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- Lucifer, vol. 4, no. 19, March 1889, pp. 27-31
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Title for references: Old W.R. - Ancient Astronomy of the Hindus
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27
NOW that the Light of Oriental Science is beginning to diffuse itself more widely into the mental atmosphere of Western thinkers, much of the ground covered by modern schools of Theorists, with the imposing structure they have been pleased to call Exact Science, is likely to fall into other hands. It is possible, nay most probable, that the Right of Inheritance will ere long receive that consideration which is demanded by the nature of its claims.
Until a very recent date, the leaders of modern systems of thought in Europe and America have held undisputed possession of the public mind, and especially have they bestowed great pains upon the cultivation of that area covered by the physical sciences. The spongiose absorption of dogmatic science is considered by the average student to be an equivalent to individual intelligence.
The enquiring “Why” is no longer the pupil, friend, or confidant of the reasoning “Because.” “A new theory” to-day, and more “exact science” to-morrow. No room for questions? Not a little! The gods have spoken, therefore keep silence!
Webster, and others of his vein, tell us that a science is a collection of principles or truths, based upon a fixed law. This may be; but science to-day is thought, by many people, to be anything which is followed by such names as Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer, &c. With such persons, the mere connection with one of these names is an all-sufficient reason. No more than this blind credulity was required of us in our childhood, to enable the indulgent nurse to administer the obnoxious “grey powder”! “Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what the gods will send you!” We remember it well! too well not to have profited by this experience of thy artful devices, O human nature!
Well, and who is this that has thrown down the glove to the champions of Modern Science? None other than the poor despised Hindu – the same that in our early days we were taught to look upon as a poor illiterate heathen, having all the vices and none of the virtues of human nature. The idea of his claiming anything more than an Englishman, beyond a darker skin, seems altogether too absurd to be entertained by one who has been trained thus to think of him. And yet, amongst other claims, a knowledge of astronomy, equal if not superior to that of Europeans, is asserted by him to have been the inheritance of his people for at least 5,000 years!
It is our purpose to examine this claim; as briefly as may be, consistent with justice.
Let us then enquire first of all as to their knowledge of the general constitution of the heavens.
In the Philosophical Transactions for 1772 some highly interesting remarks were made upon the Indian Zodiac by Sir William Jones, the nature of which went very far to prove that the present form of the Zodiac was well known to the Hindus at least 2,400 years B.C. Reference is made to Acharya Varaha Mihira, who quotes from ancient Sastras existing 2,000 years before his time, to 28show that the Precession of the Equinoxes was employed by the ancient Hindus to mark certain of their important “periods.”
According to modern astronomical teachings, Hipparchus of Bithynia, who founded his school of philosophy in Alexandria 140 B.C., is said to have first observed this phenomenon of the Equinoctial precession.
But the aforesaid Mihira, who is mentioned by name in the Panchatantra, makes this observation.
“At present, one solstice is in the first degree of Karkataka and the other in the first of Makara, but certainly the southern solstice was once in the middle of Aslesha, the northern in the first degree of Dhanishtha, according to former Sastras.”
This is equivalent to saying that about 400 B.C., the summer solstice was in Cancer 1° and the southern or winter solstice was in Capricornus 1°, but that, according to scientific teaching over 2,000 years anterior to this period, the solstices were respectively in the first degrees of Leo and Aquarius. Now what else can this statement imply than that the motion of the fixed stars and constellations was well known to the astronomical Hindu? It is to be noted that since the ancients have recorded the summer solstice as falling in Leo, such record must have been made about 4,320 years ago, since the solstice is now in Gemini, and the time required for its passage through each sign is 2,160 years. This latter period was also the time allowed by the ancients, for their “Great Year” consisted of 25,920 years, i.e., 12 times 2,160, and as this is the period allowed by Newton, and indeed all astronomers up to a very recent date, for the precession of the Equinoxes, I think we may affirm that the merit of antiquity as well as of accuracy is due to the Hindu.
It is to be noted, then, that the ancient inhabitants of India figured their Zodiac in precisely the same way as the Greeks, from whom, through the Romans, we obtained our knowledge of this subject in the first place. The division of this Zodiac into the 12 signs was the same as that found in the Egyptian monuments of antiquity by Bailly and other travellers. Copies of the Dendara Esné Zodiacs present exactly the same order in the “signs” as the copy of the Ancient Indian Zodiac in Moor’s Pantheon, and that also by Sir Wm. Jones in the Philosophical Transactions.
Further we find that the Hindus divided their Zodiac into 36 drekkanas, each sign consisting of 3 such, having 10° each. They likewise divided the circle into 27 lunar mansions.
For every one of these drekkanas and lunar mansions they had a distinctive name, and what is more remarkable still, as an evidence of the importance of astronomical exactness with them, they had a particular name for every degree of the Zodiacal circle. Besides this mathematical knowledge of the Zodiac, they appear to have been well acquainted with the natures of the different asterisms constituting the drekkanas, for they have not only named them, as said, but have pourtrayed them under figures or symbols. A description of these is given in Mihira’s Vrihat Jataka, translated by Colebrooke. Examining still further, we shall find that the ancient Hindus possessed a wide knowledge of astronomical “periods.”
We have already noticed the “Great Year” formed by the precession of the Equinoxes: we may now mention the famous Naros, or Naronic cycle.[1] The Naros was composed of 600 years and the cycle of 12 × 600 = 7,200 years. It is called 29the “Lunisolar Year,” because it has relation to the motions of the sun and moon through the Zodiac, for it will be seen that the Naros consists of 7,200 months or moons, while the cycle measures the same number of years. This cycle allows 600 years to each sign of the Zodiac, whereas the “Great Year” allows 2,160 years, and this latter period divided by 30, the number of degrees in each sign, gives 72 years, which, multiplied by 100, gives the Naronic cycle. The idea of the Hindus dividing the Zodiac into ten signs no doubt has arisen from a comparison of these two periods. The Naros of 600 years is said to be one of the oldest periods known to the Aryans. It is used to mark the recurrence of Lunisolar conjunction in the same asterism, but we may here add that it also has an important esoteric meaning as well as an exoteric use In this respect it is like all other natural phenomena to the spiritually-minded Hindu.
We may now notice another astronomical period known to the Aryans, which is intimately connected with the foregoing.
The obliquity of the ecliptic is a phenomenon which did not escape the notice of the Oriental astronomer. Regarding this matter modern astronomers are at loggerheads, not only as to its cause, but also as to its motion in regard to the earth’s axis. True to nature, the Hindus have set this motion down as “regular,” and appear to have reckoned it as 50' per century, or half a second per year. A comparison of the figures given by Flamstead, Bradley, Mayer, Maskelyne, Vince, M. de la Lande, and Woodhouse gives the same result.
It will be seen, therefore, that there is a relationship between the “great year” of 25,920 solar years and this motion of the earth’s axis in regard to the plane of the ecliptic (which we may call the polar revolution), in that the precession of the equinoxes is 50' per year and the polar revolution 50' per century.
Consequently the time required for a complete polar revolution is 2,592,000 years. Now if we multiply the Naronic Cycle of 7,200 years by 360, the degrees in a circle, the result is this period of 2,592,000 years! Hence one Naronic cycle will produce just one degree of diminution in the obliquity of the ecliptic, or, in other words, increase of polar elevation.
If we consider the vast cosmical effects which would take place under this law in the earth’s body in the course of only half such a period as that required for the polar revolution, we shall not be disposed to treat as fables the allusions frequently made in Oriental writings to stupendous seismic phenomena which are said to have occurred in past ages. Indeed, it is only reasonable to assume that, since the angular distance of the North Pole from the plane of the earth’s orbit is gradually increasing, the presence of the Borean region in the tropic of Cancer, some 240,000 years ago, will satisfactorily account for the fossil remains of the greater tropical mammalia and many kinds of tropical vegetation found in what are now the Arctic regions and the frozen deserts of Northern Russia. This theory seems far more agreeable to nature than some of the “shifts” to which modern geologists resort in their endeavours to make “head and tail” of our little globe. Moreover, since heat expands and cold contracts, we may infer that an “earth-wave,” occupying that belt of the globe known as the tropics, would follow the course of the sun induced by this polar revolution, viz., from north to south, and therefore, also, the depression of the earth’s body at the poles may be referred to the same phenomenal causes, viz., the polar revolution 30and the sun’s angular distance. The moon, in its motion round the earth, acts upon the mass of waters in the oceans, carrying with it a tidal wave; and why should not the sun, under proportionate conditions, act in a similar manner upon the denser mass of the earth’s body? Besides, scientists have yet to prove that there is some specific quality in the North and South Poles which constitutes their magnetic natures, or, in other words, the earth’s polarity. The same magnetic phenomena can be produced by a circular current of electricity travelling from west to east (the motion of the earth’s tropical and electric belt), which will cause all polarized bodies within its area of action to immediately indicate true north and south. If this theory can be faithfully worked out (and we are of opinion it can), it will prove polarity in the earth’s body to be merely a relative condition arising out of solar electrical action, a condition which, in the course of 2,592,000 years, would obtain with every degree of the earth’s polar circle.
This brings us back to our Oriental friends. The Hindus count 360 years of mortal life as one Divine year, and as they allow 12 millions of such years to be equal to one “day” of Brahmâ, it follows that, with a corresponding “night” of equal length, the immense period referred to as “a day and a night of Brahmâ”=4,320,000,000 years of mortal life. Therefore 360 of such periods will constitute “Brahmâ’s year,” and 100 such “years,” making the period known as the Mahakalpa, will, if expressed in mortal years, yield this number, 311,040,000,000,000. Now to make a comparison of these periods with those we have previously noted, we may first take the Naronic cycle of 7,200 years. This we have already shown to consist of an astronomical period, multiplied by the number of signs in the Zodiac. If we multiply this cycle by the Naros of 600 years, the result is the Mahayuga, which is the sum of the “four ages,” so well known as to need no mention here.
With regard to the period required for the precession of the Equinoxes, if it be multiplied by 1,000, it will give the sum of the Sandhis, or intervals between the reigns of the Manus, i.e., 25,920,000 years, which is the sum of six Mahayugas. Ten revolutions of the earth’s poles will produce the same figures. Presuming the polar revolution to be regular, and no one has yet proved that it is not, it may be applied to the measurement of the “four ages” already referred to. Thus at the rate of 50 per century
| 60 degrees | will produce | 432,000 years, | the Kali Yuga |
| 120 „ | „ „ | 864,000 „ | „ Dwapur „ |
| 180 „ | „ „ | 1,296,000 „ | „ Treta „ |
| 240 „ | „ „ | 1,728,000 „ | „ Satya „ |
The sum of which 4,320,000 years is the Mahayuga.
To return once more to “the precession of the Equinoxes.” It is well known that our sun is not the central sun of the universe of systems, and therefore it is but right to infer that, in connection with other minor centres to which our sun is related, it has a motion of its own in regard to the great central orb. In other words, we may say that, just as there are planetary orbits, so there are solar orbits, and thus from centre to centre we may proceed inwards until the mind grows giddy and loses its sense of location in the unfathomable depths of cosmic space. In regard to our subject we would ask, Is it not more rational to suppose the motion of the sun through space, in its own 31immense orbit, to be the cause of the precession of the Equinoxes, than that the countless systems constituting our Zodiac should concur in a uniform motion in regard to our own little system? Suppose the sun to move in the direction of the order of the “signs” at the rate of 50″ per year,[2] then the asterisms of the Zodiac would appear to move at the same rate in the opposite direction, i.e., against the order of the signs, which is agreeable to all our observations of this phenomenon.
Granting these premises to be correct, the calculation of the sun’s distance from its own centre would be a matter of a few minutes, providing we had any definite figures to denote the Radius Vector of the earth, but we will leave our astronomers to settle this point first. A study of the different computations made during the past 1,800 years only, leaves us a pretty fair margin for guessing if science permits of such a method in a matter so important! At all events it is something between 800 miles and 104,000,000 miles!
Modern Science affects to look down upon the Hindu Vedânga Jyotisha, but we may safely affirm, even from this cursory survey of their astronomy, that the ancient Sages of the East were not guessing nor “playing duck and drake” with figures, when they mentioned such vast periods as those we have been regarding. More than this, our astronomical basis rests in the soil of the Hindu mind, and the lofty superstructure we call our own has undergone many changes to suit the fashion, but the foundations have remained undisturbed.[3]
Footnotes
- ↑ Said to have originated in Narada a Vedic Rishi and astronomer.
- ↑ This would, of course, set aside the idea of an elliptical orbit in the case of the earth and planets of the solar system, and in its place a motion similar to that of the moon would be instituted. For modern astronomers to admit a motion of the sun through space, and to retain the theory of the elliptical orbit, as they do, merely to bolster up the Newtonian Philosophy, is only another proof of their insane bigotry. Any school-boy can see that it is impossible to form an ellipse round a moving body!
- ↑ The Radius Vector of the earth, according to the ancients, was 800 million stadia. A stadium is 606 feet 9 inches: and this multiplied by the above number yields 91,931,818 English miles. These figures are so exactly within the limits prescribed by the latest calculations that one cannot but be struck with the result of any comparison which might be made between them and the different estimates of astronomers since the time of Copernicus. Thus:
Copernicus gives 3,391,200 Mayer 184,000,000 These are outside figures.
Result from last transit of ♀︎ = between 91,600,000, and 92 millions.
R. Proctor gives 91,500,000.
The Great Pyramid, 91,840,000.