Subject: Re: [HM] Indian astronomy and mathematics
From: Dinesh Maheshwari (dsm@cypress.com)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2000 - 22:13:36 EST
Dear HM listmembers,
Kim Plofker <Kim_Plofker@Brown.edu> wrote :
> Dinesh Maheshwari said in another post:
>
> > An interesting chronological marker is the solar-eclipse described
> > in RgVeda 5:40:5-9. ...
> And here is the most straightforward translation of the Sanskrit
> that I can manage: ...
>
> "When the Asura [a type of superhuman being, usually translated "demon"]
> Svarbhanu smote you, Sun, with darkness, all creatures seemed like one
> stunned and not knowing where he is. Indra, when you struck down
> Svarbhanu's magic spread beneath the sky, [the seer] Atri by his fourth
> sacred prayer found the Sun hidden in darkness. Atri, I am yours,
> let not the oppressor in anger consume me with fear. You are [the god]
> Mitra, giving true blessings; may both [you] and [the god] King Varuna
> help [me]. The Brahman Atri, setting the [Soma-]pressing stones, serving
> the gods with homage and praise, set the Sun's eye in the sky and
> eradicated the magic of Svarbhanu. The Sun whom the Asura Svarbhanu
> had smitten with darkness, the Atris found him again; none other
> could do so."
>
> Nobody that I know of has ever questioned that this refers to a solar
> eclipse. What the "conservative school" maintains is that the best
> interpretation of this hymn is that it refers to a general mythologized
> idea of an eclipse, with an Asura using magic arts to obscure the Sun
> and a divine seer using pious devotion to counteract the magic. If anyone
> prefers to interpret such a hymn as a technical observational record of
> a specific astronomical event, fine; all the "conservative school" claims
> is that, looking at the overt meaning of the text and the available
> historical data, that's not the most plausible interpretation.
Perhaps Kim does not know or forgot to mention, that Svarbhanu is one of
the names for Rahu, an Asura, who is an explicit personification of the
ascending node of the moon and is considered to be the one to "cause the
eclipse". I have not researched the personifications attributed to Atri yet.
Mitra is a personification of the "day " and Varuna that of the night. So
here "Svarbhanu" is actually the moon that is causing the solar eclipse and
not any "Asura using magic arts to obscure the Sun". As we see here, with
the many personifications, names and metaphors, the "overt" meaning of the
Vedic texts can be very easily "ab"used by the "conservative school" to
present their claim to people not deeply versed in Vedic texts. (This
is not an askance attack on Kim.)
Perhaps Kim should have also pointed out that astronomy and religion in
early Vedic times were intimately intertwined. The planets, sun and moon
were either deified or "demon -ified" and the constellations were
personified or given animal representations.
[Mercury-Vishnu, Budha, Saumya, Rauhineya;
Venus -Bhrgu, Usanas, Kavi;
Mars- Skanda, Angaraka, Bhumija, Lohitanga, Bhauma, Kumara,
Jupiter- Brhaspati, Agniras, Guru
Saturn - Manda, Sanaiscara, Sauri, Pamgu, Patamgi
ascending node of Moon- Rahu, Svarbhanu;
descending node of the Moon - Ketu,
day- Mitra,
night - varuna. (Varuna is also the god of cosmic ocean)]
By the time of JaiminigrhyaSutra (JS) there were some addition/changes
to the mapping of planets to Vedic gods, as given by JS 2.9
(Caland, W., 1984. The JaiminigrhyaSutra. ),
[Sun - Shiva, moon -Uma, Venus-Indra, Saturn -Yama].
I have not researched the changes in the mapping after JS.
Considering the explicit deifications or the "demon -ification" of the
celestial objects, it is easy to understand the extreme importance of
reflecting the celestial structure in the design of altars and the
importance of synchronizing to astronomical events for religious rituals
in the Vedic times. The physical phenomena such as eclipses, solstice,
equinox and such were also portrayed as the periodic interaction between
the deities and the demons.
In India, even today all solar eclipses are considered as a bad omen by
traditional Hindu rituals because it projects the demon Rahu winning
over the Sun god, for however small a time, and it requires ritualistic
bath and oblations to purify oneself from the affects of the eclipses.
BTW, the dating of the eclipse in question was first done by
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",
and also discussed in Haribhai Pandya et al., eds.: "Issues in Vedic
Astronomy and Astrology", Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1992, p.217-224
and most recently in " N.S. Rajaram , D. Frawley: Vedic
Aryans and the Origins of Civilization, WH Press, Quebec 1995, p.106"
[BTW, K.V. Sarma is the same author whom Kim has evoked in the
discussion on Aryabhata's system.]
RigVedic text is written in a very poetic, metaphorical and musical manner.
Given the early Vedic intertwined astronomy-religion and the style of
RigVedic literature, how else would one expect a sighting of an eclipse
to be described in a religious literary work- certainly not in the
disinterested scientific/astronomical manner of today or even that of the
Platoist Greeks. And please bear in mind that we are debating about an
event that is supposed to have occurred around 4000BC.
There have also been works from the beginning of 20th century that
portray that in ancient times astronomical phenomena was cast in terms
of what we NOW call as "myths". e.g. please refer to "Santillana, G. de and
Dechend, H von., 1969. Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and frame of time.
Gambit , Boston" and "Shamasastry, R., 1938. Drapsa: The Vedic Cycle of
Eclipses. Sree Pandchacharya Electric Press, Mysore"
> And here I'd like to propose a new ground rule for this discussion
> if it's to continue: namely, that when anybody makes a statement to
> the effect that "such-and-such a Sanskrit text says so-and-so," they
> must support that with not only a specific chapter-and-verse citation but
> a direct literal translation of the Sanskrit (and the Sanskrit itself, if
> possible). If we are to provide any real information to the interested
> non-Indologists on the list (and many of them have been kind enough to
> say that the discussion is helpful---thanks!), we should make it as
> easy as possible for them to see what the texts actually say, so they
> can make up their own minds about their significance. The listmembers
> who discuss excerpts from French and German texts generally follow
> this rule of displaying the evidence openly, and I think we should do
> the same.
It should be very clear by the translation effort on Rgveda 5:40:5-9 above,
that even though Vedic texts can be translated into English with some
effort, the interpretation of the Vedic texts with all their personifications,
names and metaphors is not as easy as interpreting German, French or
even Latin texts even from 1500 years ago. Even with 4 years
of training in Sanskrit I do not consider myself qualified to provide the
correct translation from pre-Panini Sanskrit to English. Even more
important than translation is interpreting the translations and I
have realized by my own utter failure in the past that it is a task best
left to the philologists like Michael Witzel, (Harvard U) et al who are
trained and experienced in Vedic texts. It is for this reason that I refer
to simple English interpretations, however, I do try to cross-check the
interpretation in more than one document before citing it because even Michael
Witzel is known to have made inadvertent and sometimes seemingly very simple
mistakes which one does not expect from his class of Sanskrit philologists.
In any case, if the rule is to provide the Sanskrit and/or the translated
English I will not be able to participate because I carry the English
translation of just the RigVeda and the rest are simple English
interpretations of the Vedic texts from a collection of documents and books
which by themselves refer to English translations of the Vedic texts. As a
rule I have always provided the chapter, verse of the Sanskrit text and for
the minor/less well known works even the references to the English
translations. For the major works, like the Veda, the English translations
are easily available and some of them even online (e.g. RigVeda at
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/onlineRV.htm ,
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/rigveda/rigvedaskt.htm , the former
by Michael Witzel). In the instance where Kim thinks that I am misleading,
as she seems to be implying in her post, I propose that we present the
interpretations/reading by the expert philologists like Michael Witzel etc
instead of the literal translations because the literal translations can be
more misleading by themselves. I think we can let the listmembers decide as
to what they would like.
BTW,I commend Kim on her ability to translate the Vedic texts, however
if even she cannot make out the significance of the personifications etc.
can we expect others not versed in Vedic texts to understand the literal
translations.
I can offer my abilities in logical and coherent analysis of information
already processed by the experts in their respective fields of philology,
archaeology, anthropology, genetics etc. across all these disciplines
because cross discipline analysis of historical issues is what is lacking
today; and I can say that Kim and other fellow HM members can trust me to
not knowingly mislead them.
> Again, I think that this is not entirely fair. Nobody (among modern
> scholars at least, with apologies once more for the racist bigotry of
> some earlier Orientalists) is attempting to "smear the character" of
> Vedic Indians in any way.
The above reference to the "court game" was meant as a metaphor and not as
a similis; the implication was that just as the lawyers try to invalidate
an unfavourable witness the "conservative school" also has tried to
invalidate unfavourable evidence by using indirect broad remarks.
I know that current day scholars are more sensitive to the issue of
bigotry etc, but I have also seen that, as Milo has also mentioned in
an earlier post, scholars even today often tend to stick to the theories
that they have propounded in the past even in the face of new evidence
because otherwise the intellectual society today is very quick to point
their past work as failures; perhaps it is more a fault of the society
that evokes such a response from the otherwise sincere scholars. And,
again, this is in no way an askance remark on Kim's stance on the issues;
I myself had held my ground in the "conservative school" for a number of
years, fiercely defending it until I was convinced to the contrary.
Interestingly, even in the early days of "Orientalism" there were
scholars who were quite unbiased. Maurice Winternitz basing his
estimate on purely philological considerations says about RigVeda:
"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." M. Winternitz: History of Indian Literature (1907,
reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1987), vol.1, p.288.
In 1790, the 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. Please refer to-
Playfair's argumentation, "Remarks on the astronomy of the Brahmins",
Edinburg 1790.
Playfair's mathematical estimate was objected to by John Bentley in 1825,
not by a mathematical or astronomical argument, but as following in "John
Bentley: Hindu Astronomy, republished by Shri Publ., Delhi 1990, p.xxvii;"
"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."
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 Arabs."
Herman G. Jacobi, in 1894, used the precessional movement of the twelve
months of the Hindu calendar (which are tied to the constellations)
vis-a-vis the meteorological seasons to fix the date of the Rg-Veda to
the 5th-4th millennium BC.
Hermann G.Jacobi: "On the Date of the Rigveda" (1894), reproduced in
K.C. Verma et al., eds.: Rtambhara: Studies in Indology, Society for
Indic Studies, Ghaziabad 1986, p.91-99.
And then there have mathematicians like A. Seidenberg who were
so convinced of their findings that this is what he had to say:
"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."
"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".
A. Seidenberg: "The ritual origin of geometry", Archive for
History of Exact Sciences, 1962, p.488-527, 515
> It doesn't seem to me insulting to suggest that astronomical references
> in Vedic hymns and rituals, like those in the religious texts of other
> ancient civilizations, are concerned with general religious themes of
> prayer, praise, and the divine order, rather than with technically
> precise records of observations in a complex astronomical system.
Here there is a preconception that all ancient civilizations are the
same. In India, even today, the religious rituals and important affairs
like marriages etc. are done by determining the exact time of certain
planetary, moon, sun motions and constellations, which incidentally is
called "muhurat", the unit of time used in Vedic days. Even today,
the dates of some of the most auspicious religious gatherings like
Kumbh-Mela in Varanasi are given 12 years in advance (the Kumbh
-Mela occurs once in 12 years but not on same dates even by the
Indian solar or lunar calendar) to coincide with a specific celestial
occurrence (I do not know if it is conjunction of planets or something
else.).
And as I have mentioned earlier, given the extent and completeness
of the mapping of the deities and the demons to ALL the known celestial
objects, one can expect the Vedic people to also reflect the celestial
order and timing in their rituals. There were three types of altars
garhapatya, daksinagni and ahavaniya representing the earth, the space
and the sky respectively. The rituals give specific instructions
for each altar type, the number of layers of the altar and the number
of bricks/stones in each of the layers. And these numbers by themselves
are in various combinations of various celestial timings. And then there
are rites such as the one which are performed daily and follow the
motion of the Sun for the whole year etc. etc.
> evidence of this than scattered statements in religious texts. We
> should find remains of their _pre-Harappan_ cities,
Archaeologists have indeed been able to uncover pre-Harappan sites
that date back to 6500BC; one of them is the Mehragarh site, in Pakistan
And, BTW, there are about 1600 Indus valley sites spread from Iranian
border to Ganges plains and have been C-14 dated from 6500BC (eg.
Mehragargh site) to 300BC i n the Gangetic plains, but primarily around
Saraswati/Indus valley. Only about 30% of the sites have so far been
excavated and with a number of sites now falling in Pakistan and
Afganisthan there are political impediments to the excavations,
(hopefully UN can help resolve this issue.)
Sites like Mehragarh (dated 6500BC)also bring to light the reports
made by the Greco-Roman visitors (Pliny and Arrian) to India.
Quoting K Elst :
"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".
Interestingly, J.E. Mitchiner has suggested that the beginning of the
Saptarshi reckoning was in 6676 BC. "J.E. Mitchiner: Traditions of the
Seven Rishis, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1982"
> their inscriptions,
The Vedic text were expressedly forbidden to be written down in the
Vedic days, a form of intellectual control of concepts (it seems),
otherwise we would not have been wasting our time arguing about alternate
ways of dating the texts. (Well there is still a chance that we would
have been "wasting" our time on alternate sources, because, unlike Egypt,
the climate of India is not conducive to the survival of papyrus, cloth,
paper and any organic matter over long periods of time.)
The Indus Valley script if deciphered would certainly help.
Coming to seals that have been found in the Indus Valley civilization
sites - perhaps Kim is already familiar with the Parajapati seal
discovered from the Harappan sites. The Parajapati seal depicts
a male god who was identified by the depiction to be god be Vedic god
Rudra/Shiva and who is one of the main gods in the current day Hindu
pantheon. The seal was discovered in the first part of the 20th century
and the "classical school" theorised that the Aryans borrowed this god
from the people whom they vanquished. The victors borrowing gods from
the vanquished - now how probable is that compared to what Occam Razor's
principle would state as that the two people were the same.
One of the seals recently excavated from the sites depicts one of the
most important symbol in hindu theology- the swastika (Sanskrit for
"well being") , unfortunately also borrowed by the Nazi. Again, how
can a religious symbol from the vanquished people become not only
one of the most important religious symbols for the victors but also
a representation of their identity as "Aryan".
There are numerous depictions of animals on the seals, most commonly,
the bull/cow and I don't think I have to elaborate on religious
significance of the bull/cow in the Vedic/Hindu theology. The others
like tiger, elephants etc. also have religious significance.
Some of these seals and inscriptions can be seen at (please go to the
bottom of the page) http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/html/Corpusmain.htm
A glimpse from some of the ongoing interpretations :-
Some of the motifs of Early Harappan painted pottery depict
what has been interpreted as a fig tree, considered holy as early
as in the Rgveda (1,24,7), [mention is made of an Indian fig whose
roots are kept up in the middle of the sky by the god Varuna]
One of the frequent signs depicts an item that looks like a jar. The
two opposing interpretations of the seal are that it is a jar or it is
the face of a cow seen from the front. Both the jar and the cow have
religious significance in Vedic religion. BTW. the jar-born elite is
a very famous old Indian symbolism starting all the way from the
RgVeda, where Agastiya and Vasishta are supposed to have been
born out of jars.
Seal # 430 depicts 6/7 ladies with long hair and has been dated
to around 2400-2300BC. This seal has been interpreted by Asko
Porpola, a proponent of the "conservative chronology", to
correspond to the Pleidas. The Satapatha-Brahmana(SB) (2,1,2,4)
states that the six Pleiades were separated from their husbands
on account of their infidelity; other texts specify that only one
of the seven wives, Arundhati, remained faithful and was allowed
to stay with her husband: she is the small star Alcor in the Great
Bear, pointed out as a paradigm of marital virtue to the bride in
the Vedic marriage ceremonies. Interestingly, the astronomical
dating of the SB dates it(SB) to 2400-2300BC, implying that
the seal could very be a depiction of a popular idea of the time.
For an on-going interpretations of some of the more recent seals etc.
please refer to
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/peacock.html
BTW, the Indus Valley (also called the Saraswati-Sindhu valley)
inscriptions have been discovered as far as Tigris-Euphrates rivers
(Ur, Tello, Susa, Nippur, Kish, Tell-Asmar (Eshnunna), Luristan, Tell
as-Suleimani) and Oman (Ra's al-Hadd, Ra's al-Junaya); you can see
sites at the web site :
http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/indo.htm
Best Regards,
Dinesh
Dinesh Maheshwari
Advanced Design Methods
Cypress Semiconductor
San Jose, CA, USA
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