Page 27 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

14 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ORION

and their years by the sun", • and this appearrs to me to have
been the system in force in the Indo-Germanic, or at any rate in
the primitive Vedic period. There is no other conclusion that we
can fairly draw from the facts and passages noted above.
There is, however, a further question, as to whether the solar
year, with reference to which these corrections were made, was
tropical or sidereal. It is true that the great object of the calendar
was to ascertain the proper time of the seasons. But the change
in the seasons consequent upon the precession of the equinoxes
is so exceedingly minute as to become appreciable only after hund-
reds of years, and it is more probable than not that it must have
escaped the notice of the early observers of the heavens, whose
only method of determining the position of the sun in the ecliptic
was to observe every morning the fixed stars nearest that luminary.t
Under such a system the year would naturally be said to be
complete when the sun returned to the same fixed star. Prof.
Whitney has pointed out that the same system is followed in the
S6rya SiddbAnta, though the motion of the equinoxes was then
discovered.:f: It is, therefore, natural to presume that the early
Vedic priests were ignorant of the motion of the equinoxes. No
early work makes any mention of or refers to it either expressly
or otherwise; and the solar year mentioned in the Vedic works
must, therefore, be considered as sidereal and not tropical. This
would necessitate a change in the beginning of the year, every two
thousand years or so, to make it correspond with the cycle of
natural seasons, and the fact that such changes were ~troduced
twice or thrice is a further proof of the old year being a sidereal
one.§ The difference between the sidereal and the tropical y'ear is
20-4 minutes, which cause the seasons to fall back nearly one lunar

• Lewis, Hist. Surv . .Aatroa. Anc., p. r8.
t Taitt. Br. i. s. 2. 1; ~ ~ d(<Gi4'fffiq"'S'f4(1 ~" ~ ~ I
~~~Rrl~~:~l~r ~;;rq~~~«~tr~~~~
~~~I This is still recited at the Pu-"'ylha-vlchana ceremony.
:t SGr. Sid. i. 13. "· "It is, however, not the tropical so!ar year
which we employ, but the sidereal, no account being made of the
precession of the equinoxes. "
§ Tbc Kfittili::'ls once headed the list of the Nakthatras, which
now begins with Ashvinl. Other changes are discusse!f in the followiog
chapters of ~his wol'ii.:.