Page 204 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

PREFACE

THE present volume is a sequel to my Orion or Researches
into the Antiquity of the Vedas, published in 1893. The
estimate of Vedic antiquity then generally current amongst
Vedic scholars was based on the assignment of arbitrary period
of time to the different strata into which the Vedic literature
is divided; and it was believed that the oldest of these strata
could not, at the best, be older than 2400 B. C. In my Orion,
however, I tried to shew that all such estimates, besides being
too modest, were vague and uncertain, and that the astronomical
statements found in the Vedic literature supplied us with far more
reliable data for correctly ascertaining the ages of the different
periods of Vedic literature. These astronomical statements,
it was further shewn, unmistakably pointed out that the
Vernal equinox was in the constellation of Mriga or Orion
( about 4500 B. -C. ) 4u.ring the period of the Vedic hymns, and
that it had receded to the constellation of the KrittikAs, or the
Pleiades ( about 2500 B. C. ) in the days of the Bn\bmap.as.
Naturally enough these results were, at first, received by scholars in
a sceptical spirit. But my position was strengthened when it was
found that Dr. Jacobi, of Bonn, had independently arrived at
the same conclusion, and soon after, scholars like Prof. Bloom-
field, M. Barth, the late Dr. Bulher and others, more or less freely,
acknowledged the force of my arguments. Dr. Thibaut, the late
Dr. Whitney and a few others were, h,owever, of opinion that the
evidence adduced by me was not conclusive. But the subsequent
discovery, by my friend the late Mr. S. B. Dixit, of a passage in
the Shatapatha Bn\hmapa, plainly stating that the K.rittik£5
never swerved, in those days, from the due east i. e., the Vernal
equinox, has served to dispel all lingering doubts regarding the
age of the Bribmapas; while another Indian astronomer, Mr.
V. B. Ketkar, in a recent number of the Journal of the Bombay
Branch of the RoYal Asiatic Society, has mathematically worked
out the statement in the Taittir1ya Brihma11a ( m, 1, 1, 5 ), that
B!ibaspati; or the planet Jupiter, was first discovered when.
confronting or nearly occultina the star Ti,hya, and shewn that