भरणीस्

यन्त्रोपारोपितकोशांशः

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects

पृष्ठभागोऽयं यन्त्रेण केनचित् काले काले मार्जयित्वा यथास्रोतः परिवर्तयिष्यते। तेन मा भूदत्र शोधनसम्भ्रमः। सज्जनैः मूलमेव शोध्यताम्।

28. Apabharaṇīs, Bharaṇīs, or Bharaṇyas, ‘the bearers,’ is the name of the small triangle in the northern part of the Ram known as Musca or 35, 39, and 41 Arietis.

The Nakṣatras and the Months.--In the Brāhmaṇas the Nakṣatra names are regularly used to denote dates. This is done in two ways. The name, if not already a feminine, may be turned into a feminine and compounded with pūrṇa-māsa, ‘the full moon,’ as in Tiṣyā-pūrṇamāsa, ‘the full moon in the Nakṣatra Tiṣya.’ Much more often, however, it is turned into a derivative adjective, used with paurṇamāsī, ‘the full moon (night),’ or with amāvāsyā, ‘the new moon (night),’ as in Phālgunī paurṇamāsī, ‘the full-moon night in the Nakṣatra Phalgunī’; or, as is usual in the Sūtras, the Nakṣatra adjective alone is used to denote the full-moon night. The month itself is called by a name derived from that of a Nakṣatra, but only Phālguna, Caitra, Vaiśākha, Taiṣya, Māgha occur in the Brāhmaṇas, the complete list later being Phālguna, Caitra, Vaiśākha, Jyaiṣṭha, Āṣāḍha, Śrāvaṇa, Prauṣṭhapada, Āśvayuja, Kārttika, Mārgaśīrṣa, Taiṣya, Māgha. Strictly speaking, these should be lunar months, but the use of a lunar year was clearly very restricted: we have seen that as early as the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa there was a tendency to equate lunar months with the twelve months of thirty days which made up the solar year (see Māsa).

The Nakṣatras and Chronology.--(1) An endeavour has been made to ascertain from the names of the months the period at which the systematic employment of those names was introduced. Sir William Jones refers to this possibility, and Bentley, by the gratuitous assumption that Śrāvaṇa always marked the summer solstice, concluded that the names of the months did not date before B.C. 1181. Weber considered that there was a possibility of fixing a date by this means, but Whitney has convincingly shown that it is an impossible feat, and Thibaut concurs in this view. Twelve became fixed as the number of the months because of the desire, evident in the Brāhmaṇas, somehow or other to harmonize lunar with solar time; but the selection of twelve Nakṣatras out of twenty-seven as connected with the night of full moon can have no chronological significance, because full moon at no period occurred in those twelve only, but has at all periods occurred in every one of the twenty-seven at regularly recurrent intervals.

(2) All the lists of the Nakṣatras begin with Kṛttīkās. It is only fair to suppose that there was some special reason for this fact. Now the later list of the Nakṣatras begins with Aśvinī, and it was unquestionably rearranged because at the time of its adoption the vernal equinox coincided with the star Piscium on the border of Revatī and Aśvinī, say in the course of the sixth century A.D. Weber has therefore accepted the view that the Kṛttikās were chosen for a similar reason, and the date at which that Nakṣatra coincided with the vernal equinox has been estimated at some period in the third millennium B.C. A very grave objection to this view is its assumption that the sun, and not the moon, was then regarded as connected with the Nakṣatras; and both Thibaut and Oldenberg have pronounced decidedly against the idea of connecting the equinox with the Kṛttikās. Jacobi has contended that in the Rigveda the commencement of the rains and the summer solstice mark the beginning of the new year and the end of the old, and that further the new year began with the summer solstice in Phalgunī. He has also referred to the distinction of the two sets of Deva and Yama Nakṣatras in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa as supporting his view of the connexion of the sun and the Nakṣatras. But this view is far from satisfactory: the Rigveda passages cannot yield the sense required except by translating the word dvādaśa as ‘the twelfth (month)’ instead of ‘consisting of twelve parts,’ that is, ‘year,’ the accepted interpretation; and the division of the Nakṣatras is not at all satisfactorily explained by a supposed connexion with the sun. It may further be mentioned that even if the Nakṣatra of Kṛttikās be deemed to have been chosen because of its coincidence with the vernal equinox, both Whitney and Thibaut are prepared to regard it as no more than a careless variant of the date given by the Jyotiṣa, which puts the winter solstice in Māgha.

(3) The winter solstice in Māgha is assured by a Brāhmaṇa text, for the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa expressly places it in the new moon of Māgha (māghasyāmāvāsyāyām). It is not very important whether we take this with the commentators as the new moon in the middle of a month commencing with the day after full moon in Taiṣa, or, which is much more likely, as the new moon beginning the month and preceding full moon in Māgha. The datum gives a certain possibility of fixing an epoch in the following way. If the end of Revatī marked the vernal equinox at one period, then the precession of the equinoxes would enable us to calculate at what point of time the vernal equinox was in a position corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha, when the solstitial colure cut the ecliptic at the beginning of Śraviṣṭhās. This would be, on the strict theory, in the third quarter of Bharaṇī, 6(3/4) asterisms removed from Śraviṣṭhās, and the difference between that and the beginning of Aśvinī= 1(3/4) asterisms = 23(1/3)º (27 asterisms being = 360º). Taking the starting-point at 499 A.D., the assured period of Varāha Mihira, Jones arrived at the date B. C. 1181 for the vernal equinox corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha--that is, on the basis of 1º = 72 years as the precession. Pratt arrived at precisely the same date, taking the same rate of precession and adopting as his basis the ascertained position in the Siddhāntas of the junction star of Maghā, Leonis or Regulus. Davis and Colebrooke arrived at a different date, B.C. 1391, by taking as the basis of their calculation the junction star of Citrā, which happens to be of uncertain position, varying as much as 3º in the different textbooks. But though the twelfth century has received a certain currency as the epoch of the observation in the Jyotiṣa, it is of very doubtful value. As Whitney points out, it is impossible to say that the earlier asterisms coincided in position with the later asterisms of 13(1/3)º extent each. They were not chosen as equal divisions, but as groups of stars which stood in conjunction with the moon; and the result of subsequently making them strictly equal divisions was to throw the principal stars of the later groups altogether out of their asterisms. Nor can we say that the star Piscium early formed the eastern boundary of Revatī; it may possibly not even have been in that asterism at all, for it is far remote from the Chinese and Arabic asterisms corresponding to Revatī. Added to all this, and to the uncertainty of the starting-point-582 A.D., 560 A.D., or 491 A.D. being variants --is the fact that the place of the equinox is not a matter accurately determinable by mere observation, and that the Hindu astronomers of the Vedic period cannot be deemed to have been very accurate observers, since they made no precise determination of the number of days of the year, which even in the Jyotiṣa they do not determine more precisely than as 366 days, and even the Sūrya Siddhānta does not know the precession of the equinoxes. It is therefore only fair to allow a thousand years for possible errors, and the only probable conclusion to be drawn from the datum of the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa is that it was recording an observation which must have been made some centuries B.C., in itself a result quite in harmony with the probable date of the Brāhmaṇa literature, say B.C. 800-600.

(4) Another chronological argument has been derived from the fact that there is a considerable amount of evidence for Phālguna having been regarded as the beginning of the year, since the full moon in Phalgunī is often described as the ‘mouth (mukham) of the year.’ Jacobi considers that this was due to the fact that the year was reckoned from the winter solstice, which would coincide with the month of Phālguna about B.C. 4000. Oldenberg and Thibaut, on the other hand, maintain that the choice of Phālguna as the ‘mouth’ of the year was due to its being the first month of spring. This view is favoured by the fact that there is distinct evidence of the correspondence of Phālguna and the beginning of spring: as we have seen above in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, the new moon in Māgha is placed at the winter solstice, which puts the full moon of Phalgunī at a month and a half after the winter solstice, or in the first week of February, a date not in itself improbable for about B.C. 800, and corresponding with the February 7 of the veris initium in the Roman Calendar. This fact accords with the only natural division of the year into three periods of four months, as the rainy season lasts from June 7-10 to October 7-10, and it is certain that the second set of four months dates from the beginning of the rains (see Cāturmāsya). Tilak, on the other hand, holds that the winter solstice coincided with Māghī full moon at the time of the Taittirīya Saṃhitā (B.C. 2350), and had coincided with Phālgunī and Caitrī in early periods--viz., B.C. 4000-2500, and B.C. 60004000.

(5) The passages of the Taittirīya Saṃhitā and the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa, which treat the full moon in Phālguna as the beginning of the year, give as an alternative the full moon in Caitra. Probably the latter month was chosen so as to secure that the initial day should fall well within the season of spring, and was not, as Jacobi believes, a relic of a period when the winter solstice corresponded with Caitra. Another alternative is the Ekāṣṭakā, interpreted by the commentators as the eighth day after the full moon in Maghās, a time which might, as being the last quarter of the waning half of the old year, well be considered as representing the end of the year. A fourth alternative is the fourth day before full moon; the full moon meant must be that of Caitra, as Ālekhana quoted by Āpastamba held, not of Māgha, as Āśmarathya, Laugākṣi and the Mīmāṃsists believed, and as Tilak believes.

(6) Others, again, according to the Gṛhya ritual, began the year with the month Mārgaśīrṣa, as is shown by its other name Āgrahāyaṇa (‘belonging to the commencement of the year’). Jacobi and Tilak think that this one denoted the autumn equinox in Mṛgaśiras, corresponding to the winter solstice in Phalgunī. But, as Thibaut shows clearly, it was selected as the beginning of a year that was taken to commence with autumn, just as some took the spring to commence with Caitra instead of Phālguna.

(7) Jacobi has also argued, with the support of Bühler, from the terms given for the beginning of Vedic study in the Gṛhya Sūtras, on the principle that study commenced with the rains (as in the Buddhist vassā) which mark the summer solstice. He concludes that if Bhādrapada appears as the date of commencing study in some texts, it was fixed thus because at one time Proṣṭhapadās (the early name of Bhadrapadās) coincided with the summer solstice, this having been the case when the winter solstice was in Phālguna. But Whitney has pointed out that this argument is utterly illegitimate; we cannot say that there was any necessary connexion between the rains and learning--a month like Śrāvaṇa might be preferred because of its connexion with the word Śravaṇa, ‘ear’--and in view of the precession of the equinoxes, we must assume that Bhādrapada was kept because of its traditional coincidence with the beginning of the rains after it had ceased actually so to coincide.

The Origin of the Nakṣatras.--As we have seen, there is no evidence showing the process by which the Nakṣatras may have originated in India. They are mentioned only as stars in the earlier parts of the Rigveda, then the names of three of them are found in the latest parts of that Saṃhitā, and finally in the later Atharvaveda and in the Yajurveda Saṃhitās the full list appears. It may also be noted that the Vedic Indians show (see Graha) a remarkably small knowledge of the other astronomical phenomena; the discovery of a series of 27 lunar mansions by them would therefore be rather surprising. On the other hand, the nature of such an operation is not very complicated; it consists merely in selecting a star or a star group with which the moon is in conjunction. It is thus impossible a priori to deny that the Vedic Indians could have invented for themselves a lunar Zodiac.

But the question is complicated by the fact that there exist two similar sets of 28 stars or star groups in Arabia and in China, the Manāzil and the Sieou. The use of the Manāzil in Arabia is consistent and effective; the calendar is regulated by them, and the position of the asterisms corresponds best with the positions required for a lunar Zodiac. The Indians might therefore have borrowed the system from Arabia, but that is a mere possibility, because the evidence for the existence of the Manāzil is long posterior to that for the existence of the Nakṣatras, while again the Mazzaroth or Mazzaloth of the Old Testament may really be the lunar mansions. That the Arabian system is borrowed from India, as Burgess held, is, on the other hand, not at all probable.

Biot, the eminent Chinese scholar, in a series of papers published by him between 1839 and 1861, attempted to prove the derivation of the Nakṣatra from the Chinese Sieou. The latter he did not regard as being in origin lunar mansions at all. He thought that they were equatorial stars used, as in modern astronomy, as a standard to which planets or other stars observed in the neighbourhood can be eferred; they were, as regards twenty-four of them, selecte about B.C. 2357 on account of their proximity to the equator, and of their having the same right ascension as certain circumpolar stars which had attracted the attention of Chinese observers. Four more were added in B.C. 1100 in order to mark the equinoxes and solstices of the period. He held that the list of stars commenced with Mao (= Kṛttikās), which was at the vernal equinox in B.C. 2357. Weber, in an elaborate essay of 1860, disputed this theory, and endeavoured to show that the Chinese literary evidence for the Sieou was late, dating not even from before the third century B.C. The last point does not appear to be correct, but his objections against the basis of Biot's theory were reinforced by Whitney, who insisted that Biot's supposition of the Sieou's not having been ultimately derived from a system of lunar mansions, was untenable. This is admitted by the latest defender of the hypothesis of borrowing from China, Léopold de Saussure, , but his arguments in favour of a Chinese origin for the Indian lunar mansions have been refuted by Oldenberg, who has also pointed out that the series does not begin with Mao (= Kṛttikās).

There remains only the possibility that a common source for all the three sets--Nakṣatra, Manāzil, and Sieou--may be found in Babylonia. Hommel has endeavoured to show that recent research has established in Babylonia the existence of a lunar zodiac of twenty-four members headed by the Pleiades (= Kṛttikās); but Thibaut's researches are not favourable to this claim. On the other hand, Weber, Whitney, Zimmer, and Oldenberg all incline to the view that in Babylonia is to be found the origin of the system, and this must for the present be regarded as the most probable view, for there are other traces of Babylonian influence in Vedic literature, such as the legend of the flood, perhaps the Ādityas, and possibly the word Manā.