Page 653 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

6 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • VEDIC CHRONOLOGY

published in 1862, contested this view and rejected it as ground-
less. But he was not qualified to make further research in this
matter; and Whitney who was so qualified was prevented by his
prejudices from diving deeper into the question, though he
clearly saw, as observed by him in his essay on 'The Lunar
Zodiac ' published in 1874 in the second series of his ' Oriental
and linguistic Studies,' that Weber's theory 'was no better than a
suspicion, perhaps not even worth finding expression as such ',
or ' of a character to compel belief ' and that there was n9 reason
' to impugn either the candour or the good sense of any one who
might refuse to be won over to a like belief. ' But if Weber's
theory was thus admittedly a mere suspicion it was clearly an
error of judgment to refrain, on that account, from critically
examining and co-ordinating the Vedic texts, with a view to as-
certain which was the oldest system of Nak~hatras disclosed by
them. For the speculative question about the origin of the lunar
zodiac cannot be solved satisfactorily without first determining
the fact whether the Kdttika series was the oldest known in India
or whether it was preceded by another beginning with Mtigashiras.
It is to be regretted, therefore, that Weber's or Whitney's authority
diverted, for ~Some time at least, the attention of Western Vedic
Scholars from this kind of investigation. But the ultimate dis-
covery of truth is hardly, if ever, prevented by such mishaps.
On the contrary we might even say that the path to such disco-
very often lies through such errors and the progressive elimination
thereof. Thus when later researches and discoveries in the Baby-
lonian antiquities failed to bring to light any of those grounds
for the Mesopotamian origin of Nak~Jhatra System, grounds
which Weber and Whitney fondly believed the future would
disclose, Thibaut, writing on the subject in the Journal of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1894, expressly stated that the theory
of the Babylonian origin of the Indian Nak~Jhatra system must,
in consequence, be given up; and a year earlier, that is, in 1893
H. Jacobi, who in the meanwhile was prosecuting his investiga-
tion into the ~igvedic calendar, almost simulataneously but in-
dependently came to the conclusion to which I had already arrived,
viz., that in the days of the ~igveda the vernal equinox was in
Mrigashiras or Orion, and that the Vedic texts, properly inter-
preted, clearly referred to a Nak,hatra Series older than the one
beginning with the Krittikas at its head, thereby carrying back