Page 652 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

INTRODUCTION 5
view, and we find it accepted, though in a somewhat modified
form, even by Whitney in his edition of the translation of
Surya Siddhanta published in 1860. Prof. Alfred Weber, how-
ever, clearly saw the weakness of Biot's position resting as it did,
on the supposed antiquity of the Chinese texts; and the so-called
convenience of astronomical observation of the time. With great
diligence and learning he, therefore, collected all the astronomi-
cal statements contained in the various Vedic works, and pub-
lished in 1860 and 1862 his two essays on ' Die Vedisohen
Nachricten Von der Naxatra' (the Vedic accounts of the
Nak~hatras ). In the first of these he showed how the supposed
antiquity of the Chinese texts was unwarranted by historical
facts and in the second conclusively proved that the ancient
existence of the Indian System of Nak!;!hatras, with the Krittikas
at their head, was fully borne out by passages in Vedic works of
undoubted antiquity. This was the first time that the astronomical
statements contained in the Vedic Works were collected; and so
complete is this collection that only a few Vedic texts bearing
on the same subject have been since discovered. If Weber had
gone further and arranged and co-ordinated the texts collected
by him he could have easily perceived that the series with the
Krittikas ( Pleades ) at the head was not the oldest of its kind
and that the Vedic works expressly refer to a still older system of
Nak!Jhatras with Mrigshiras ( Orion) at the head. But it is not
uncommon that a collector of materials sometimes misses to
grasp their true significance, as was the case with the great
Danish astonomer, Tycho, whose numerous observations
formed the basis of the laws of planetary motion subsequently
discovered by Kepler, his successor. Weber had the same low
opinion about the capacity of Hindus to make any, even the
crudest celestial observations, as was held by Whitney; and
though he established the priority of the Indian system of Nak-
!Jhatras over the Chinese, he was, in consequence, Jed to believe,
on almost imaginary grounds, that neither the Indians, nor the
Chinese, nor again the Arabs, whose system of Manazil
( Nakl!hatras ) resembles the Indian and the Chinese in many
points, were the original discoverers of the system; but that all of
them must have borrowed it from some still unknown West
Asian, possibly Babylonian source. Prof. Max Muller, in his
preface to the fourth volume of the first edition of the ~igveda,