Page 662 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

TilE VEDIC CALENDER 15
on astronomy as it was then known. It introduces at regular inter-
vals, two intercalary lunar months, one in the midst and one at
the end of a Yuga of five years and ordains that every 62nd lunar
day ( tithi ) should be omitted in order to make the different
reckonings of time - Savana (Sacrificial or civil), Chandra
(lunar), Nak~hatra ( Siderial) and Soura ( Solar)- correspond
with one another. It is expressly stated that the winter solstice in
those days occurred when the sun, the moon and the asterism of
Dhanistha. were together; and this Nak~hatra is therefore taken as
the first point of the celestial sphere which is evidently siderial and
not, as supposed by Bentley, tropical in character. Starting from
this first point the zodiac is divided into 27 equal parts each
named after the principal Nak~hatra contained therein. But to
exactly state the mean positions of the sun and the moon in these
pivisional NaktJhatras it was necessary to sub-divide; and conse-
quently we find each of the above divisional Nak~hatra further
divided into 124 parts to define the position of the moon on each
day of the Yuga of 5 years. The author of the' Vedanga Jyoti~Jha'
whosoever he may be, had no knowledge of the gradual retro-
grade motion of the solstices or the equinoxes. He, therefore,
takes the seasons as fixed and gives rules for finding out when each
of them commenced and ended. Thus winter or the Shish ira season
commenced with the winter solstice inDhanis~ha and was followed
by Vasanta (Spring) and Grishma (Summer); the last ending
with the sun at the summer solstice; while the other three seasons,
viz., Varshd (Rains), Sharad (Autumn) and Heman! (Cold)
were comprised in the southern passage of the sun, that is, from
the summer to the winter solstice. Considerable skill and inge-
nuity is shown in reducing the arithmetical work to a minimum
in order to make the rules as simple as possible, and especially
in devising such a conventional serial arrangement of the 27
NakiJhatras that the numerical order of the NaktJhatra in this series
may indicate the exact yearly position of the sun in Amshas ( sub-
divisions ) of that Nak~Jhatra at the end of each lunar fortnight.
But we need not go into these details. Suffice it to say that the
word rashi, which occurs in this book and which was formerly
believed by some scholars to denote a zodiacal sign and betraying
thereby a foreign influence, is now found to be used not in that
sense at all, but only in the sense of ' number ' or ' quantity '
in general; and consequently all conjectures about the date of