Page 28 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

SACRIFICE ALIAS 'THE YEAR 15
month in about every two thousand years, if the sidereal solar year
be taken as the standard of measurement. When these changes
and corrections came to· be noticed for the first time, they must
have created a great surprise and it was not till after one or two
adjustments on this account were made that their true reason,
the motion of the enquinoxes, could have been discovered. Garga
tells us that if the sun were to turn to the north without reaching
Dhani~h~ha, • it foretold great calamity, and I am disposed to put
a similar interpretation upon the story of Prajipati alias Yajna
alias the year, who contrary to all expectations, moved backwards.
to his daughter Rohini.t But as I wish to examine the tradition
more fully hereafter, it is not necessary to dilate on the point here.
My object at present is to show that the Vedic solar year was
sidereal and not tropical, and what has been said above is, I believe,
sufficient to justify such a presumption, at least for the present,.
though it may•afterwards be either retained or discarded, accord-
ing as it tallies or jars with other facts.
Opinions differ as to whether the lunar month began with
the full or the new moon,t and whether the original ,number of
Nak~hatras was 27 or 28.§ But I pass over these and similar
other points as not very relevant to my purpose, and ·take up next
the question of the commencement of the year. I have already
stated that the sacrifice and 'the year were treated as synonymous
in old days, and we may, therefore, naturally expect to find that
the beginning of the one was also the beginning of the other. The
Vedanga Jyoti~ha makes the year commence with the winter sol-
stice, and there are passages, in the Shrauta Sdtras which lay down
that the annual sacrifices like gavamayana, should be begun at

• Garga <;uot< d by Bha!totpala on Brihat. Sa~. iii. 1 :-
~ fifq~Sfllf: ~81!f'1(1qVJ I
aJT~ .U~s~ ~~ 11
t Ait. Br. iii. 33· The passage is discussed in this light further 011
in Chapter VIII. See also Shat. Br. i. ;. 4· r.
t See Kala Madhava, Chapter 011 .JhmJh, Cal. Ed., p. 63: cllitttiWdA
!~: iijZf$ ~~I We can thus explain why the ju/1 moun night ot a
month was described as the first ·D!ght of the year. See infr••·
§ Pref. co ~ig., Vol. IV, and \\'hitney's Essar on the Hindu and .
Chinese Asterismb,