in China anciently began at the
winter solstice, and the fact that this season was in Tchuen-Hio’s
time so accurately marked by the junction of the star groups Wei and
Hiu (see diagram), and we must further take into consideration the
many references to the star group Hiu in ancient Chinese literature,
which connect it very specially with traditions concerning the Emperor
Tchuen-Hio. Many passages in the works of the Père Gaubil are to be
met with to this effect, as for instance where he thus quotes and
comments on a statement in the Eul-ya. “On désigne _Hiuen-hiao_ par la
Constellation Hui (_sic_); on appelle encore ce Signe _Tchouen-Hio_.”
Gaubil adds, “Le Signe Hiuen-Hiao est celui que nous appelons Amphora.
Le dictionnaire [Eul-ya] met dans ce Signe la Constellation _Hiu_;
c’est-à-dire que le Signe commençoit par quelque degré de cette
Constellation. L’Histoire Chinoise asseure que l’eau est le symbole
du régne de Tchouen-Hiu (_sic_). L’Eul-ya dit formellement que
Hiuen-hiao Signe Celeste du Zodiaque désigne l’Empereur _Tchouen-Hiu_
(_sic_).”[103] Schlegel also tells us that the Chinese placed the soul
of Tchuen-Hio in the constellation Hiu.

  [103] _Observations Mathématiques, Astronomiques_, &c., redigées et
  publiées par le P. Étienne Souciet, tome iii. pp. 31-33.

But not only is Hiu in Chinese literature closely associated with the
Emperor Tchuen-Hio: it is also closely bracketed with the season of the
winter solstice. Schlegel gives many quotations to this effect from
Chinese authorities, but he would refer all such allusions to the far
back time between 14,000 and 13,000 B.C., when Hiu was in opposition to
the sun at that season, not in conjunction with it as at Tchuen-Hio’s
date.

Of Hiu he writes:--

  _Hiu, ou Tertre funéraire._[104]

  “C’est cet astérisme dont la culmination à l’heure _tsze_ (11^{h} de
  la nuit) annonçait le solstice d’hiver.... ‘Au solstice d’hiver,’
  dit le Mémoire sur la divination par la tortue, ‘la course du soleil
  et des astres n’est pas encore complète, et ils sont conséquemment
  délaissés comme des orphelins (_Kou_) et vides (_Hiu_).’ Le solstice
  d’hiver était donc considéré par les Chinois comme la position d’un
  ‘orphelin au tombeau de ses parents.’ ... Le père Noël à traduit
  (_Hiu_) par Vacuum, Vide; mais nous préférons traduire litéralement
  par Tertre funéraire.”[105]

  [104] _Uranographie Chinoise_, p. 214.

  [105] _Ibid._ p. 217.

Taking these various passages into consideration, we are, I think, led
to feel that the probabilities in favour of Tchuen-Hio having chosen
the star group Hiu to mark, in conjunction with the sun, the winter
solstice, are greater than those in favour of a comparatively modern
choice of that star group as a mark for the beginning of spring.

Reading the passage of the _Histoire Générale_ as corrected above,
we may assume that Tchuen-Hio intended to establish sure rules by
which the Chinese were for the future to count their years from the
_solstice_, and from the conjunction of sun and moon close to the star
group Hiu. But we also know that the following of these sure rules was
an impossibility. Either the season or the star mark must in the long
course of ages have been abandoned. It would be a difficult, perhaps an
impossible, task to ascertain how far, or in what manner, the attempt
was made under successive dynasties to carry out the injunctions of
Tchuen-Hio. We read in the _Confucian Analects_ that in answer to his
“disciple,” who had asked him, “how the government of a country should
be administered,” the Master said--as the first of five rules--“Follow
the seasons of Hsiâ.” And in his note on this text the commentator
says, “Confucius approved the rule of the Hsiâ dynasty. His decision
has been the law of all the dynasties since the Ch’in.”[106] During
all the centuries in which the Hea or Hsiâ dynasty held sway, _i.e._,
from 2205 to 1766 B.C., the sure rules of Tchuen-Hio might have been
carried out without much difficulty, for at the _new moon nearest to
the winter solstice_ the sun would still have been in or _near to the
constellation Hiu_ (see diagram), though at the date of Confucius,
551-479 B.C., this was no longer the case. Judging from the final
result, we may, I think, take it for granted that the Chinese followed
the _star mark_ and not the _season_ appointed for the beginning of the
year by Tchuen-Hio. And thus following the star mark, the beginning of
their year imperceptibly receded from the solstice, and approached the
spring equinox, so that in 1600 A.D. the Jesuit fathers found the year
still beginning at the new moon, “vers le Siou Hiu,” _and hence at the
season midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox._

  [106] Legge, _Chinese Classics_, vol. i., _Confucian Analects_, book
  xv., ch. x.

In a former Paper contributed to these _Proceedings_,[107] I suggested
that in the inscription engraved on Gudea’s diorite statue we had
evidence of a reform of the already existing Accadian calendar--in use
from a date much earlier than Gudea’s in the neighbouring Babylonian
kingdom.

  [107] February 1896, V. p. 54.

Gudea’s date is placed by scholars at about 2800 B.C.--not much earlier
than at that claimed in the Chinese History for Tchuen-Hio.

Much honour is given by this priestly ruler of Lagash “to Ningirsu, and
to the goddess Bau, his beloved consort,” and the concluding lines of
the inscription run as follows:--

“On the day of the beginning of the year, the day of the festival of
Bau, on which offerings were made: one calf, one fat sheep, three
lambs, six full grown sheep, two rams, seven _pat_ of dates, seven
_sab_ of cream, seven palm buds.

“Such were the offerings made to the goddess Bau, in the ancient temple
on that day.”

The generally received opinion as to Ningirsu (Ninib) is, that he was
the god of the “southern sun”; and, as I contended in my Paper, the
_southern sun_, if we think of the sun in its _yearly_, not merely in
its daily course, may fitly represent the sun of the winter solstice,
while the goddess Bau = Gula is the goddess by whose very name the
constellation Aquarius, as we may assume, was designated in the
Accadian astrological texts.

If from Gudea’s inscription concerning the new year’s festival a reform
in the calendar of Lagash may be inferred, by which the beginning of
the year was transferred from the stars of Aries to those of Aquarius,
we should find that the Lagash inscription, and the great History of
China, tell us the same story--the Lagash inscription supplementing
the Chinese History in this important point--that whereas the account
of Tchuen-Hio’s reform has been manifestly more or less garbled in its
long descent through human hands: that of Gudea’s new year’s festival
is a contemporaneous and utterly untampered-with account. It is also
of some moment to note one curious point of resemblance in the idea
connected with the stars of Aquarius, by the astronomers of countries
so far distant from each other as China and Mesopotamia. Hiu, as we
have learnt, may be translated as “Vacuum,” and the name of the
goddess Bau or Bahu bears the same signification as the Hebrew word
translated in Genesis i. 2 by “void.”[108]

  [108] Sayce, _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_,
  February 1874.

If we now accept Tchuen-Hio’s reformation as a re-adjustment of a
previously-existing sidereal and originally solstitial calendar, we
are at once given the clue to the two so similar Hindu and Chinese
traditions quoted above, concerning the initial point of their
Lunar Zodiacs: and we shall recognise that Kio--containing the star
Spica--_in opposition to_, and the first degrees of Aswinī, _in
conjunction with_, the sun, obtained the posts of leaders of the lunar
series for the same reason--namely, _that they marked the beginning of
the year at the winter solstice_ 6000 B.C.

To this same cause I have here, and elsewhere, attributed the fact that
in the Accadian calendar the stars of Aries held the same position, and
marked the _first_ month of the year, as the month of the “sacrifice of
righteousness.”

In thus tracing back the history of the calendars of the ancient
nations of the East, in observing the identity of their earliest
astronomical traditions, and noting the curious points of contact
and divergence in their later scientific and mythological ideas, the
impression seems to force itself upon us more and more definitely,
that before the races of mankind were “scattered abroad upon the face
of the whole earth,” their ancestors were capable of great scientific
achievements, and possessed in common high intellectual aspirations.

We in these later days, so picturing to ourselves the past, may be
freshly struck by the words of the ancient history, which tell us of
the time when “the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.”

PART II

PLATES.

PART II.

PLATES XV., XVI., XVII., AND XVIII.

In the foregoing pages arguments have been urged in support of the
view that the ecliptic circle, at the remote date (speaking in round
numbers) of 6000 B.C., had been portioned by some “ancient race of men”
into twelve divisions; and that the twelve constellational figures of
the Zodiac had then also been imagined under forms more or less closely
resembling those which we recognize in the heavens at the present day.

Most of the arguments in favour of this opinion are necessarily based
on considerations connected with the phenomena of the heavens, effected
in the long course of ages by a slow revolution of the earth’s axis.
Astronomers during the last two thousand years have carefully observed
the effects and studied the causes of this slow terrestrial movement,
and they can now tell us with confidence and exactness that the
space of 25,868 years is required for the accomplishment of one such
revolution of the earth’s axis.

In our enquiry into the astronomy of the ancients we need not at all
turn our minds to the difficult subject of the causes, or indeed even
to the fact, of this slow movement of the earth’s axis, further than
to realize fully that its effects have been to produce a slow but