Page 682 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

34 SAMA.GRA TlLAK - 2 • VEDANGA JYOTI~HA

acknowledge~, was to be expected; and we, accordingly, find Maha-
mahopadhyaya Sudhakar Dwivedi, the well known learned Pan!lit
of Benares. endeavouring to improve upon Barhaspatyah's defective
explanations. in what he calls his own ( Sudhakar) Bh:l.shya on
the Vedanga, published in a pamphlet form, along with Somakara's
Bhashya, in 1908, at the Medical Hall Press, in Benares. Barhas-
patyah, in reply, has attempted to defend his own interpretation
of the text, and the controversy has unfortunately assumed a some-
what personal aspect inN. W. P. We are not, however, concerned
with this aspect of the question. It is true that Pan!Iit Sudhakar
has not succeeded in giving us a more rational or simple explanation
of the Vedanga verses, except mostly by making ingenious but
radical changes in the traditional text. But still his work has a
value of its own, especially in drawing our attention to the weak
points in Barhaspatya's work; and subsequent critics have to see
whether these defects cannot partially, if not wholly, be removed
without any violent emendations of the text. This is what the pre-
sent note attempts to do, especially in the case of the nine verses
mentioned in the preface to the Sudhakar Bhashya, as those where-
in the Pan!lit considers Barhaspatya's explanations as seriously
defective. Not that there are no more points of difference between
them. But these being of minor importance are not discussed in
this note. To avoid constant repetition of full names I have, in the
sequel, used the letters Band S to denote Barhaspatya and Sudhakar
or their works mentioned above, while the Rik and the Yajus
recensions of the Vedanga are indicated by the letters R and Y
respectively.
The astronomical elements on which the Vedanga bases its
calculations are only approximately true; and we shall see later
on how in the case of the moon, at least, a correction was provided
for, when the error became too obvious to be neglected. We might,
however, generally say that the Vedanga lays down rules to cal-
culate first the fortnightly, and then from it the daily position of
sun and the moon from these approximately mean data. The posi-
tions to be thus determined are two-fold. First we determine the
position of the sun and the moon, in space, that is, amongst the
celestial Nak~hatras (a) at the end of each parvan and ( b ) tithi.
But a parvan or a tithi hardly ends with a Nak~hatra. We have,
therefore, secondly to ascertain the time when the sun or the
moon first enters into (a ) the parvan, or (b) the tithi-nak~hatra.