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Astronomical data and the Aryan question
Dr. Koenraad Elst
1. Dating the Rg-Veda
The determination of the age in which Vedic literature
started and flourished has its consequences for the Aryan Invasion question.
The oldest text, the Rg-Veda, is full of precise references to places and
natural phenomena in what are now Panjab and Haryana, and was unmistakably
composed in that part of India. The date at which it was composed is a firm
terminus ante quem for the entry of the Vedic Aryans into India. They may
have come from abroad or they may have been fully native, but by the time of
the Rg-Veda, they were certainly Indians without memory of a foreign
homeland.
In a rather shoddy way, Friedrich Max Müller launched the hypothesis that
the Rg-Veda had to be dated to about 1200 BC, and eventhough he later
retracted it, that arbitrary guess has become the orthodoxy.1 It is
forgotten too often that in his own day, other scholars rejected this
extremely late date on a variety of grounds. Maurice Winternitz based his
estimate on purely philological considerations: "We cannot explain the
development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a
date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point."2 Isn't it
refreshing to find how logical and unprejudiced the early researchers were?
You cannot credibly cram the complicated linguistic, cultural and
philosophical developments which are in evidence in Vedic literature, into
just a few centuries.
But since this argument of plausibility can always be countered with the
argument that unlikely developments are not strictly impossible, we need a
firmer basis to decide this chronological question. The most explicit
chronology would be provided by astronomical markers of time.
2. Ancient Hindu astronomy
2.1. Astronomical tables
One of the earliest estimates of the date of the Vedas
was at once among the most scientific. In 1790, the Scottish mathematician
John Playfair demonstrated that the starting-date of the astronomical
observations recorded in the tables still in use among Hindu astrologers (of
which three copies had reached Europe between 1687 and 1787) had to be 4300
BC.3 His proposal was dismissed as absurd by some, but it was not refuted by
any scientist.
Playfair's judicious use of astronomy was countered by John Bentley with a
Scriptural argument which we now must consider invalid. In 1825, Bentley
objected: "By his [= Playfair's] attempt to uphold the antiquity of Hindu
books against absolute facts, he thereby supports all those horrid abuses
and impositions found in them, under the pretended sanction of antiquity.
Nay, his aim goes still deeper, for by the same means he endeavours to
overturn the Mosaic account, and sap the very foundation of our religion:
for if we are to believe in the antiquity of Hindu books, as he would wish
us, then the Mosaic account is all a fable, or a fiction."4
Bentley did not object to astronomy per se, in so far as it could be helpful
in showing up the falsehood of Brahminical scriptures. However, it did
precisely the reverse. Falsehood in this context could have meant that the
Brahmins falsely claimed high antiquity for their texts by presenting as
ancient astronomical observations recorded in Scripture what were in fact
back-calculations from a much later age. But Playfair showed that this was
impossible.
Back-calculation of planetary positions is a highly complex affair requiring
knowledge of a number of physical laws, universal constants and actual
measurements of densities, diameters and distances. Though Brahminical
astronomy was remarkably sophisticated for its time, it could only
back-calculate planetary position of the presumed Vedic age with an
inaccuracy margin of at least several degrees of arc. With our modern
knowledge, it is easy to determine what the actual positions were, and what
the results of back-calculations with the Brahminical formulae would have
been, e.g.:
"Aldebaran was therefore 40' before the point of the vernal equinox,
according to the Indian astronomy, in the year 3102 before Christ. (...)
[Modern astronomy] gives the longitude of that star 13' from the vernal
equinox, at the time of the Calyougham, agreeing, witjin 53', with the
determination of the Indian astronomy. This agreement is the more
remarkable, that the Brahmins, by their own rules for computing the motion
of the fixed stars, could not have assigned this place to Aldebaran for the
beginning of Calyougham, had they calculated it from a modern observation.
For as they make the motion of the fixed stars too great by more than 3''
annually, if they had calculated backward from 1491, they would have placed
the fixed stars less advanced by 4�or 5�, at their ancient epoch, than they
have actually done."5 So, it turns out that the data given by the Brahmins
corresponded not with the results deduced from their formulae, but with the
actual positions, and this, according to Playfair, for nine different
astronomical parameters. This is a bit much to explain away as coincidence
or sheer luck.
2.2. Ancient observation, modern confirmation
That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient tuimes cannot be based on later
back-calculation, was also argued by Playfair's contemporary, the French
astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly: "the motions of the stars calculated by the
Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the
[modern] tables of Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual
variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe -- a variation
unknown to the school of Alexandria and also the the Arabs".6
Prof. N.S. Rajaram, a mathematician who has worked for NASA, comments:
"fabricating astronomical data going back thousands of years calls for
knowledge of Newton's Law of Gravitation and the ability to solve
differential equations."7 Failing this advanced knowledge, the data in the
Brahminical tables must be based on actual observation. Ergo, the
Sanskrit-speaking Vedic seers were present in person to record astronomical
observations and preserve them for a full 6,000 years: "The observations on
which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand
years before the Christian era. (...) Two other elements of this astronomy,
the equation of the sun's centre and the obliquity of the ecliptic (...)
seem to point to a period still more remote, and to fix the origin of this
astronomy 1000 or 1200 years earlier, that is, 4300 years before the
Christian era".8
All this at least on the assumption that Playfair's, Bailly's and Rajaram's
claims about the Hindu astronomical tables are correct. Disputants may start
by proving them factually wrong, but should not enter the dispute arena
without a refutation of the astronomers' assertions. It is something of a
scandal that Playfair's and Bailly's findings have been lying around for two
hundred years while linguists and indologists were publishing speculations
on Vedic chronology in stark disregard for the contribution of astronomy.
2.3. The start of Kali-Yuga
Hindu tradition makes mention of the conjunction of the "seven planets"
(Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun and moon) and Ketu (southern
lunar node, the northern node/Rahu being by definition in the opposite
location) near the fixed star Revati (Zeta Piscium) on 18 February 3102 BC.
This date, at which Krishna is supposed to have breathed his last, is
conventionally the start of the so-called Kali-Yuga, the "age of strife",
the low point in a declining sequence of four ages. However, modern scholars
have claimed that the Kali-Yuga system of time-reckoning was a much younger
invention, not attested before the 6th century AD.
Against this modernist opinion, Bailly and Playfair had already shown that
the position of the moon (the fastest-moving "planet", hence the hardest to
back-calculate with precision) at the beginning of Kali-Yuga, 18 February
3102, as given by Hindu tradition, was accurate to 37'.9 Either the Brahmins
had made an incredibly lucky guess, or they had recorded an actual
observation on Kali Yuga day itself.
Richard L. Thompson claims that in Indian literature and inscriptions, there
are a number of datelines expressed in Kali-Yuga which are older than the
Christian era (and a fortiori older than the 6th century AD).10 More
importantly, Thompson argues that the Jyotisha-shâstras (treatises on
astronomy and, increasingly, astrology, starting in the 14th century BC with
the Vedanga Jyotisha as per its own astronomical data, but mostly from the
first millennium AD) are correct in mentioning this remarkable conjunction
on that exact day, for there was indeed a conjunction of sun, moon, Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Ketu and Revati.
True, the conjunction was not spectacularly exact, having an orb of
37�between the two most extreme planetary positions. But that exactly
supports the hypothesis of an actual observation as opposed to a
back-calculation. Indeed, if the Hindu astronomers were able to calculate
this position after a lapse of many centuries (when the Jyotisha-Shâstra was
written), it is unclear what reason they would have had for picking out that
particular conjunction. Surely, such conjunctions are spectacular to those
who witness one, and hence worth recording if observed. But they are not
that exceptional when considered over millennia: even closer conjunctions of
all visible planets do occur (most recently on 5 February 1962).11 If the
Hindu astronomers had simply been going over their astronomical tables
looking for an exceptional conjunction, they could have found more
spectacular ones than the one on 18 February 3102 BC.
3. The precession of the equinox
3.1. The slowest hand on the clock
The truly strong evidence for a high chronology of the Vedas is the Vedic
information about the position of the equinox. The phenomenon of the
"precession of the equinoxes" takes the ecliptical constellations (also
known as the sidereal Zodiac, i.e. those constellations through which the
sun passes)12 slowly past the vernal equinox point, i.e. the intersection of
ecliptic and equator, rising due East on the horizon. The whole tour is made
in about 25,791 years, the longest cycle manageable for naked-eye observers.
If data about the precession are properly recorded, they provide the best
and often the only clue to an absolute chronology for ancient events.
If we can read the Vedic and post-Vedic indications properly, they mention
constellations on the equinox points which were there from 4,000 BC for the
Rg-Veda (Orion, as already pointed out by B.G. Tilak)13 through around 3100
BC for the Atharva-Veda and the core Mahabharata (Aldebaran) down to 2,300
BC for the Sutras and the Shatapatha Brahmana (Pleiades).14
Other references to the constellational position of the solstices or of
solar and lunar positions at the beginning of the monsoon confirm this
chronology. Thus, the Kaushitaki Brahmana puts the winter solstice at the
new moon of the sidereal month of Magha (i.e. the Mahashivaratri festival),
which now falls 70 days later: this points to a date in the first half of
the 3rd millennium BC. The same precessional movement of the twelve months
of the Hindu calendar (which are tied to the constellations) vis-a-vis the
meterological seasons, is what allowed Hermann Jacobi to fix the date of the
Rg-Veda to the 5th-4th millennium BC.15 Indeed, the regular references to
the full moon's position in a constellation at the time of the beginning of
the monsoon, which nearly coincides with the summer solstice, provide a
secure and unambiguous chronology through the millennial Vedic literature.
It is not only the Vedic age which is moved a number of centuries deeper
into the past, when comparing the astronomical indications with the
conventional chronology. Even the Gupta age (and implicitly the earlier ages
of the Buddha, the Mauryas etc.) could be affected. Indeed, the famous
playwright and poet Kalidasa, supposed to have worked at the Gupta court in
about 400 AD, wrote that the monsoon rains started at the start of the
sidereal month of Ashadha; this timing of the monsoon was accurate in the
last centuries BC.16 This implicit astronomy-based chronology of Kalidasa,
about 5 centuries higher than the conventional one, tallies well with the
traditional "high" chronology of the Buddha, whom Chinese Buddhist tradition
dates to ca. 1100 BC, and the implicit Puranic chronology even to ca. 1700
BC.17
3.2. Some difficulties
These indications about the precessional phases may be unreliable insofar as
their exact meaning is not unambiguous. To say that a constellation "never
swerves from the East" (as is said of the Pleiades in the Shatapatha
Brahmana 2:1:2:3) seems to mean that it contains the spring equinox,
implying that it is on the equator, which intersects the horizon due East.
But this might seem insufficiently explicit for the modern reader who is
used to a precise and separate technical terminology for such matters. But
then, the modern reader will have to accept that technical terminology in
Vedic days mostly consisted in fixed metaphorical uses of common terms. This
is not all that primitive, for the same thing will be found when the
etymology of modern technical terms is analyzed, e.g. a telescope is a Greek
"far-seer", oxygen is "acid-producer", a cylinder is a "roller". The only
difference is that we can use the vocabulary of foreign classical languages
to borrow from, while Sanskrit was its known classical reservoir of
specialized terminology.
Another factor of uncertainty is that the equinox moves very slowly (1�in
nearly 71 years), so that any inexactness in the Vedic indications and any
ambiguity in the constellations' boundaries makes a difference of centuries.
This occasional inexactness might possibly be enough to neutralize the above
shift in Kalidasa's date -- but not to account for a shift of millennia
(each millennium corresponding to about 14 degrees of arc) needed to move
the Vedic age from the pre-Harappan to the post-Harappan period, from 4000
BC as calculated by the astronomers to 1200 BC as surmised by Friedrich Max
Müller.
On the other hand, it is encouraging to note that the astronomical evidence
is entirely free of contradictions. There would be a real problem if the
astronomical indications had put the Upanishads earlier than the Rg-Veda, or
Kalidasa earlier than the Brahmanas, but that is not the case: the
astronomical evidence is consistent. Inconsistency would prove the
predictable objection of AIT defenders that these astronomical references
are but poetical fabulation without any scientific contents. However, the
facts are just the opposite. To the extent that there are astronomical
indications in the Vedas, these form a consistent set of data detailing an
absolute chronology for Vedic literature in full agreement with the known
relative chronology of the different texts of this literature. This way,
they completely contradict the hypothesis that the Vedas were composed after
an invasion in about 1500 BC. Not one of the dozens of astronomical data in
Vedic literature confirms the AIT chronology.
3.3. Regulus at summer solstice
In the Shulba Sutra appended to Baudhayana's Shrauta Sutra, mathematical
instructions are given for the construction of Vedic altars. One of its
remarkable contributions is the theorem usually ascribed to Pythagoras,
first for the special case of a square (the form in which it was
discovered), then for the general case of the rectangle: "The diagonal of
the rectangle produces the combined surface which the length and the breadth
produce separately." This and other instances of advanced mathematics
presented by Baudhayana have been shown by the American mathematician A.
Seidenberg to be the origin of similar mathematical techniques and
"discoveries" in Greece and Babylonia, some of which have been securely
dated to 1700 BC. So, 1700 BC was a terminus post quem for Baudhayana's
mathematics, which would reasonably be dated to the later part of the
Harappan period which ended in ca. 1900 BC.
However, Seidenberg was told by the indologists that these Sutras, or any
Vedic text for that matter, were definitely written later than 1700 BC. But
mathematical data cannot be manipulated just like that, and Seidenberg
remained convinced of his case: "Whatever the difficulty there may be
[concerning chronology], it is small in comparison with the difficulty of
deriving the Vedic ritual application of the theorem from Babylonia. (The
reverse derivation is easy)... the application involves geometric algebra,
and there is no evidence of geometric algebra from Babylonia. And the
geometry of Babylonia is already secondary whereas in India it is
primary."18 To satisfy the indologists, he said that the Shulba Sutra had
conserved an older tradition, and that it is from this one that the
Babylonians had learned their mathematics: "Hence we do not hesitate to
place the Vedic (...) rituals, or more exactly, rituals exactly like them,
far back of 1700 BC. (...) elements of geometry found in Egypt and Babylonia
stem from a ritual system of the kind described in the Sulvasutras".19
This is then one of those "entities multiplied beyond necessity": a ritual,
annex altar, annex mathematical theory, which is exactly like the Vedic
ritual, annex altar, annex mathematical theory, only it is not the Vedic
ritual but a thousand or so years older. Let us simplify matters and assume
that it was Baudhayana himself who devised his mathematical theories "far
back of 1700 BC". Is there a way to find independent confirmation of this
suspicion. Yes, there is: the precession of the equinoxes.
In their Index of Vedic Names, A.A. MacDonell and A.B. Keith cite the
opinion of several philologists about a reference to a solstice in Magha in
the Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra (as well as in the Kaushitaki Brahmana 19:3),
to which the Shulba Sutra is an appendix. Magha is the asterism around the
star Regulus, but the name is used for an entire month (names of months are
typically the name of the most prominent one of the two or three asterisms/nakshatras
which make up that one-twelfth of the ecliptic), spatially equivalent to a
zone of about 30� around that star, so any deduction here must take a fair
degree of imprecision into account. The 18th- and 19th-century philologists
cited disagree about whether a Magha solstice was in 1181 BC or in 1391 BC.
The authors themselves consider it "only fair to allow a thousand years for
possible errors", and settle for a date between 800 BC and 600 BC, "quite in
harmony with the probable date of the Brahmana literature".20
However, it is very easy to calculate that Regulus, currently at almost
exactly 60�from the solstitial axis, was on that axis about 60 x 71 years
ago, i.e. in the 23rd century BC. Though we must indeed allow for an
inexactitude of up to 15�, equivalent to about 1100 years, the Magha
solstice described is much more likely to have been in 2200 BC than in 1100
BC (with Keith's and MacDonell's 600 BC being already quite beyond the
pale). It may have taken place even before the 23rd century BC: maybe only
the asterism around Regulus had reached the solstitial axis but not yet the
star itself. Most likely, then, this reference to a Magha solstice confirms
that the Brahmana and Sutra literature including the Baudhayana Shrauta
Sutra (annex Shulba) dates to the late 3rd millennium BC, at the height of
the Harappan civilization. In that case, Seidenberg's reconstruction of the
development and transmission of mathematical knowledge and the astronomical
references in the literature confirm each other in placing Baudhayana's
(post-Vedic!) work in the later part of the Harappan period.
3.4. One Veda can hide another
At this point, the only defence for the AIT can consist in a wholesale
rejection of the astronomical evidence. This can be done in a crude way,
e.g. by simply ignoring the astronomical evidence, as is done in most
explicitations of the AIT. A slightly subtler approach is to explain it
away, as is done by Romila Thapar, who affirms her belief in "the generally
accepted chronology that the Rig-Vedic hymns were composed over a period
extending from about 1500 to 1000 BC". When "references to what have been
interpreted as configurations of stars have been used to suggest dates of
about 4000 BC for these hymns", she raises the objection that "planetary
positions could have been observed in earlier times and such observations
been handed down as part of an oral tradition", so that they "do not
constitute proof of the chronology of the Vedic hymns".21
This would imply that accurate astronomical data were indeed made from the
5th millennium onwards, and that they were preserved for more than two
thousand years, an unparalleled feat in oral traditions. If such a feat is
not an indication of literacy and of written records, at the least it
supposes a mnemotechnical device capable of preserving information orally,
and the one that was available then was verse. So, some poems with the
memory-aiding devices of verse, rhythm and tone must have been composed when
the information was available first-hand, i.e. close to the time of the
actual observation, and those hymns would of course be the Vedic hymns
themselves. Otherwise, one has to postulate that the Vedic hymns were
composed by borrowing the contents of an earlier tradition of verse,
composed at the time when the equinox was observed to be in Orion.
In other words, the Rg-Veda contains literal (though unacknowledged)
quotations from another hymns collection composed 2,500 years earlier. This
is as good as asserting that Shakespeare's works were not written by
Shakespeare, but by someone else whose name was also Shakespeare. However,
the point to remember is that even Romila Thapar does not deny that
somebody's actual observation of these celestial phenomena was the source of
their description in the Vedas.
It is not good enough for those who don't like this evidence, to object that
they are not convinced by these astronomical indications of high antiquity,
on the plea that their meaning might be somewhat unclear to us. It is clear
enough and undeniable that the Vedic seers took care to mention certain
astronomical positions and phenomena. A convincing refutation would
therefore require an alternative but consistent (philogically as well as
astronomically sound) interpretation of the existing astronomical
indications which brings Vedic literature down to a much later age. But so
far, such a reading of those text passages doesn't seem to exist. In no case
is there astronomical information which puts the Vedas at as late a date as
"generally accepted" by Prof. Thapar and others.
4. Additional astronomical indications
4.1. The Saptarshi cycle
Apart from the hard evidence, there are a few elements in Hindu astronomical
tradition which would not count as evidence all by themselves, but which may
gain a new significance when studied in the company of the more solid
elements already considered. We will mention four of them: the Saptarshi
cycle, the Vedic description of a particular eclipse, Kabbala-like numerical
games in Vedic texts and ritual, and the surprising presence of the Zodiac.
A lesser-known Hindu system of time-reckoning is the Saptarshi cycle of 3600
years. My suspicion is that Saptarshi, "the seven sages", sometimes
referring to the seven stars of the panhandle in Ursa Maior, in this case
means "the seven planets" (later replaced with Navagraha, "the nine
planets", including the two Lunar nodes); that the Saptarshi cycle was
conceived as the period between two conjunctions of all the seven planets;
and that 3600 years was but a conventional and arbitrary approximation of
that ideal cycle. At any rate, by the Christian age we find writers who take
this concept of a 3600-year cycle literally, and it is hard to either prove
or refute that this may have been a much older tradition.
The medieval Kashmiri historian Kalhana claimed that the previous cycle had
started in 3076 BC, and the present one in AD 525. J.E. Mitchiner has
suggested that the beginning of the Saptarshi reckoning was one more cycle
earlier, in 6676 BC.22 This would roughly coincide with the start of the
Puranic dynastic list reported by Greco-Roman authors as starting in 6776
BC.
Indeed, the Puranic king-list as known to Greek visitors of Candragupta's
court in the 4th century BC or to later Greco-Roman India-watchers, started
in 6776 BC. Pliny wrote that the Indians date their first king to "6,451
years and 3 months" before Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), while Arrian
puts "Dionysus" as head of the dynastic list at 6,042 + 300 + 120 = 6,462
years before Sandrokottos (Chandragupta), to whom a Greek embassy was sent
in 314 BC. Both indications add up to a date, give or take a year, of 6776
BC. This would, according to the implicit chronology of Puranic tradition,
be the time of Manu's enthronement, Manu being the Aryan patriarch who
established his kingdom in North India after having survived the Flood. One
of Manu's heirs was Ila, ancestress of Yayati, whose five sons became the
patriarchs of the "five peoples" who form the ethnic horizon of the Vedas,
one of them being Puru; in Puru's tribe, then, one Bharata started the
Bharata clan to which most of the Vedic seers belonged.
It so happens that in 6776 BC (and still in 6676 BC), the oceans were still
in the process of recovering the ground they lost during the Ice Age, when
the sea level was for thousands of years nearly a hundred metres below the
present level. The importance of the Glaciation, which peaked ca. 16,000
years ago, in the reconstruction of Eurasian migration histories can hardly
be overestimated. The Channel between Britain and France, with sea bottom at
ca. 40 metres, was a walkway until it was inundated again in ca. 6500 BC,
when the sea was already more than halfway back to its normal (or at least
its present) level. This means that for centuries before and for some more
centuries after that time, the sea level was progressively rising. Since
large populations had settled in the coastal areas vacated by the receding
sea at the beginning of the Ice Age, the progressive melting of the ice-caps
led to the progressive flooding of ever higher-situated population centres,
for several millennia until perhaps 5,000 BC.
One can imagine what would happen if today the sea level would rise a mere
10 metres: densely populated countries like the Netherlands and Bangladesh
would get largely submerged, along with major cities like New York and
Mumbai, and at least a quarter of the world population would have to move.
But that was, for several millennia, the human condition: one after another,
low-lying villages had to be abandoned to the rising sea. It must have
seemed like a law of nature to them that the sea was forever rising, forcing
men to seek higher habitats. And this process was probably continuous only
when looked at from a distance, the reality being more like periods of
stable sea levels followed by sudden jumps, catastrophes when considered on
the scale of a human lifetime. Most probably, that is the origin of the
Flood story.23 The Puranas describe Manu as the leader of mankind after the
Flood, and if we apply a realistic average length to the rulerships of the
kings mentioned in the Puranic dynastic lists, Manu must have lived in the
7th millennium BC, the time of the rising waters, warranting the suspicion
that the Flood story is related to historical events at the end of the Ice
Age.
The myth of Atlantis and other submerged continents probably has a similar
origin. The Tamils have a tradition of a submerged land to India's south, of
which the Maledives and Sri Lanka are remaining hilltops: Tamilakam or, in
the parlance of the Madras-based Theosophical Society, Lemuria. The city in
which their poets' academy or Sangam (recorded in the early Christian era,
but claimed to be ten thousand years old) was established, was said to have
been moved thrice because of the rising waters. Though it is hard to see how
poets working at the turn of the Christian era could have a memory of events
five millennia older, one cannot dismiss as pure fable a story which tallies
neatly with the known geological facts of the rising sea level at the end of
the Ice Age.
And if such memory was possible, the existence of a system of time-reckoning
going back that far, is not impossible either. But we must admit that for
the time being, this is merely "not impossible". However, even if we let the
Saptarshi cycle start only in 3076 BC, unrelated to Manu and the Flood, this
is still hard to reconcile with the theory of an Aryan invasion in the 2nd
millennium BC.
4.2. A remarkable eclipse
For another chronological marker, Rg-Veda 5:40:5-9 describes a solar
eclipse. From the description, one can deduce a number of conditions
determining the times at which it could have taken place: it was at that
site a central, non-total exclipse, which took place in the afternoon on the
Kurukshetra meridian, on a given day after the summer solstice, at least in
the reading of P.C. Sengupta. Only one date satisfies all conditions, which
he calculated as 26 July 3928 BC.24 We have to add, however, that this
calculation stands or falls with the accuracy of the unusual translation of
the word brahma as "solstice". This reading is supported by later scriptural
references to the same event, Shankhayana Aranyaka 1:2,18 and Jaiminiya
Brahmana 2:404-410. N.S. Rajaram has identified an even more explicit use of
brahma in the sense of "solstice": in Rg-Veda 10:85:35, where brahma is
associated with the division of the solar cycle in two halves.25
Moreover, the astronomical interpretation (e.g. by B.G. Tilak) of Rg-Veda
10:61:5-8, where brahma is the equinox and the fruit of the union between a
divine father and daughter,
i.e. the two adjoining constellations Mrgashira/Orion and Rohini/Aldebaran,
if not moreabstractly the intersection of two related celestial circles, may
be cited in support: equinox is not the same as solstice, but it is at least
one of the cardinal directions, a purely astronomical rather than a
religious concept; the common meaning of brahma would then be "cardinal
direction". The division of the ecliptic in 4 parts of 90�by the solstice
axis and the equinox axis is already obliquely referred to in RV 1:155:6, so
the concept of "cardinal direction" was certainly understood. Still, this
construction remains sufficiently strange to be a reasonable ground for
skepticism. On the other hand, it is up to the skeptics to come up with a
convincing alternative translation which fits the context.
4.3. Vedic Kabbalism
A different type of astronomical evidence, not to fix a precise date but to
give an idea of the scientific spirit of the Vedic Aryans, is the
interpretation of numerical facts about the Vedas as implicit references to
astronomical data. If this seems far-fetched, it should be borne in mind
that ancient mythology and religion were primarily concerned with the
visible heaven-dwellers, i.e. the heavenly bodies. Many myths are nothing
but anthropomorphic narrations of celestial phenomena such as eclipses,
solstices and equinoxes, the angular relations between the orbiting planets
(e.g. the regular overtaking of the planets by the fast-moving moon,
therefore imagined by the Greeks as a huntress, Artemis), the analogy
between the twelve-month solar cycle and the twelve-year Jupiter cycle, and
even the precession.26
Apart from this figurative representation, there is also a numerical
representation of astronomical data in ancient traditions. Thus the Bible,
written by a satellite culture of the astronomically astute Babylonians,
used the device of enciphering astronomical data in all kinds of contingent
numerical aspects of the narrative, e.g. the ages of the antediluvian
patriarchs in Genesis turn out to be equal to the sums of the planets'
synodic cycles (period from one conjunction with the sun till the next):
Lamech dies at age 777 = 399 (number of days in Jupiter's synodic cycle) +
378 (Saturn's); Mahalalel at 895 = 116 + 779 (Mercury + Mars); Yared at 962
= 584 + 378 (Venus + Saturn). Similarly, the symbolism of 12 and 13,
referring to the lunar months in a year, is omnipresent in the Bible: 12
sons of Jacob plus 1 daughter; 12 tribes of Israel with a territory plus the
1 priestly tribe of Levi; 12 regular apostles of Jesus plus the one
substitute for the traitor Judas, Matthias; the "thirteen-petalled rose" as
Talmudic symbol of the Torah.
In the past decades, scientists and orthodox religionists have often made
fun of attempts to connect religion with science, as in Frithjof Capra's Tao
of Physics and numerous other books. Yet, in ancient religious texts we
already see this attempt of religious thinkers to keep up with the latest in
science, as outlined above for astronomy. In his Gospel, John takes the
trouble of counting the fish caught by the apostle-fishermen in their nets:
153. Number theory was fairly advanced among the Pythagoreans, and some of
its remarkable findings were well-known among the educated in the
Hellenistic world. They were aware of the unique property of 153: it is
equal to the sum of the third powers of its own constituent figures: 1 + 125
+ 27. Somehow, John assumed that the religious depth of his text would gain
from including some allusions to mathematics. In ancient Pagan
civilizations, this fusion of religion and proto-science was the done thing;
it was usually the priests who used their leisure to develop scientific
knowledge, for they were not troubled by the conflict between faith and
religion which would characterize the Christian and Islamic Middle Ages.
So in the Vedas as well, we find astronomical data enciphered in all kinds
of ways. Thus, the Hindus' most sacred number 108 is, with an inaccuracy of
only 1%, the distance earth-sun expressed in solar diameters (i.e. the
radius of the earth's orbit divided by the sun's diameter), as well as the
distance earth-moon expressed in lunar diameters. Subhash Kak has checked if
such numerical combinations as just cited from Genesis also appear in the
Vedas.27 They do, though they are often quite complicated and only obvious
to someone well-versed in the idiosyncrasies of the multiple Vedic calendar
systems. An easy example is: the number of hymns in books 1, 2, 3 and 4 of
the Rg-Veda adds up to 354, the number of days in the Lunar year consisting
of 12 moon cycles. Similarly, the total number of hymns in books 4, 5, 6 and
7 is 324, the number of days in the so-called Nakshatra year, being the
duration of the sun's stay in 24 of the 27 lunar mansions. Coincidence?
According to Kak: "By adding the hymn counts of the ten books of the
Rig-Veda in different combinations, we obtain numbers that are factors of
the sidereal periods and the five synodic periods (...) The probability of
this happening is about one in a million. Hence whoever arranged the
Rig-Veda encoded into it not only obvious numbers like the lunar year but
also hiden numbers of great astronomical significance."28
This choice of numbers in a cosmically meaningful way is also present in the
construction of the Vedic altar, such as the numbers of bricks in each layer
being equal to the number of days in given planetary cycles.29 It involves
fairly complicated arithmetic, and shows the kind of concern which the Vedic
seers had for the harmony between their own religious practices and the
astronomical cycles. That mentality led logically to painstakingly accurate
observations and calculations, and thereby supports the suspicion of
reliability of the internal Vedic astro-chronology.
4.4. The Zodiac
To conclude this brief acquaintance with Vedic astronomy, we want to draw
attention to the presence in the Rg-Veda of a momentous cultural artifact,
the origin of which is usually situated in Babylonia in about 600 BC: the
twelve-sign Zodiac. In RV 1:164:11, the sun wheel in heaven is said to have
12 spokes, and to be subdivided into 360 pairs of "sons": the days
(consisting of day and night), rounded off to an arithmetically manageable
number, also basis of the "Babylonian" division of the circle in 360�. The
division in 12 already suggests the Zodiac, and we also find, in the
footsteps of N.R. Waradpande, that a number of the Zodiacal constellations/rashis
(classically conceived as combinations of 2 or 3 successive Lunar mansions
or nakshatras of 13�20' each) are mentioned: Simha/Leo (5:83:3 and 9:89:3),
Kanya/Virgo (6:49:7), Mithuna/Gemini (3:39.3), and Vrshabha/Taurus (6:47:5
and 8:93:1).30
Here again, the precession has located them where we would expect them in
about 4000 BC. The Vrshabha rashi is said to have stabilized the heavens
with a mighty prop, apparently a reference to the Taurus equinox in the 4th
millennium BC; the same verse links the Taurus month with its opposite,
Shukra/Jyeshtha (coinciding with Scorpio, which contained the autumnal
equinox), confirming that Vrshabha, "bull", is used here in an astronomical-calendrical
sense. That the seasons are linked with the constellation which is
"heliacally rising" (i.e. rising just before dawn) is perhaps indicated by
RV 8:93:1: "Surya, than mountest up to meet the vrshabha", the sun rises as
if to meet the constellation which is just above the horizon.
We are aware that, like the Chinese, the Hindus link the season to the lunar
constellation/nakshatra in opposition, i.e. the one which rises at sunset
and may contain the full moon. This approach, if applied to modern
astrology, would mean that those who think they are Taurus (sun in Taurus)
would become its opposite, Scorpio (sun opposite Scorpio, full moon in
Scorpio). By contrast, the Babylonians linked the seasons to the solar
constellation/rashi in heliacal rising. If that method were used in modern
astrology, those who consider themselves Taurus (sun in Taurus) would find
themselves to be Aries (last constellation to rise before the sun-in-Taurus
rises).31 However, Waradpande's discovery seems to imply that the Hindus too
used the constellation (at least the rashi, not the nakshatra) in heliacal
rising, like the Babylonians did.
If in Rg-Vedic astronomy the twelve constellations are not linked to the
time of the year when they are heliacally rising, but to the time when they
are "inhabited" by the sun (as is the practice in modern Hindu astrology),
then the whole story would move up at least a thousand and possibly two
thousand years, putting the Rg-Veda in about 2000 BC. This is because the
sun is in mid-Taurus a month before Taurus's heliacal rising, or about 30�
of the cycle, a distance covered by the precession of the equinox in about
two thousand years. But it is unlikely that they considered the
constellation containing the sun rather than the constellation heliacally
rising, as astronomy was based on actual observation more than on
calculation, and consequently required that the constellation be visible.32
The constellation temporarily inhabited by the sun is invisible, and that is
why the ancients made do with the constellation rising before the one in
which the sun is located (heliacal rising), or the one rising when the sun
sets, in practice the one inhabited by the full moon (opposition).
The difference between the sun, which obscures the constellation it
inhabits, and the moon, which is seen against the background of the
constellation it inhabits, explains why a moon-based system uses
moon-in-constellation or, via full-moon-in-constellation, sun-in-opposition
(the full moon being by definition opposite to the sun); while a sun-based
system had to make do with a derivative relation between sun and
constellation, typically the constellation's heliacal rising. My suspicion
is that India originally had both systems: a Lunar 27-part Zodiac (nakshatras)
using the opposition, exactly like in China (and its derived system of 12
months, based on combinations of 2 or 3 nakshatras and still in use); and a
Solar 12part Zodiac (rashis) using the heliacal rising, exactly like in
Babylonia.
The Mithuna rashi/Gemini is said to destroy darkness and to be basis (budhna)
of heat (tapas) (RV 3:39:3). During Gemini's heliacal rising in 4000 BC, the
sun was in Cancer, then coinciding with our month of May, in northern India
the first month of summer (May-June), a season of drought and extreme heat.
During Leo's heliacal rising, around summer solstice in 4000 BC, the rainy
season began. Therefore, verse 5:83:3 says: "Like the charioteer driving the
horse by the whip, he releases the messengers of shower. From afar the roars
of the simha declare that the rain-god is making the sky showering." It
could not be clearer.
Leo is followed by Virgo, indicating the second half of the rainy season,
when the water level in the rivers rises dramatically: in verse 6:49:7, she
is called "the purifier Kanya with Chitra as her life, waterstream-full".
The reference to Chitra, the asterism Spica, the most conspicuous part of
the constellation Virgo, dispels any lingering doubt that Kanya/Virgo does
indeed mean the sixth constellation of the Zodiac. This means that the
Zodiac is as old as the oldest Veda, and that the Zodiac itself helps to
date the Vedas to the age when Virgo was connected with the rainy season.
Even if we consider sun-in-Virgo rather than Virgo's heliacal rising, this
would still indicate the centuries around 2000 BC, well before the 1500 BC
taught in our universities as the earliest possible date of the Rg-Veda.
Either way, it also upsets the current assumption that the Zodiac was
invented in Babylon in the last millennium BC.
4.5. India as the metropolis
Off-hand, while trying to give a solid astronomical basis to Vedic
chronology, we discover a case of cultural transmission in which India is no
longer a rather late receiver but, on the contrary, the extremely ancient
source. Indeed, both the solar and the lunar Zodiac may well originate in
India. If the Rg-Veda does refer to a 12-part Zodiac, it precedes the
Babylonian Zodiac by 5 centuries even in the lowest AIT-based chronology for
the Vedas. As for China: in his famous Science and Civilization in China,
Joseph Needham notes, again by using the precession as a time marker, that
the Chinese 27-part Zodiac dates back to the 24th century BC.33 He
recognizes a common origin with the Hindu nakshatra Zodiac, and then
surmises that the Hindus had it from China, on the assumption that the Vedic
references to the nakshatras are from 1500 BC at the earliest. But that
assumption, a by-product of the AIT, is seriously undermined by all the data
we have been considering here.
Another indication for Indian influence on Chinese astronomy is the 60-year
century, known in Vedic literature (the Brhaspati cycle) and still commonly
used in the Chinese calendar. The 6th-century astronomer Aryabhatta reports
that he was 23 when the 60th cycle ended, implying that the system was set
rolling in 3102 BC. In China, the system was adopted a few centuries later:
according to Chinese tradition, it started with the enthronement of the
legendary Yellow Emperor in 2697 BC.
A stellar myth which was apparently transmitted from India to China is the
notion that after death, the souls go to the Scorpio-Sagittarius region of
the sky (specifically Phi Sagitarii), where the autumnal equinox was located
in the 4th millennium BC. There, they were to be judged by Yama or a similar
god of the dead.
The influence of Indian astronomy on both China and Babylonia confirms the
Vedic-Harappan civilization's status as the world metropolis in the 4th-3rd
millennium BC. In the official cults in imperial China and in Babylon,
stellar science, stellar symbolism and stellar worship were central. But the
same central place had already been accorded to astronomy in the Vedas, as
we have seen here (if only fragmentarily, for numerous Vedic motifs not
discussed here are also related to astronomy, e.g. the twelve Adityas or
divine children of the sun, Prajapati as personification of the year cycle,
etc.); and also in the culture and religion of
Joseph Needham: Science and Civilization in China, part 1, ch.20:
"Astronomy", p.253-254.
the Indus-Saraswati civilization, as Asko Parpola and others have shown.34
Remark that Parpola often tries to make sense of Harappan data by referring
to Vedic data, on the AIT-based assumption that the Aryan invaders
integrated Harappan astronomy and religion.35 This is again a case of
multiplying entities without necessity: instead of saying that there are two
cultures which happen to share some astro-religious lore, we might assume
that these two cultures are one, until proof of the contrary. Parpola's
arguments for a Harappan origin of Vedic and Hindu cultural items, e.g. of
astronomy-based nomenclature (names like Karttika, "of the Pleiades"), are
just as much arguments for an identity of Vedic and Harappan.36 The point to
remember is that even Parpola, often cited as an argument of authority by
Indian defenders of the AIT, fully acknowledges the continuity between Vedic
and Harappan culture. The common emphasis on astronomy in both Vedic and
Harappan sources, is certainly an indication of their close kinship if not
their identity.
5. Conclusion
The astronomical lore in Vedic literature provides elements of an absolute
chronology in a consistent way. For what it worth, this corpus of
astronomical indications suggests that the Rg-Veda was completed in the 4th
millennium AD, that the core text of the Mahabharata was composed at the end
of that millennium, and that the Brahmanas and Sutras are products of the
high Harappan period towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. This corpus
of evidence is hard to reconcile with the AIT, and has been standing as a
growing challenge to the AIT defenders for two centuries.
Footnotes:
1. The story of Max Müller's chronology and its impact is
told by N.S. Rajaram: The Politics of History, Voice of India, Delhi 1995,
ch.3.
2. M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907, reprint by Motilal
Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol.1, p.288.
3. Playfair's argumentation, "Remarks on the astronomy of the Brahmins",
Edinburg 1790, is reproduced in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology in
the Eighteenth Century, Academy of Gandhian Studies, Hyderabad 1983 (Impex
India, Delhi 1971), p.69-124.
4. John Bentley: Hindu Astronomy, republished by Shri
Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii; also discussed by Richard L. Thompson: "World
Views: Vedic vs. Western", The India Times, 31-3-1993. On p.111, we find
that Bentley has "proven" that Krishna was born on 7 August in AD 600 (the
most conservative estimate elsewhere is the 9th century BC), and on p.158
ff., that Varaha Mihira (AD 510-587) was a contemporary of the Moghul
emperor Akbar (r.1556-1605).
5. J. Playfair in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology, p.87.
6. Quoted in S. Sathe: In Search for the Year of the Bharata War,
Navabharati, Hyderabad 1982, p.32.
7. N.S. Rajaram: The Politics of History, p.47.
8. J.Playfair in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology, p.118.
9. J.Playfair in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology, p.88-89.
10. R.L. Thompson: Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Bhaktivedanta Book
Trust, Los Angeles 1989, p.19-24. Unfortunately, he gives no examples of the
early use of Kali-Yuga, contenting himself with references to Indian
publications offering such examples, unlikely to convince Western scholars,
viz. S.D. Kulkarni: Adi Sankara, Bombay 1987, and G.C. Agrawala: Age of
Bharata War, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1979. Kulkarni's book (p.281 ff.)
offers Kali-Yuga dates such as 509 BC, but from marginal Sanskrit sources
which most Western scholars would consider unreliable.
11. On that day, Hindu astrologers gathered for prayer-sessions on hilltops
to avert the impending catastrophe; they were moderately successful.
12. The sidereal Zodiac, used in astrology by most Hindu and some Western
astrologers, consists of the actually visible constellations on the
ecliptic. It is contrasted with the tropical Zodiac, an abstract division of
the ecliptic in twelve equal sectors of which the first one starts by
definition at the equinox axis. This tropical Zodiac, used by most Western
and some Hindu astrologers, is unrelated to the background of constellations
(it could be constructed even if the universe consisted only of the sun and
the earth); but it does not figure anywhere in the present discussion. As
far as we know, the process of abstraction from visible constellations to
geometrical sectors took place only in the Hellenistic period, ca. 100 BC,
and was unknown to the Vedic seers, though they did know the solstice axis
and equinox axis.
13. We are aware that the equinox axis never points
exactly towards the constellation Orion, which lies south of the ecliptic;
but it is understandable that the relatively starless area between the
constellations of Gemini and Taurus was named after the conspicuous
constellation Orion which lies nearby on the same longitude.
14. Remark that the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, the high tide of
the Harappan cities, is also identified by K.D. Sethna (Karpasa in
Prehistoric India: a Chronological and Cultural Clue, Impex India, Delhi
1981) as the period of the Sutras, the Vedas being assigned to the pre-Harappan
period, all on the basis of the evidence of material culture (with special
focus on cotton/karpasa) as attested in the literary and archaeological
records.
According to Asko Parpola, Indus-Saraswati seal 430 (reasonably datable to
the 24th century BC) depicting the Seven Sisters seems to refer to the
observation of the Pleiades.
15. Hermann G.Jacobi: "On the Date of the Àgveda" (1894), reproduced in K.C.
Verma et al., eds.: Rtambhara: Studies in Indology, Society for Indic
Studies, Ghaziabad 1986, p.91-99.
16. "We can, therefore, say that about 2000 years have elapsed since the
period of Kalidasa", according to P.V. Holay: "Vedic astronomy, its origin
and evolution", in Haribhai Pandit et al.: Issues in Vedic Astronomy and
Astrology, Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan & Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi,
p.109.
17. The argument for a higher chronology (by about 6 centuries) for the
Guptas as well as for the Buddha has been elaborated by K.D. Sethna in
Ancient India in New Light, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi 1989. The established
chronology starts from the uncertain assumption that the Sandrokottos/Chandragupta
whom Megasthenes met was the Maurya rather than the Gupta king of that name.
This hypothetical synchronism is known as the "sheet-anchor of Indian
chronology". In August 1995, a gathering of 43 historians and archaeologists
from South-Indian universities (at the initiative of Prof. K.M. Rao, Dr. N.
Mahalingam and Dr. S.D. Kulkarni) passed a resolution fixing "the date of
the Bharata war at 3139-38 BC" and declaring this date "to be the true sheet
anchor of Indian chronology".
18. A. Seidenberg: "The ritual origin of geometry",
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 1962, p.488-527, specifically p.515,
quoted by N.S. Rajaram and D. Frawley: Vedic 'Aryans' and the Origins of
Civilization, WH Press, Québec 1995, p.85.
19. A. Seidenberg: "The ritual origin of geometry", Archive for History of
Exact Sciences, 1962, p.515, quoted by N.S. Rajaram and D. Frawley: Vedic
'Aryans' and the Origins of Civilization, p.85.
20. A.A. MacDonell & A.B. Keith: Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, vol.1
(1912, reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1982), p.423-424, entry
Nakshatra. Romila Thapar: "The Perennial Aryans", Seminar, Dec. 1992.
21 Romila Thapar: "The Perennial Aryans", Seminar, Dec.
1992.
22. J.E. Mitchiner: Traditions of the Seven Rishis, Motilal Banarsidass,
Delhi 1982, quoted in Kak: Astronomical Code of the Rg Veda, Aditya
Prakashan, Delhi 1994, p.64.
23. The worst case was probably the Black Sea, which was a lake during the
Ice Age, until some time in the 7th millennium BC. When rising waters in the
Mediterranean inundated the dry Bosporus straits and plunged into the Black
Sea, the latter rose dramatically, forcing coast-dwellers to flee as much as
a mile a day for months on end. Many of them didn't survive, and entire
states (or whatever political units were in existence) were drowned. The
fact that the Biblical Flood story has Noah land on Mount Ararat, not far
from the Black Sea, may be due (apart from the presence of a boat-like rock
formation there) to the memory of the Black Sea flood drama. In most parts
of the world, the flooding of coastal villages must have been more gradual.
24. P.C. Sengupta: "The solar eclipse in the Rgveda and
the Date of Atri", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal Letters,
1941/7, p.92-113, also included in his Ancient Indian Chronology, Calcutta
1947; discussed in K.V. Sarma: "A Solar Eclipse Recorded in the Rgveda", in
Haribhai Pandya et al., eds.: Issues in Vedic Astronomy and Astrology,
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1992, p.217-224.
25. N.S. Rajaram (with D. Frawley):Vedic Aryans and the Origins of
Civilization, WH Press, Québec 1995, p.106.
26. This position is argued powerfully in the classic
study by Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha von Dechend: Hamlet's Mill, David R.
Godine, Boston 1992 (1969); in Norman Davidson: Astronomy and the
Imagination, Routledge & Kegan, London 1986 (1985); and in Thomas D. Worthen:
The Myth of Replacement. Stars, Gods and Order in the Universe, University
of Arizona Press, Tucson 1991.
27. S. Kak: Astronomical Code, Ch.5-6.
26 This position is argued powerfully in the classic
study by Giorgio de Santillana &
Hertha von Dechend: Hamlet's Mill, David R. Godine, Boston 1992 (1969); in
Norman
Davidson: Astronomy and the Imagination, Routledge & Kegan, London 1986
(1985); and
in Thomas D. Worthen: The Myth of Replacement. Stars, Gods and Order in the
Universe,
University of Arizona Press, Tucson 1991.
27 S. Kak: Astronomical Code, Ch.5-6.
28. Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley: In
Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Quest Books, Wheaton IL 1995, p.208.
29. S. Kak: Astronomical Code, Ch.4.
30. Argued in N.R. Waradpande: New Light on the Date of the Rgveda, Sanskrit
Bhasha Pracharini Sabha, Nagpur 1994, p.13-24.
31. This remains true whether one uses the Tropical
(abstract, solstice/equinox-based) or the Sidereal (visible,
constellation-based) Zodiac, a question which is not really relevant here.
The Vedic Zodiac was sidereal, more based on observation than on
calculation; the tropical Zodiac apparently dates from the time when
Sidereal and tropical signs coincided (around the turn of the Christian
era), i.e. when the constellation of Aries filled the 30� sector following
the spring equinox in the sun-earth cycle, a tropical sector known since
then as Aries regardless of the position of the constellation Aries. The
concept of the Tropical Zodiac was apparently thought up in Hellenistic
circles, but who knows what more surprises the Brahmins have up their
sleeves?
32. Other possible Vedic indications that the seers used the concept of
heliacal rising, are the descriptions of the last stars fading before the
almost-rising sun: RV 1:50:2, and metaphorically RV 7:36:1, 7:81:2, 9:69:4..
34. Asko Parpola: Deciphering the Indus Script, Cambridge
University Press 1994, contains a large section on and numerous references
to stellar motifs in the Harappan seals.
35. See e.g. Parpola: "The Harappan priest-king's robe and the Vedic tarpya
garment: their interrelation and symbolism (astral and procreative)", in J.
Schotsmans & M. Taddei, eds.: South Asian Archaeology 1983, Naples,
p.385-404; and Parpola: The Sky-Garment: a Study of Harappan Religion aand
Its Relation to the Mesopotamian and Later Indian Religions, Finnish
Oriental Society, Helsinki 1985.
36. Asko Parpola: "Astral proper names in India. An analysis of the oldest
sources, with argumentation for an ultimately Harapan origin", Adyar Library
Bulletin #53, Madras 1989-90, p.1-53.
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