Chapter VI: Part I: I (4)

The Hindu year is a sidereal year. It is counted at present in most parts of India from a fixed point on the ecliptic, not from a season. It is a calendrical not a cosmic year. Only one apparently small change in the method of counting the years would now require to be made, and again the Aswins might be hymned by the Hindus as the “wondrous,” and “not untruthful,” _stars_, marking by their heliacal rising a new year’s festival--a festival to be held on the 15th, or full moon’s day.

The Hindu year is now counted from the new moon immediately _preceding_ the sun’s arrival at the initial point of the lunar Zodiac. The first of Chaitra (the first of the light half of Chaitra) never falls later than the 12th of April, and may arrive a month earlier. If the year were to be counted from the same initial point, but from the first new moon _following_ instead of that _preceding_ the sun’s arrival at that point, there would be the difference of a whole month in the range of the month Chaitra. The first day of its bright half would then never arrive before the 12th of April, and might fall a month later.

For the interpretation of the Vedic hymns to the Aswins I would make the provisional suggestion, that when these hymns were composed, the year was so counted from the new moon _following_ and not from that _preceding_ the arrival of the sun at “the end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.” In support of this provisional theory, let us first read the summing up of the Aswinī myths, and of the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding them, according to the present modes of explanation; and then let us consider the astronomic method of interpretation above proposed.

We read that[76] “Next to Indra, Agni, and Soma, the twin deities named the Aśvins are the most prominent in the Rig Veda, judged by the frequency with which they are invoked. They are celebrated in more than fifty entire hymns and in parts of several others, while their name occurs more than 400 times. Though they hold a distinct position among the deities of light and their appellation is Indian, their connexion with any definite phenomenon of light is so obscure, that their original nature has been a puzzle to Vedic interpreters from the earliest times. This obscurity makes it probable that the origin of these gods is to be sought in a pre-Vedic period.... The Aśvins are young, the T. S. (Taittirīya Sanhitâ) even describing them as the youngest of the gods. They are at the same time ancient. They are bright, lords of lustre, of golden brilliancy, and honey-hued.... They possess profound wisdom and occult power. The two most distinctive and frequent epithets of the Aśvins are _dasra_, ‘wondrous,’ which is almost entirely limited to them, and _nāsatya_, which is generally explained to mean ‘not untrue....’ Their car ... moves round heaven. It traverses heaven and earth in a single day as the car of the sun and that of Uṣas (the Dawn) are also said to do.... The time of their appearance is often said to be the early dawn, when ‘darkness still stands among the ruddy cows’ and they yoke their car to descend to earth and receive the offerings of worshippers. Uṣas (the Dawn) awakes them. They follow after Uṣas in their car. At the yoking of their car Uṣas is born. Thus their relative time seems to have been between dawn and sunrise. But Savitṛ (the sun) is once said to set their car in motion before the dawn. Occasionally the appearance of the Aśvins, the kindling of the sacrificial fire, the break of dawn, and sunrise seem to be spoken of as simultaneous. The Aśvins are invoked to come to the offering not only at their natural time, but also in the evening or at morning, noon, and sunset.... In the A. B. (Aitareya Brahmana) the Aśvins as well as Uṣas and Agni are stated to be gods of dawn; and in the Vedic ritual they are connected with sunrise.... The Aśvins may originally have been conceived as finding and restoring or rescuing the vanished light of the sun. In the Rig Veda they have come to be typically succouring divinities.” ... Again, at p. 51, the writer adds, “Quite a number of legends illustrating the succouring power of the Aśvins are referred to in the Rig Veda.” Here follows an enumeration of many miraculous “protections,” and cures,--and then[77] “The opinion of Bergaigne and others that the various miracles attributed to the Aśvins are anthropomorphized forms of solar phenomena (the healing of the blind man thus meaning the release of the sun from darkness), seems to lack probability. At the same time the legend of Atri may be a reminiscence of a myth explaining the restoration of the vanished sun. As to the physical basis of the Aśvins, the language of the Ṛṣis is so vague that they themselves do not seem to have understood what phenomenon these deities represented ... what they actually represented puzzled even the oldest commentators mentioned by Yāska. That scholar remarks that some regarded them (the Aśvins) as Heaven and Earth (as does the S. B.--Satapatha Brahmana), others as Day and Night, others as sun and moon, while the ‘legendary writers’ took them to be ‘two kings, performers of holy acts.’ Yāska’s own opinion is obscure.”

[76] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 49.

[77] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 53.

In contrast to all these vague and often contradictory explanations, the astronomical suggestion made at page 137 may to some appear too matter-of-fact and prosaic. But that a firm and scientific base should underlie mythical and imaginative similes does not in reality detract from their poetic excellence. Indeed, an added fitness, and therefore an added beauty, is to be recognized in the Aswin hymns, when we can think of them as addressed to well-known and beneficent deities presiding over the new year--deities who manifested themselves in the earliest dawn of the new year’s morning under the form of two beautiful and easily to be recognised _stars_, and to whom their worshippers appealed for “protection,” through the unknown dangers of the future year.

I give two diagrams to illustrate the fact that the time of the rising of the stars α and β Arietis must necessarily, on such a new year’s festival as above proposed, have taken place in some years before the first intimation of dawn, in others a few minutes before the time of sunrise.

It is of course to be borne in mind that the Vedic years were luni-solar. The actual point therefore on the ecliptic at which the conjunction of sun and moon-or new moon-took place, and from which each year was counted, varied in different years to the extent of nearly 30 degrees. The diagram, Plate XII. Figs. 1 and 2, represents the maximum and minimum distance between the rising of the Yoga stars of the Nakshatra Aswinī, and of the sun on the 15th or full-moon’s day of the first month of a luni-solar year; counted from the first conjunction of sun and moon _following_ the sun’s arrival at the “end of Revatî and the beginning of Açvinî.”

The Vedic Aswins and the Indian Calendar.

[_To face p. 142._]

It will be seen from the diagram that something more than two hours was the longest interval that, according to the presumed method of counting the Vedic year, elapsed between the appearance of α and β Arietis and of the sun above the horizon.

This astronomic interpretation accounts for the varying times noted in the hymns for the appearance of the Aswins. It also accounts, as it seems to me, for the general tone of the hymns, but as regards the long series of miraculous “protections” of the Aswins, accorded by them to many sick, aged, and decrepit personages, it does not at first sight account.

We have seen that Bergaigne and others have opined that the various miracles attributed to the Aswins are “anthropomorphized forms of solar phenomena,” and with this view the astronomic interpretation, when fully followed out to its logical end, agrees.

But at first sight we wonder how the sun at the beginning of the calendrical year could, _in Vedic times_, be described as in any way especially sick, aged, or decrepit.

3,000 B.C., when, as we have seen, the winter solstice was in Aquarius, the Indian calendrical and sidereal year, such as has been supposed, would have begun at its earliest a month and a half _after_ the solstice.[78] The sun _at_ the winter solstice, may be, and often is, described as pale, weak, sick and old; but at the beginning of a calendrical year, a month and a half _after_ the solstice, the sun no longer could have been thought of as requiring the miraculous protection of the heralding Aswins.

[78] If the Hindu year were _now_ counted from the new moon
_following_ instead of that _preceding_ the sun’s arrival at
the initial point of the Zodiac, owing to the precession of the
equinoxes, the year would begin at earliest twenty-one days after the
_spring equinox_. Since 3,000 B.C. the seasons have advanced by more
than two months, as regards their position amongst the stars.

To help in solving this difficulty, recourse may again wisely be had to Babylonian astronomic lore. The fanciful legends regarding the Aswins, considered only by themselves, can scarcely yield a sufficiently firm foundation on which to build the far-reaching theory I now desire to bring forward concerning them; a theory on all fours with one I ventured some years ago to propound in reference to Babylonian astronomy, in a Paper entitled the “Accadian Calendar.”[79] It was there suggested that the probable date for the origin of that Calendar was about 6,000 B.C. The fact was pointed out that Aries, in the most ancient Accadian and Babylonian astronomical works, always appears as leader of the signs and of the year, and stress was laid on the unlikelihood that this constellation should have been chosen for this leading post at a date when the sun’s entry into it did not correspond with any one of the four well-marked natural divisions of the year, _i.e._ the solstices or equinoxes. But as on the cuneiform tablets Aries appears as _leader_ long before the time when the sun sojourned in that constellation during the first month following _the equinox_, it was suggested that it was when the _solstitial not the equinoctial_ point coincided with the first degree of Aries, that the Accadian calendrical scheme had first been drawn up; namely about 6,000 B.C.

[79] _Proceedings of Society of Biblical Archæology_, January 1892.

A corroboration of the view then put forward is to be drawn from a further study of the Accadian month names. The first three month names, in Accadian, referred, as scholars have pointed out, to the first three constellations of the Zodiac.

(1.) The month of the “sacrifice of righteousness” to Aries.

(2.) The month of the “propitious Bull” to Taurus.

(3.) The month of “the Twins” to Gemini.

The twelfth and thirteenth names in the same series seem to refer equally clearly to a year originally counted as beginning at the _winter solstice_. They are called respectively:

“12th. The month of sowing of seed.”--“13th. The dark month of sowing.”

For the sowing of most cereals, late autumn and early winter are the favoured seasons. Many crops however are sown in early spring. There might then be a doubt whether “the month of sowing of seed” more fitly described the spring sowing of seed in the twelfth month of a luni-solar year, counted from the _equinox_,--or the winter sowing of seed in the twelfth month of a luni-solar year, counted from the _solstice_. But when we find this twelfth month followed by a thirteenth, of which the especial and added epithet is _dark_, there can, as it seems to me, be little if any doubt that the winter month whose range in different years extended from 12th of December to 22nd January is better described by the epithet dark, than the rapidly brightening month whose range extended from 12th March to 22nd April.

Very curiously, then, and accurately does the Accadian calendar give us the date of its origin, and of the first naming of its months, as that when the _winter solstice coincided with the sun’s entry into the first degree of the constellation Aries_[80]--the date in round numbers of 6,000 B.C.

[80] The winter solstice now coincides very closely with the sun’s
entry into Sagittarius. It _precedes_ the sun’s entry into Aries by
almost a third of the whole circle of the ecliptic.

To this same date it is, as I believe, that the miraculous protections accorded by the Aswins to the _distressed_ solstitial sun and moon and earth appear to point, and fully does this view corroborate the opinion that the Aswin-legends took their rise in pre-Vedic times. They also, as do the Indra and Vritra myths, refer us for their origin to a more northern latitude than tropical India. In the tropics the sun is scarcely less powerful in winter than in summer. The astronomers who drew up the Accadian calendar, and the myth-makers of the Aswin-legends, must, according to the astronomic theory, have dwelt in temperate zones and formulated calendar and myths about 6,000 B.C.

VI

NOTES.--AHURA MAZDA, ETC.

[Ahura Mazda, a note reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society
of Biblical Archæology_, February 1900]

Professor Hommel in the March number for 1899 of these _Proceedings_ calls attention in his _Assyriological Notes_ to the name “Assara Mazas” appearing in a list of Assyrian gods. The section of the list in which this name appears contains “a number of foreign sounding names” belonging to gods honoured, presumably, in out-lying portions of the Assyrian dominions.

Professor Hommel claims “that this god (Assara Mazas) is no other than the Iranian Ahura Mazda,” and he thus concludes his arguments in favour of this opinion--“concerning _Assara-mazas_, I should like to remark in closing this paragraph, that we have here the same older pronunciation of Iranian words as in the Kassitic _Surias_, ‘sun’ (later _Ahura_ and _Hvarya_, but comp. Sanscrit _Asura_ and _suria_), which is of the highest importance for the history of the Aryan languages. In the same Kassitic period, between 1,700 and 1,200 B.C., I suppose was borrowed by the Assyrians the Iranian god Assara-mazas.”

In a Paper entitled _The Median Calendar and the Constellation Taurus_, printed in the June number for 1897 of these _Proceedings_, I made a very similar claim for the derivation of the name of the great god of the Assyrians--Assur.

The claim put forward was not based only on the resemblance in sound of “Assur” and “Ahura,” but was in the first place founded on the virtual identity of the emblems of Assur and Ahura Mazda. For the _origin_ of these emblems (referring as it was suggested they did to the Zodiacal constellation Sagittarius) a date as high as 4,000 B.C. was, on astronomic grounds, assumed, and it was pointed out that at that date there was no evidence of the existence of the Assyrian nation as a nation, nor any trace of a Semitic worship of the god Assur; whereas, on the other hand, as early as 3,800 B.C. there is evidence that a powerful Aryan race--the Manda--rivalled the power, and threatened the Semitic rule of Sargon of Agane.

The opinion that the symbol of Ahura Mazda, and of Assur, was of ancient Aryan origin, naturally suggested the further thought that the _name_ Assur, so closely resembling the earlier Indo-Iranian form Asura, of the Iranian Ahura, had, together with the emblem of the god, been borrowed from the Aryan ancestors of the Medo-Persians by the Semitic settlers who, early in the second millennium B.C., established themselves to the north of Babylonia. It may here be pointed out that no very certain Semitic derivation at present holds the field which the proposed Aryan derivation would occupy. According to some scholars it comes from a word signifying “a well-watered plain.” According to Professor Hommel, the name Assur is derived from a word which originally meant “the heavenly host.”

Professor Hommel, quoting as his authority the opinions of the Sanscrit scholar Oldenburg, and reinforcing Oldenburg’s opinions by arguments from other sources, further maintains the high probability of the Median god Ahura Mazda having been the representative of the Vedic Varuna, and also that Varuna was the moon.

Vedic scholars are divided in opinion as to what physical phenomenon is represented by Varuna. He is very generally supposed to personify “the vast extent of the encompassing sky,” some say especially the sky at night-time--others claim him as a solar divinity, whilst Oldenburg, as we have seen, supposes him to be the moon. It is not to the question, however, what phenomenon Varuna represented, but to that of the probability or improbability of his original identity with the Median Ahura Mazda, that I would now draw attention.

It is said that “the parallel in character, though not in name, of the god Varuna is Ahura Mazda, the Wise Spirit.” But a variety of considerations may lead us to entertain the possibility of a Vedic god other than Varuna being the parallel in character and in _epithet_ of Ahura Mazda; a parallel which is also still more clearly to be recognized if we adopt the view, above contended for, of the identity of Assur, the _archer_ god of Assyria, with Ahura Mazda.

The Vedic god Rudra is, like Varuna, an Asura or Spirit. He is described as “the wise,” and his votaries are encouraged to worship him “for a comprehensive and sound understanding.” But in one passage the epithet “asura maha,” so curiously recalling to our ears the name of the Avestan “Ahura Mazda,” is actually applied to him.[81] As a wise and great Asura, Rudra seems to be as close a parallel to Ahura Mazda as Varuna; the resemblance of epithet in the case of Rudra makes the parallelism closer.

[81] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala ii., I, 6, Uncertainty prevails
among scholars as to the exact meaning to be given to the name
Ahura Mazda. The Rev. L. H. Mills, D.D., under the heading “Zend,”
writes thus in _Chambers’s Encyclopædia_; “The Supreme Deity Ahura
Mazdâh, the Living God or ‘Lord’ (_ahu_ = ‘the living,’ ‘life,’ or
‘spirit’--root _ah_ = ‘to be’), the Great Creator (_maz_ + _da_ =
Sansk. _mahâ_ + _dhâ_), or ‘the Wise One’ (_cf._ _su-medhâs_).”
Again, the same writer in his book on the Gàthàs, published in 1894,
gives on p. 3 in his “verbatim translation,” “O magni-donator (?)
(vel) O Sapiens (?),” as alternative meanings for Mazda. Similar
uncertainty seems to prevail as regards the meaning to be attached
to the words of the passage in the Rig Veda to which reference has
been made above, _i.e._, Maṇḍala ii., Súkta i., verse 6. In Wilson’s
translation of the Rig Veda, vol. ii., p. 211, we read:--“Thou, Agni,
art Rudra, the expeller (of foes) from the expanse of heaven”: and
in his note to this passage he says: “_Twam Rudro asuro maho divah_:
_asura_ is explained śatrúnám nirasitá, the expeller of enemies,
_divas_, from heaven; or it may mean, the giver of strength....”
Macdonell (_Vedic Mythology_, p. 75) says that Rudra is called in
this passage “the great _asura_ of heaven.”

Varuna indeed in Vedic estimation held a much higher and more commanding position than Rudra, but considering how opposed the Avestan was to Vedic mythology on important points, we ought not to expect that the god elevated by the Medians above all others should have held a very exalted place amongst the Brahmins of India.

But it is when we turn our thoughts not only to Ahura Mazda but to his Assyrian representative Assur, that the parallelism between him and Rudra becomes more marked.

Rudra is not only a wise and great Asura, he is above everything else celebrated in the Rig Veda as an archer. He has “the sure arrow, the strong bow.”[82] He is “the divine Rudra armed with the strong bow and fast flying arrows.”[83]

[82] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11.

[83] _Ib._, Maṇḍala vii., xiii. (xlvi.), 1.

In the Paper already referred to, it was suggested that an astronomic observation of the equinoctial colure passing through the constellations Sagittarius and Taurus was the probable origin of Median and (as derived from Median) Assyrian symbolism concerning Ahura Mazda and Assur. This observation could, as was pointed out, only have been made at the date, in round numbers, of 4,000 B.C.

It is a very tempting enterprise to seek in the mythologies of European nations for allusions to this same astronomic observation--an observation made, as we may believe, when the ancestors of the Iranian and Indian Aryans, and possibly the ancestors of the European nations, were still, if not all dwelling together, at least within easy intellectual touch of each other.

In Grecian fable we have the Centaur (the Bull-killer) Chiron giving his name to the constellation Sagittarius, and in this fable we may, as it would seem, find a better _astronomic_ explanation of the term Bull-killer than that usually given concerning the well-mounted Thessalian hunters of wild cattle. The constellation Sagittarius, an archer, half man, half horse, is not a figure of Grecian invention. It is to be met with depicted on Babylonian monuments, unmistakably the archer of our celestial sphere; and this constellation, when it rises in the east, always drives below the western horizon--_i.e._, mythically exterminates, the last stars of the constellation Taurus.

To Chiron, the chief Centaur, the epithet “wise” is especially given, and “he was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music, gymnastics, and the art of prophecy”; of these not altogether congruous attributes Rudra the Vedic god possessed three of the most important. He was wise, he was an archer, and he was famed as “a chief physician among physicians.”[84] In a verse, part of which has been already quoted,[85] worshippers are exhorted to “Praise him who has the sure arrow, the strong bow, who presides over all sanitary drugs; worship Rudra for a comprehensive and sound understanding, adore the powerful divinity with prostrations.”

[84] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala ii., xxxiii., 4.

[85] _Ib._, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11.

Apollo the far-darter, Artemis the goddess of the silver bow, also shared these same attributes, and Grecian legend would lead us to place them in the same part of the heavens as that allotted to Chiron--_i.e._, Sagittarius. Apollo prompted Artemis to aim a shaft from her bow at a point on the horizon, and this point was the head of the hunter Orion. Now the constellation Orion is exactly in opposition to the bow stars of Sagittarius; that the legend is astronomical is plainly to be inferred from its variant form, in which Artemis is represented as sending a Scorpion to sting Orion to death. The stars marking the Scorpion’s sting are in very close proximity to the bow stars of Sagittarius.

Returning to Indian myths, the name of Siva does not occur in the Rig Veda; but in later Sanscrit works Siva is the representative of Rudra. In a hymn to Siva,[86] the following passages occur, and it is difficult to read them and not be reminded of the sculptured figures of Artemis, crescent-crowned and leading a stag by the horns. (Allowance must be made, however, for the tendency in Hindu art to multiply the heads, arms, and features of their gods.)

[86] Hymn to Siva, prefixed to “An Exposition of the Principles of
Sanskrit Logic,” by Bodhanundánath Swami, Calcutta.

“I worship the great _Mahesa_, who shines like ten million suns: who is adorned with triple eyes: who is crowned with the moon: who is armed with the trident, the bow, the mace, the discus, the goad, and the noose:

Who is the eternal Lord;

Who is bright as the snowy summit of Mount Kailáçe; whose matted hair is ablaze with the crescent moon;

* * * * *

Whose hands hold the head of a deer and a battle-axe;

Whose forehead is adorned with the bright half-moon;

Whose fingers are interlaced to typify a deer;

* * * * *”

For the explanation of the Roman myths of Dianus and Diana (varying forms as the dictionary tells of Janus and Jana) we may naturally seek for the same astronomic origin, as for those concerning the Grecian archer divinities.

Janus indeed has not, so far as I know, ever been represented as an archer or a Centaur. The attribute for which he is especially renowned is that of “opener of the year,” and this attribute, on the astronomic theory here proposed, would furnish the connecting link between the varying forms of the Italian deities above mentioned.

The many and still imperfectly understood changes that were made in the Roman year by successive rulers, have effaced the connexion of that year with the stars which must have originally presided over its opening. But Roman tradition embodied in Virgil’s lines speaks of “the bright Bull” who “with his gilded horns opens the year.”[87] The golden star-tipped horns of the Bull are as we know exactly opposed to the westernmost degrees of Sagittarius; and that constellation, in opposition to the sun, would therefore have marked the opening of just such a vernal year as that alluded to by Virgil. Whether this vernal year before the Julian reformation was still the calendrical year in Rome is, however, very doubtful.

[87] Virgil, _Georg._, Lib. I., 217, 218.

Janus is represented with two heads, sometimes even with four, “to typify the seasons of the year.” The _full moon_ in Sagittarius 4,000 B.C. marked the season of the spring equinox--the sun then being in _conjunction_ with the stars marking the horn tips of the Bull. The _new moon_ in Sagittarius at the same date marked the autumn equinox. The _half waning moon_ in Sagittarius marked the season of the winter solstice: and the half moon of the _crescent or waxing moon_ marked the season of the summer solstice. The four heads of Janus may thus have referred to the four seasons marked by the moon in Sagittarius.

The fact that the Indian archer Rudra (= Siva) and the Grecian archer Artemis, were represented as crowned by the _half_, not the _full moon_, would refer these myths to an Indo-Iranian, not to a somewhat later Iranian source. It was not to the reformed Iranian equinoctial year that they pointed, but to the sun’s triumph at the solstitial season. In the Roman Janus myth we may rather detect the later Median influence, and suppose that it referred to a year beginning with the _full moon_ in Sagittarius, a year opening in the spring, when the _sun_ was in conjunction with the “gilded horns” of “the bright Bull.”

All these mythological indications, derived from Median, Assyrian, Indian, and classical sources, though each of them looked at separately may not speak with much insistence, yet considered together seem to point us more and more clearly as we study them, to the fact that about 4,000 B.C. a very important and authoritative observation of the colures (amongst the Zodiacal constellations) was made, and that upon this observation much of the mythology of ancient nations was founded.

VII

ANCIENT INDIAN ASTRONOMY

[Reprinted from the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archæology_, February 1900]

It is only on Talmudic authority, I think, that astronomy can be denied a place, and indeed an important place, in researches connected with Biblical Archæology.

On Talmudic authority we are told that, as a protest against the sun-, moon-, and star-worship of surrounding nations, the Hebrews were not permitted to calculate in any way beforehand, or by scientific methods based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, their days, their months, or their years.

The end of the day and beginning of the night could only be definitely ascertained when three stars were visible to the observer. The moon must have shown its pale sickle to some watcher of the heavens, before the first of the month could be announced. The beginning of the year, we are also told, was dependent on the earliness or lateness of the agricultural season, for three ears of corn, in a sufficiently advanced state of growth, were to be presented to the priest and waved before the Lord _on a fixed day of the first month_ of the year.

This is what some passages of the Talmud[88] seem to teach; but from Old Testament Scriptures, it is not possible to infer these calendrical restrictions with any degree of certainty. On the contrary, there is much in the Scriptures to lead us to an opposite conclusion.

[88] _Bible Educator_, edited by Rev. E. H. Plumptre, M.A., vol. iii.
pp. 239 and 240. “It may have been with a view to render astrology
impossible, that the Jews were forbidden to keep a calendar in
the Holy Land, ... as the length of the lunation, or lunar month,
is, roughly speaking, twenty-nine days and a half, it is easy to
know, from month to month, when to expect the crescent to become
visible. Six times in the year the beginning of the month was
decided by observation of the new moon.... On two months of the
year the determination of the new moon was of such importance, that
the witnesses who observed the crescent were authorized to profane
the Sabbath by travelling to give information at Jerusalem. These
occasions were the months Nisan and Tisri.... The Mishna records that
on one occasion as many as forty pairs of witnesses thus arrived on
the Sabbath at Lydda. Rabbi Akiba detained them, but was reproved for
so doing by Rabbi Gamaliel.... When the evidence was satisfactory,
the judges declared the month to be commenced, and a beacon was
lighted on Mount Olivet, from which the signal was repeated on
mountain after mountain, until the whole country was aglow with
fires.”

On the very first page of the Bible we read of “the greater and the lesser lights,” and of “the stars also” set in the heavens, to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” And scarcely have we turned this first page, when we meet the statement that “in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” In the margin the words “in process of time” are rendered “at the end of days.” In considering this passage we seem to be brought into touch with a definitely established year; and at once archæology and astronomy enter into the field of Biblical research, to tell us of a remotely old calendar--astronomic indications would date the origin of this calendar at about 6,000 B.C.--and from this calendar we learn that at “the end of days”--the end of the _dark_ days of the year--there followed a month of “the sacrifice of righteousness”: a sacrifice, we may well suppose, of the firstlings of the flock, as the stars in conjunction with the sun during this first month were imagined by the institutors of the calendar under the form of a lamb or ram ready for sacrifice.

To this calendrical first month our attention is again drawn when we read, in the book of Exodus, of the institution at God’s command of the Hebrew festival, to be held on the 14th and 15th days of the month Abib.

This month Abib, it is generally assumed, is the equivalent of the month Nisan, spoken of in some of the later books of the Old Testament.

Astronomy and archæology again claim a hearing on this point. The month Nisan, the Semite equivalent of the Accadian month Bar zig-gar (the month of the “sacrifice of righteousness”), we may gather from the evidence of the cuneiform tablets, had been the first month of a calendrical year in Babylon for many centuries--for millenniums, perhaps--before the date of Moses; and therefore archæology would teach us that the children of Israel were being recalled, from strange Egyptian modes of reckoning, to the observance of an ancient and patriarchal year and festival, when they were told that for them Abib was to be the first month of the year, and that on the 14th of that month, “a night to be much observed,” they were to sacrifice of the firstlings of their flock, and were to hold the great festival of the Passover on the fifteenth day.

If “Abib,” “Nisan,” and “Bar zig-gar” are names used by various nations to designate one and the same month, Abib could not have been, as has very generally been supposed, a month varying according to the uncertain ripening of agricultural crops, and one taking its name from the _ears of corn_ presented to the priest, and waved before the Lord on some fixed day of that month; but rather it must have been (as we know, from Babylonian sources that Nisan was) a well calculated soli-lunar and sidereal month. Now, if we adopt this view, we must find some alternative derivation for the month name Abib. Nor is it by any means difficult so to do.

On the fourteenth night of the first month--Bar zig-gar, Nisan, or Abib--“a night to be much observed,” or rather, according to the marginal reading, “a night of observations”--the bright star Spica, which marks the _ears of corn_ in the Virgin’s hand, rose above the eastern horizon as the sun set in the west, and at midnight must have shone down brilliantly on the Hebrew hosts; for Spica is so bright a star, that even the beams of the full moon riding close at hand could not have obscured its lustre.

The Indians of to-day name their months from the stars in their lunar Zodiac which are in _opposition to_, not from those in _conjunction with_, the sun. The close resemblance of the Arab and Indian lunar Zodiacal series suggests the thought that the Arabs may have followed the same system of month _nomenclature_ as the Indians; and if this were the case it would furnish a reason why Moses, who had so lately returned from his forty years’ sojourn in Arabia, should--in recalling the Hebrews to the observance of such a year as that which was presumably followed by their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--have yet spoken of the first month of the year according to a _non-Babylonian_ method of nomenclature, and should have called it Abib, after the star in _opposition to_ the sun.

If now we adopt the opinion that an astronomic method of counting the year did in reality obtain amongst the Hebrews, a great difficulty must present itself to our minds in regard to the generally accepted theory that only on a _fixed day of the first month of the year_ might the first reaped handful of corn be waved before the Lord.

The seasons in Palestine are not more punctual than in other countries. To restrict a husbandman to a fixed day of a year (even such a year as ours) before which he might not begin to put his sickle into the corn, would be felt as a hurtful and arbitrary regulation; but to restrict the husbandman to a fixed day in a luni-solar year would be a still more hurtful regulation. The beginning of a soli-lunar year may vary to the extent of a whole month. A late beginning of such a year might coincide with a very early agricultural season, and _vice versa_ an early calendrical year might occur in a late agricultural season.

Considerations of this nature may incline us to inquire carefully whether the “generally accepted theory” (concerning the waving of the ears of corn before the Lord during the Passover week) rests upon Scriptural authority or on Talmudic and traditional teaching. As against an almost unbroken array of commentators, it is possible in this connexion to quote from the work of a learned Hebrew scholar a clearly expressed opinion that from the Scriptures themselves, it is not possible to infer directly a connexion in date between the waving of the first fruits and the Passover festival.[89]

[89] _Pentateuque_, Traduction Nouvelle, par Rabbi Wogue (Lazare),
tom. 3. Discussing an important difference of opinion which exists
amongst Jewish scholars and commentators as to the exact day of
the Passover festival, on which the priest was to wave the sheaf
before the Lord, the writer says: “Le texte porte: ‘Le Lendemain du
Sabbat,’ indication qui a donné lieu à une dissidence importante
entre les Pharisiens et les Saducéens.... Nous avons adopté le
système talmudique, qui a pour lui l’autorité des Septante, des
targoumîm, de Josephe, et l’usage immémorial de la Synagogue; mais,
à ne consulter que les textes sans parti pris, nous ne souscririons
à aucune des deux doctrines. Ni la cérémonie de l’ômer, ni le comput
des semaines, ne sont mis par nos textes en rapport avec la Pâque,
mais uniquement avec les moissons, soit ici, soit dans le Deutéronome
(xvi. 9). Dès la récolte de l’orge, le divin Législateur veut qu’on
lui fasse hommage des prémices de cette céréale; il n’indique point
de date, parceque la moisson, pas plus que la vendange, et pas plus
en Palestine qu’ailleurs, ne commence à jour fixe. Mais une fois
ouverte, elle se continue sans interruption; et comme les froments,
en Palestine, sont coupés sept semaines après, les prémices du
froment doivent être offertes au bout de sept semaines. L’Omer et
la Pentecôte sont donc mobiles par exception, mais cette dernière
est relativement fixe. Maintenant de quel ‘Sabbat’ est il question?
Puisque tout ici est subordonné à _l’ouverture de la moisson_, ce
sera naturellement le Sabbat qui suit cette ouverture.”

But if our enquiries should lead us to accept, as at least a probability, the existence in Mosaic times of an astronomically counted Hebrew year, and if this admission should require us to change long-held opinions regarding the right observance of Hebrew festivals, on the other hand, the fact that we might then trace _Arabian_ rather than _Babylonian_ influence in the name of Abib would have its weight on the conservative side of the controversy concerning the post or pre-exilic _date_ of the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.

The fact that in India the months are named after the stars in opposition to the sun suggested the above proposed explanations of the Hebrew month name Abib as that of the month when the sun was in conjunction with the constellation Aries, and in opposition to the star Spica, marking the Zodiacal ears of corn. But there is a further point of connexion to be observed between Indian astronomy and Biblical archæology, namely, that the _first month of the Indian year_ is at the present date the month during which the sun is in conjunction with the constellation Aries. This month is called Chaitra, which is the Sanscrit name of the star Spica, and it is in fact the same sidereally marked month, which, according to the opinions here advocated, was the first month of the ancient Accadian, Babylonian, and Hebrew years.

It must, therefore, be a question of interest to Biblical students to determine, if possible, whether this Indian _first month_ has only so been counted (as some scholars tell us) since about 570 A.D., or whether it has so been counted from the same remote time as was the Accadian month Bar zig-gar, that is, possibly, from about 6,000 B.C.

This question as to the month Chaitra forms part only of a larger controversy which has been long waged, concerning the antiquity, or otherwise, of the whole science of astronomy in India.

To this larger controversy I have drawn attention in my Paper, _Astronomy in the Rig Veda_, read before the Congress of Orientalists assembled at Rome in 1899. In that Paper, arguments are put forward in support of the opinion that the Vedic bards possessed an acquaintance with the science of astronomy, and that much of the imagery of the hymns bore reference to the constellations of the Zodiac. For the gods Indra, Soma, Agni, and the Aswins, astronomic interpretations are proposed; and finally the question, which as it seems to me is one specially deserving the attention of the Society of Biblical Archæology--the question of the position of the month Chaitra as first month of the Indian year in Vedic and pre-Vedic times is discussed, and the claim that it was, and throughout remote ages had ever been, virtually the same month as the Accadian Bar zig-gar is insisted upon.

Pursuing further the controversy concerning the antiquity of astronomy amongst the Aryan races, in the note on “Ahura Mazda” (p. 152), I proposed an identification of the Vedic Rudra with the Median god--the god who presided over the Median equinoctial year, marked by observation of the full moon in the constellation Sagittarius.

Continuing then our enquiries into the astronomic myths of ancient India, let us turn our attention to the sons of Rudra--the _Maruts_. They are a group of gods very prominent among Vedic deities, and it is to be noted that Rudra is oftener alluded to in the Rig Veda as the father of the Maruts than in almost any other capacity. Now the Maruts--the stormy troop of Maruts--are celebrated as the companions and friends of Indra. They are “associated with him in innumerable passages.” Here, at first sight, it might seem that the proposed astronomical identification of Indra and Rudra as solstitial and equinoctial personifications must break down; for how should the sons of the equinoctial Rudra always appear as the devoted companions of the solstitial Indra?

On further examination, however, a very interesting explanation of this difficulty presents itself. From a hymn (quoted at p. 157) to Siva, the Hindu representative of the Vedic Rudra, we learn that the crescent half-moon blazes on the forehead of Siva. Now the crescent half-moon, in the western degrees of the constellation Sagittarius, would, 4,500 B.C., have marked the month of the summer solstice; for the moon, in its “first quarter” in the first degrees of Sagittarius, must attain to “full moon” seven days later, either in the constellation Aquarius or Pisces, and the full moon in one or other of those two constellations marked the season of the summer solstice somewhat earlier than 4,000 B.C. The Maruts are often spoken of in the Veda as a troop, seven in number, or as seven troops of seven, or as three times seven in number. The astronomical thought therefore suggests itself, that the seven Maruts represent the seven days that elapsed between the crescent half-moon, blazing on the brow of Rudra, and the full moon of the summer solstice, or Soma pavamana--Soma purified in the celestial waters (see Plate XIII.). And this explanation of the Maruts does not contradict, but rather agrees with and includes the usual non-astronomic explanations held regarding them, namely, that they are _storm winds_; for we know that the days which accompany the setting in of the solstitial rainy season in India are the days in which the fierce tropical hurricanes or monsoons prevail.

Outer circle divided into 360 degrees.

2nd circle. The names and extent of the twenty-seven Indian
“Nakshatras” or divisions of the Lunar Zodiac.

3rd circle. Names and extent of the twelve Indian “Rashis” or
divisions of the Solar Zodiac.

4th circle. Proposed three-fold division of the Vedic Lunar Month at
Season of Summer Solstice.

Section of 5th circle. Proposed identification of “Maruts” with
Moon’s course through seven “Nakshatras” at Season of Summer Solstice.

The Constellations here appear as drawn on the celestial globe;
they have not been reversed as in the other illustrations, hence an
apparent, though not real, contradiction ensues.

[_To face p. 174._]

Now let us turn from the Maruts to another, as it seems to me, lunar and solstitial myth, namely, that of Trita Aptya.

Trita Aptya is a friend of the Maruts, and is said to have appeared on the same car with them. He is constantly, in the hymns, associated with Indra, and feats recorded in one passage as performed by Indra, are in another passage of the same hymn attributed to Trita.

Trita is also often spoken of together with Soma; and in the ninth Maṇḍala, again and again we read of the ten “maidens, or fingers,” of Trita preparing the Soma juice for Indra.

All these attributes of Trita, and others to be mentioned later, are easily explainable on the astronomic theory already propounded in the identifications of Indra, of Soma, and of the Maruts.

In the name Trita there is certainly a suggestion of the number _three_, and Macdonell, in his _Vedic Mythology_,[90] brings proof to show “that it was felt to have the meaning of the third”--that is, in order of sequence.

[90] P. 69.

But though the third, in this sense, does not actually carry with it the meaning of _third of a whole_; yet, to any one in search of an astronomical explanation of the Trita myth, the reiterated mention of the ten fingers of Trita quickly suggests the thought of a whole divided into three chief parts, each part containing ten lesser divisions--a whole therefore of thirty parts.

Now the lunar month--in reality consisting of twenty-nine and a half solar days (with some fractions over)--is in Hindu calendrical usage divided into thirty equal portions of time called “tithis,” which are considered as lunar days; and here, as it would seem, we arrive at the physical basis of the Trita myth. Trita Aptya, or Trita in the waters (or of the waters), appears as the third part of the lunar month--the part during which the moon is to be seen in the celestial waters; and as Trita is so closely connected with Indra and Soma pavamana, that third part must have been the ten lunar days (five before and five after “the full”) during which the moon is at its brightest, and in the constellation Aquarius.

If we think of Trita Aptya as a personification of the triumphant third of the moon’s course through the constellations of the Zodiac at the season of the summer solstice (see Plate XIII.), and if we remember that the moon during the ten lunar days contained in that “third” came to its full in Aquarius or in Pisces, sometimes indeed at the juncture of these constellations, we shall be able to understand much of the figurative language of the Veda, which associates Trita with the stormy Maruts, with the victories of Indra over Vritra, and with the effulgence of Soma pavamana.

There is a legend concerning Trita not related but alluded to in the Rig Veda. This legend tells us that Trita was one of three brothers (Ekata, Dvita, and Trita), and that he was pushed into a well by his brothers, and over the mouth of the well a circular covering was placed with intent to keep Trita down and drown him. But through the circular covering the ever-triumphant Trita burst. Here there can be little doubt is a mythic description of the temporary disaster of eclipse overtaking the full moon of the summer solstice in the celestial waters of Aquarius or Pisces. The circular covering can be nothing else than the circular shadow of the earth covering the disc of the full moon, and Trita’s triumph may well remind us of the serene victoriousness of the moon when it has emerged from eclipse and rides unharmed along the sky.

In the Zend Avesta Thrita corresponds in many points with the Vedic Trita. Thraetona also represents Trita under some of his other aspects, and mention is made of Thraetona’s “two brothers who seek to slay him on the way.”[91] From these facts it may be inferred that the Trita myth is pre-Vedic. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find traces of it in European mythologies. The name of Trita, with only a change of termination, appears as the Greek Triton, and we may guess at an allusion in the sculptured forms of Greek and Roman Tritons--half men and half fish--to the two watery constellations, Aquarius and Pisces, in which the Vedic Trita Aptya (son of waters) made his abode. The Roman rendering of these composite figures, especially, may recall to our minds the Zodiacal basis of the myth--the two fish of Pisces appearing in Italian art, as the two fish-tails which terminate the human-headed figure of the Triton. Again Hecate, as has been pointed out by scholars, bears a close resemblance in name to Ekata. Hecate was a lunar divinity; she was worshipped and sacrificed to at the close of the month. We may therefore suppose she represented the waning moon. She is further said to have been the daughter of Perseus and Asteria. Looking at the figures of the celestial sphere (see Plate), we may trace the third part of the moon’s course--the ten days of its waning appropriated to Ekata--and observe how this portion of its course began close to the _constellation Perseus_. Thus the Sanscrit Trita myth may explain the name and parentage of the Grecian Hecate.[92]

[91] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 69.

[92] It is not to be supposed that only the month of the summer
solstice was divided into the three parts, personified by Ekata,
Dvita, and Trita: the legend of Trita Aptya, that is, Trita in the
waters (or, of the waters), is necessarily restricted to that season
in which the moon came to its full in the constellations Aquarius or
Pisces. Some interesting indications in Indian and Greek mythology
seem to point to a similar division of other months, but the subject
is surrounded with uncertainties and difficulties.

A study of ancient European calendars may, on the other hand, eke out our knowledge concerning the astronomic scheme in which Trita and his brothers played such important parts. We read that in the Attic year “each month was divided into three decades,” and the statement may confirm us in the opinion that, following an almost too mathematically imagined calendrical method, the ancestors of the Aryan race in remote ages counted their months, not as containing twenty-nine-and-a-half solar days, but as a portion of time containing three great equal divisions, the first, the second, and the third--Ekata, Dvita, Trita--each of these three parts being again subdivided into ten equal tithis. If this should have been the case, it would be interesting to note that the Greeks (and the Romans also, as shown by their cumbrous system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides) retained the plan of a threefold division of the months, but lost the originally concomitant arrangement of the ten equal divisions of each part into tithis, whence much difficulty ensued for Greeks and Romans alike in counting lunar months of alternately thirty and twenty-nine days. Indian astronomers, on the other hand, who retain the accurate and elaborate division of the month into equal tithis, must have long ago lost the thought of its originally threefold partition, for the Indians count each month as composed not of three periods of time, but of _a light and a dark half_.[93]

[93] “The Luni-Solar year is used for the regulation of festivals
and domestic arrangements; it commences at present at the instant
of conjunction of the Sun and Moon in the Sidereal month Chaitra.
The Hindu Lunar months invariably consist of thirty Tithis, or Lunar
days; and the whole month is divided into two equal parts of fifteen
Tithis each, the one called Shukla or Shuddh Paksha--the bright half
or increase of the Moon; the other Krishna or Vadya Paksha--the dark
half or decrease of the Moon.” (_The Indian Calendar_ for the year
1892.)

To one more lunar Vedic personage let us direct our attention: namely, to Atri--Atri who, unlike the conquering and ever-victorious Trita, is chiefly celebrated for his misfortunes. Agni, Indra, and especially the Aswins, moved by his misfortunes, come to the help of Atri, and by means of a hundred acts, a hundred devices, they extricate him from captivity, whether from a dark cavern or from a burning chasm. They make the time of his captivity even pleasant to him, giving him refreshing drink.

One of our own poets may help us to understand the Vedic metaphor of Atri’s darksome cave. In the _Samson Agonistes_ of Milton, the hero, describing his blindness, says--

“The sun to me is dark
And silent as the moon
When she deserts the night,
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.”