The Study of Jyotisha · Chapter 47 of 54 · Part Ten · History

#The Vedic sky

#Part Ten: history

The last part of this course tells the history of Jyotisha: where its ideas came from, how they changed, and how we know. History matters for a student for three reasons. It shows that the tradition is many streams, not one. It explains why the texts disagree — they come from different centuries and places. And it lets a student tell the difference between what the old texts say and what is merely claimed for them.

The history in these chapters follows the published scholarship, especially the work of David Pingree on the dating of Indian astral texts, alongside the texts themselves. Where scholars disagree, both views are given.

#Jyotisha as a limb of the Veda

In the traditional scheme, Jyotisha is one of the six Vedangas, the "limbs of the Veda" — the auxiliary sciences needed to perform the Vedic rituals correctly: phonetics (shiksha), ritual (kalpa), grammar (vyakarana), etymology (nirukta), metre (chandas) and astronomy (jyotisha). Jyotisha's task was to fix the right time for the sacrifices: the new and full moons, the solstices, the seasons, the nakshatras under which particular rites were to be performed.

A famous verse of the Vedanga Jyotisha itself says: as the crest stands on the head of the peacock and the jewel on the head of the serpent, so jyotisha stands at the head of the sciences of the Vedangas.

So in its origin, Jyotisha was calendar astronomy in the service of ritual. Horoscopy came much later.

#The sky in the Vedic hymns

The Rigveda knows the year as a wheel. A well-known riddle-hymn speaks of a wheel with twelve fellies and three hundred and sixty spokes (Rigveda 1.164.48) — the twelve months and the days of an ideal 360-day year. The Sun, the Moon, the dawn and the seasons are everywhere in the hymns. The planets, as objects with their own motion and meaning, are barely visible.

#The nakshatras

The oldest astronomical system of India is the nakshatras: star groups along the Moon's path, one for each day of the Moon's monthly round (Chapter 4).

• The Taittiriya Samhita of the Black Yajurveda lists the nakshatras with their presiding deities, beginning from Krittika (the Pleiades).
• The Atharva Veda has a hymn (19.7) that names the nakshatras with blessings — twenty-eight, including Abhijit, which is absent from the Taittiriya and Vedanga Jyotisha lists.
• The Shatapatha Brahmana says that the Krittikas "do not move away from the eastern quarter" (2.1.2.3), and tells a story in which the Krittikas were once the wives of the Seven Sages (the stars of the Great Bear), separated from them because the Sages rise in the north and the Krittikas in the east (2.1.2.4).

Two things stand out. First, the list begins with Krittika, not Ashvini. The later order starting from Ashvini reflects a later reference point (Chapter 2). Second, the deities of the nakshatras — Agni for Krittika, Prajapati for Rohini, Soma for Mrigashira, and so on — are the same ones Varahamihira gives a thousand years later (Brihat Samhita 98). The nakshatra system is one of the longest continuities in the whole subject.

#The Krittikas in the east, and dating

The statement that the Krittikas rise due east has been used to date the Shatapatha Brahmana. Because of precession (Chapter 2), the stars' rising points slowly shift; the Pleiades rose almost exactly due east around the third millennium BCE. Some scholars (notably S. B. Dikshit in the 19th century) argued from this for a very early date. Others reply that "do not move away from the eastern quarter" need not mean "rise exactly due east", and that such observations may be traditional rather than contemporary. The question is still debated.

#The Vedanga Jyotisha

The oldest surviving astronomical text of India is the Vedanga Jyotisha, attributed to Lagadha. It survives in two versions: one attached to the Rigveda (36 verses) and one to the Yajurveda (43 or 45).

It is a calendar, not a book of astrology:

• Its basic cycle is a five-year yuga of 1,830 days, containing 62 lunar months (Pingree's summary of the text).
• It divides the Moon's path into the 27 nakshatras, beginning from Krittika, each of 13°20′ (in modern terms).
• It gives rules for the tithis, the solstices and the times of the rites.
• It mentions neither the planets nor the twelve signs, and it has no horoscopes.

#When was it written?

Here scholars disagree sharply.

• The early view. B. G. Tilak (1925) and S. B. Dikshit dated it to about 1400 BCE or earlier, from its statement of where the solstices fall among the nakshatras: the positions it gives match the sky of that period.
• The later view. David Pingree dated it to "not very many years before or after 400 BCE", arguing from its language (post-Vedic), its use of ideas found in Pingala's work on metre, and its similarities to Mesopotamian astronomy of the Achaemenid (Persian) period.

The two views can be partly reconciled: the solstice positions may preserve an older observation, while the text in its present form is later. This course does not decide the question; a student should know both views and their arguments.

#What is not yet there

At the end of the Vedic period, Indian astronomy had: the nakshatras, the lunar months and tithis, the solar year and its seasons, the five-year yuga, and a sophisticated ritual calendar. What it did not yet have, as far as the surviving texts show:

• the twelve signs of the zodiac;
• the seven planets as a system of meanings;
• the seven-day week named after the planets;
• horoscopes — charts of the sky at a person's birth.

These arrive in the following centuries, and the story of how they arrived is the subject of the next chapter.

#Summary

• Jyotisha began as one of the six Vedangas: calendar astronomy for timing the Vedic rituals.
• The nakshatras are the oldest system: listed with their deities in the Taittiriya Samhita, and in the Atharva Veda (19.7, with Abhijit); the list began from Krittika; the Shatapatha Brahmana says the Krittikas keep to the east (2.1.2.3).
• The Vedanga Jyotisha of Lagadha is a five-year-cycle calendar of 27 nakshatras, with no planets, signs or horoscopes. It is dated about 1400 BCE by Tilak and Dikshit, about 400 BCE by Pingree.
• The zodiac signs, the planetary week and horoscopy came later.

#Exercises

1. What were the six Vedangas, and what was Jyotisha's role among them?
2. With which nakshatra do the Vedic lists begin? Why might that be?
3. What two dates are proposed for the Vedanga Jyotisha, and on what grounds?
4. Name four things that are absent from the Vedanga Jyotisha but central to later Jyotisha.
5. Why is the nakshatra system called one of the longest continuities in the subject?

Answers: 1. Shiksha, kalpa, vyakarana, nirukta, chandas and jyotisha; jyotisha fixed the right times for the rituals. 2. Krittika; one common explanation is that the Pleiades marked the spring equinox at the time the lists took shape. 3. About 1400 BCE (Tilak, Dikshit), from the solstice positions it gives; about 400 BCE (Pingree), from its language, its debt to Pingala, and parallels with Mesopotamian astronomy. 4. The twelve signs, the planets as a system of meanings, the planetary week, and horoscopes. 5. Because the same nakshatras, with the same presiding deities, appear in the Vedic texts and a thousand years later in Varahamihira, and are still used today.