Page 56 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

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Vedic days must be taken to denote the asterisms known by such
names. If Indian priests are to be supposed incapable of making
any accurate observations of solstitial points in 1200 B. C., • it is
to my mind utterly inconsistent and illogical to hold that the
forefathers of these priests, when they assigned the vernal equinox
to the Krittikas, understood the word to mean the asterism but
the imaginary beginning of the zodiacal portion of that name. I
-cannot also understand why scholars should hesitate to assign
the Vedic works to the same period of antiquity which they allow
to the Chinese and the Egyptians.t But it is needless here to enter
into this controversy. For if I once succeed in showing, as I hope
to do, that there is sufficient internal evidence in the Vedic literature
itself of a still remoter antiquity, all theories, conjectures and guesses,
which have the effect of unduly reducing the antiquity of the
Vedic works and also of throwing discredit upon the claims of
the Indians to the origin of the Nak,hatra system, will require no
refutation.
Bentley, however, takes his stand on a different ground. He
suggests that the word Vishtlkha, like Vida/d;;t may mean "possessed
of two branches," and that these two branches may have been
caused by the equinoctial colure bisecting the zodiacal portion of
the VishAkhas. Now the equinoctial colure passing through the
beginning of the divisional KrittiUs naturally bisects the zodiacal
portion of the VisbakhA. Bentley, therefore, concludes, without
any more proof than this etymological conjecture, that this was
the position of the colure when Vishakhl received its name. This
is no doubt an ingenious hypothesis. But there is not only no
evidence in the Vedic works to support su~h etymological specula·

• See Pref. ,to \lig., voi.IV,~p. xxill.
t M. Biot allows it in the case of the Chinese and considers that
the Hindus borrowed the Nakthatra system from them. Albtrunt, in his
chronology of ancient nations, etc., observes thac· other nations begia
their asterisms with the Pleiades. He further states that he has found
ia some books of Hermes that the vernal equinox coincides with the
Tiling ol rleiades, but, says be' God knows best what they intend! J
t Tbi~•example has been added by Prof. Max Milller. See Pref. to
~~· VoJ. IV, p. Jitn. See aJio Bentley's Historical v1ew of Hindu
Astrenomy, p. 2.