by the President (Sir William Jones)
Asiatic Researches, Volume 2
1788
Page 306-314
Our ingenious associate Mr. Samuel Davis (whom I name with respect and applause, and who will soon, I trust, convince M. Bailly that it is very possible for an European to translate and explain the Surya Siddhanta) ...
The Surya Siddhanta (lit. 'Sun Treatise') is a Sanskrit treatise in Indian astronomy in fourteen chapters. The Surya Siddhanta describes rules to calculate the motions of various planets and the moon relative to various constellations, and calculates the orbits of various astronomical bodies. The text is known from a 15th-century CE palm-leaf manuscript, and several newer manuscripts....
The second verse of the first chapter of the Surya Siddhanta attributes the words to an emissary of the solar deity of Hindu mythology, Surya, as recounted to an asura (a mythical being) called Maya at the end of Satya Yuga, the first golden age of Hindu mythology, around two million years ago.
The text asserts, according to Markanday and Srivatsava, that the earth is of a spherical shape. It treats Sun as stationary globe around which earth and other planets orbit, It calculates the earth's diameter to be 8,000 miles (modern: 7,928 miles), the diameter of the moon as 2,400 miles (actual ~2,160) and the distance between the moon and the earth to be 258,000 miles (now known to vary: 221,500–252,700 miles (356,500–406,700 kilometres). The text is known for some of earliest known discussion of sexagesimal fractions and trigonometric functions...
One of the evidence for the Surya Siddhanta being a living text is the work of medieval Indian scholar Utpala, who cites and then quotes ten verses from a version of Surya Siddhanta, but these ten verses are not found in any surviving manuscripts of the text....
The contents of the Surya Siddhanta is written in classical Indian poetry tradition, where complex ideas are expressed lyrically with a rhyming meter in the form of a terse shloka. This method of expressing and sharing knowledge made it easier to remember, recall, transmit and preserve knowledge. However, this method also meant secondary rules of interpretation, because numbers don't have rhyming synonyms. The creative approach adopted in the Surya Siddhanta was to use symbolic language with double meanings. For example, instead of one, the text uses a word that means moon because there is one moon. To the skilled reader, the word moon means the number one. The entire table of trigonometric functions, sine tables, steps to calculate complex orbits, predict eclipses and keep time are thus provided by the text in a poetic form. This cryptic approach offers greater flexibility for poetic construction...
The Surya Siddhanta thus consists of cryptic rules in Sanskrit verse. It is a compendium of astronomy that is easier to remember, transmit and use as reference or aid for the experienced, but does not aim to offer commentary, explanation or proof.
-- Surya Siddhanta, by Wikipedia
favoured me lately with a copy, taken by his Pandit, of the original passage, mentioned in his paper on the Astronomical Computations of the Hindus concerning the places of the colures in the time of Varaha, compared with their position in the age of a certain Muni, or ancient Indian philosopher; and the passage appears to afford evidence of two actual observations, which will ascertain the chronology of the Hindus, if not by rigorous demonstration, at least by a near approach to it.
The copy of the Varahisanhita, from which the three pages received by me had been transcribed, is unhappily so incorrect (if the transcript itself was not hastily made) that every line of it must be disfigured by some gross error; and my Pandit, who examined the passage carefully at his own house, gave it up as inexplicable; so that, if I had not studied the system of Sanscrit prosody, I should have laid it aside in despair: but though it was written as prose, without any sort of distinction or punctuation, yet, when I read it aloud, my ear caught, in some sentences, the cadence of verse, and of a particular metre, called Arya, which is regulated (not by the number of syllables, like other Indian measures, but) by the proportion of times or syllabic moments, in the four divisions of which every stanza consists. By numbering the moments and fixing their proportion, I was enabled to restore the text of Varaha, with the perfect assent of the learned Brahmen who attends me; and, with his assistance, I also corrected the comment, written by Bhattotpala,...
Utpala or Bhaṭṭotpala (Bhaṭṭa-utpala) is the name of a 10th-century Indian commentator of Vārāha Mihira's Brihat Samhitā. Brihat Samhitā is a Samhitā text of Jyotiṣa (Indian astrology and astronomy). Samhitā is one of three branches of Jyotiṣa (Samhitā has many other meanings outside Jyotiṣa).
He is known for quoting six verses from Surya Siddhanta which are not found in its extant version. These six verses can be found in the 'Introduction' by S. Jain to the translation of Surya Siddhānta made by E. Burgess.
-- Utpala (astronomer), by Wikipedia
who, it seems, was a son of the author, together with three curious passages, which are cited in it. Another Pandit afterwards brought me a copy of the whole original work, which confirmed my conjectural emendations, except in two immaterial syllables, and except that the first of the six couplets in the text is quoted in the commentary from a different work, entitled Panchasiddhanttica, five of them were composed by Varaha himself; and the third chapter of his treatise begins with them.
Varāhamihira (c. 505 – c. 587), also called Varāha or Mihira, was an ancient Indian astrologer, astronomer, and polymath who lived in Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh, India)....
Varāhamihira's main work is the book Pañcasiddhāntikā (“Treatise on the Five Astronomical Canons”) dated c. 575 CE, which gives us information about older Indian texts which are now lost. The work is a treatise on mathematical astronomy and it summarises five earlier astronomical treatises by five authors, namely the Surya Siddhanta, Romaka Siddhanta, Paulisa Siddhanta, Vasishtha Siddhanta and Paitamaha Siddhanta. It is a compendium of Vedanga Jyotisha as well as Hellenistic astronomy (with Greek, Egyptian and Roman elements). Varahamihira was the first one to mention that the Ayanāṃśa, or the shifting of the equinox, is 50.32 arc seconds per year...
Another important contribution of Varahamihira is the encyclopedic Brihat-Samhita. Although the book is mostly about divination, it also includes a wide range of subjects other than divination. It covers wide-ranging subjects of human interest, including astronomy, planetary movements, eclipses, rainfall, clouds, architecture, growth of crops, manufacture of perfume, matrimony and domestic relations. The volume expounds on gemstone evaluation criterion found in the Garuda Purana, and elaborates on the sacred Nine Pearls from the same text. It contains 106 chapters and is known as the "great compilation".
-- Varāhamihira, by Wikipedia
Before I produce the original verses, it may be useful to give you an idea of the Arya measure,...
Āryā meter is a meter used in Sanskrit, Prakrit and Marathi verses. A verse in āryā metre is in four metrical lines called pādas. Unlike the majority of meters employed in classical Sanskrit, the āryā meter is based on the number of mātrās (morae) per pāda [In phonology, a mora is a basic timing unit of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ba consists of one mora, while a long syllable such as baa consists of two; extra-long syllables with three moras are relatively rare. Such metrics is also referred to as syllable weight.]. A short syllable counts for one mātrā, and a long syllable (that is, one containing a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by two consonants) counts for two mātrās. It is believed that arya meter was taken from the gatha meter of Prakrit [Gāthā is a Sanskrit term for ‘song’ or ‘verse’, especially referring to any poetic metre which is used in legends, and is not part of the Vedas but peculiar to either Epic Sanskrit or to Prakrit...The stanzas of the Prakrit dialects of Ardhamagadhi, Sauraseni and Pāli are known as gathas as opposed to shlokas and sutras of Sanskrit and dohas of Apabhramsha. Most of the Jain and Buddhist texts written in Prakrit are composed of gathas (or verses/stanzas). Thus, gatha can mean any Prakrit and Pali verses in general, or specifically the arya meter of Sanskrit; versified portions of Pāli Canon (Tipitaka) of Theravāda Buddhism are also specifically called gathas.]. Arya metre is common in Jain Prakrit texts and hence considered as favourite metre of early authors of Jainism. The earlier form of the arya metre is called old gati, which occurs in a some very early Prakrit and Pàli texts.
The basic āryā verse has 12, 18, 12 and 15 mātrās in the first, second, third, and fourth pādas respectively. An example is the following from Kālidāsa's play Abhijñānaśākuntalam (c. 400 CE):āparitoṣād viduṣāṃ
na sādhu manye prayogavijñānaṃ
balavadapi śikṣitānām
ātmany apratyayaṃ cetaḥ
– u u | – – | u u –
u – u | – – | u – u | – – | –
u u u u | u – u | – –
– – | – – | u | – – | –
"I do not consider skill in the representation of plays to be good (perfect) until (it causes) the satisfaction of the learned (audience); the mind of even those who are very well instructed has no confidence in itself."
The gīti meter has 12, 18, 12 and 18 mātrās in its four pādas respectively.... The upagīti meter has 12, 15, 12 and 15 mātrās in its four pādas respectively...The udgīti meter has 12, 15, 12 and 18 mātrās in its four pādas respectively...The āryāgīti meter has 12, 20, 12 and 20 mātrās in its four pādas respectively.
-- Arya metre, by Wikipedia
which will appear more distinctly in Latin than in any modern language of Europe:
Tigridas, apros, thoas, tyrannos, pessima monstra, venemur:
Dic hinnulus, dic lepus male quid egerint graminivori.
The couplet might be so arranged as to begin and end with the cadence of an hexameter and pentameter, six moments being interposed in the middle of the long, and seven in that of the short, hemistich:
Thoas, apros, tigridas nos venemur, pejoresque tyrannos:
Dic tibi cerva, lepus tibi dic male quid egerit herbivorus.
Since the Arya measure, however, may be almost infinitely varied, the couplet would have a form completely Roman, if the proportion of syllabic instants, in the long and short verses, were twenty-four to twenty, instead of thirty to twenty-seven:
Venor apros tigridasque, et, pessima monstra, tyrannos:
Cerva mali quid agunt herbivorusque lepus?
I now exhibit the five stanzas of Varaha in European characters, with an etching of the two first, which are the most important, in the original Devanagari:
Asleshardhaddacshinamuttaramayanan raverdhanishthadyan.
Nunan cadachidasidyenoctan purva sastreshu,
Sampratamayanan savituh carcatacadyan mrigaditaschanyat:
Uctabhave vicritih pratyacshapericshanair vyactih.
Durasthachihnavedyadudaye stamaye piva sahasransoh,
Chhayapravesanirgamachihnairva mandale mahati.
Aprapya macaramarco vinivritto hanti saparan yamyan,
Carcatacamasanprapto vinivrittaschottaran saindrin.
Uttaramayanamatitya vyavrittah cshemasasya vriddhicarah,
Pracritisthaschapyevan vicritigatir bhayacridushnansuh.
Of the five couplets thus exhibited, the following translation is most scrupulously literal:
“Certainly the southern solstice was once in the middle of Aslesha; the northern in the first degree of Dhanishtha, by what is recorded in former Sastras. At present, one solstice is in the first degree of Carcata, and the other in the first of Macara* [We quote the following lines from the Third Volume of Asiatic Researches, Page 208 of the Original Work — "Note on Vol. II page 391.— By the President. —A desire of translating the couplets of Varahamihira with minute exactness, and of avoiding the Sanscrit word ayaha in an English phrase, has occasioned a little inaccuracy, or at least ambiguity, in the version of two very important lines, which may easily be corrected by twice reading advat in the fifth case for adyam in the first so that they may thus be translated word for word. “Certainly the southern road of the sun was, or began, once from the middle of Aslesha; the northern, from the first of Dhanishtha. At present the southern road of the sun begins from the first of Carcata, and the other from the first of Mriga, or Macar." -- Publisher, Popular Edition.]. That which is recorded not appearing, a change must have happened; and the proof arises from ocular demonstrations; that is, by observing the remote object and its marks at the rising or setting of the sun, or by the marks in a large graduated circle, of the shadow’s ingress and egress. The sun, by turning back without having reached Macara, destroys the south and the west; by turning back without having reached Carcata, the north and east. By returning when he has just passed the winter solstitial point, he makes wealth secure and grain abundant, since he moves thus according to nature; but the sun, by moving unnaturally, excites terror.”
Now the astronomers agree, that the 1st of January 1790, was in the year 4891 of the Caliyuga, or their fourth period; at the beginning of which, they say, the equinoctial points were in the first degrees of Mesha and Tula; but they are also of opinion, that the vernal equinox oscillates from the third of Mina to the twenty-seventh of Mesha, and back again in 7200 years, which they divide into four padas, and consequently that it moves in the two intermediate padas from the first to the twenty-seventh of Mesha and back again in 3600 years; the colure cutting their ecliptic in the first of Mesha, which coincides with the first of Aswini, at the beginning of every such oscillatory period. Varaha, surnamed Mihira, or the Sun, from his knowledge of astronomy, and usually distinguished by the title of Acharya, or teacher of the Veda, lived, confessedly, when the Caliyugii was far advanced; and, since by actual observation he found the solstitial points in the first degrees of Carcata and Macara, the equinoctial points were at the same time in the first of Mesha and Tula: he lived, therefore, in the year 3600 of the fourth Indian period, or 1291 years before the 1st of January that is, about the year 499 of our era. This date corresponds with the ayanansa, or precession, calculated by the rule of the Surya Siddhanta; for 19° 21' 54" would be the precession of the equinox in 1291 years, according to the Hindu computation of 54" annually, which gives us the origin of the Indian Zodiac nearly; but, by Newton's demonstrations, which agree as well with the phenomena as the varying density of our earth will admit, the equinox recedes about 50" every year, and has receded 17° 55' 50" since the time of Varaha; which gives us more nearly in our own sphere the first degree of Mesha in that of the Hindus. By the observation recorded in older Sastras, the equinox had gone back 23° 20'; or about 1680 years had intervened between the age of the Muni and that of the modern astronomer: the former observation, therefore, must have been made about 2971 years before the 1st of January 1790; that is, 1181 before Christ.
We come now to the commentary, which contains information of the greatest importance. By former Sastras are meant, says Battotpala [Utpala], the books of Parasara and of other Munis;...
Parashara was a maharshi and the author of many ancient Indian texts. He is accredited as the author of the first Purana, the Vishnu Purana, before his son Vyasa wrote it in its present form. He was the grandson of Vasishtha, the son of Śakti Maharṣi....
When Parashara's father, Sakti Maharishi died after being devoured by the king Kalmashapada [In Hindu mythology, Kalmashapada, also known as Saudasa, Mitrasaha, Amitrasaha and Kalmashanghri (Kalmasanghri), was a king of the Ikshvaku dynasty (the Solar dynasty), who was cursed to be a rakshasa (demon) by the sage Vashishtha. He is described as an ancestor of Rama, the avatar of the god Vishnu and the hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Many texts narrate how Kalmashapada was cursed to die if he had intercourse with his queen, so he obtained a son from Vashishtha by niyoga, an ancient tradition whereby a husband can nominate another man to impregnate his wife.] along with Vashistha's other sons, Vashistha resorted to ending his life by suicide. Hence he jumped from Mount Meru but landed on soft cotton, he entered a forest fire only to remain unharmed, then he jumped into the ocean who saved him by casting him ashore. Then he jumped in the overflowing river Vipasa, which also left him ashore. Then he jumped into the river Haimavat, which fled in several directions from his fear and was named Satadru. Then when he returned to his asylum, he saw his daughter-in-law pregnant. When a son was born he acted as his father and hence forgot completely about destroying his life. Hence, the child was named Parashara which meant enlivener of the dead.
According to the Vedas, Brahma created Vasishtha, who, with his wife Arundhati, had a son named Śakti Mahariṣhi who sired Parashara. With Satyavati, Parashara is father of Vyasa. Vyāsa sired Dhritarashtra and Pandu through his deceased step brother's wives, Ambika and Ambalika and Vidura through a hand-maiden of Ambika and Ambalika. Vyāsa also sired Shuka through his wife, Jābāli's daughter Pinjalā. Thus Parashara was the biological great-grandfather of both the warring parties of the Mahābhārata, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Parashara is used as a gotra [lineage] for the ancestors and their offsprings thereon.
-- Parashara, by Wikipedia
and he then cites from the Parasari Sanhita the following passage, which is in modulated prose, and in a style much resembling that of the Vedas:
Sravishtadyat paushnardhantan charah sisiro; vasantah
paushnardhat rohinyantan; saumyadyadas ieshardhantan grishmah;
praviidasleshardhat hastantan; chitradyat jyeshthardhantan
sarat; hemanto jyeshthardhat vaishn avantan.
"The season of Sisira is from the first of Dhanishtha to the middle of Revati; that of Vasanta from the middle of Revati to the end of Rohini; that of Grishma from the beginning of Mrigasiras to the middle of Aslesha; that of Versha from the middle of Aslesha to the end of Hasta; that of Sanad from the first of Chitra to the middle of Jyeshtha; that of Hemanta from the middle of Jyeshtha to the end of Sravana."
This account of the six Indian seasons, each of which is co-extensive with two signs, or four lunar stations and a half, places the solstitial points, as Varaha has asserted, in the first degree of Dhanishtha, and the middle, or 6°40', of Aslesha, while the equinoctial points were in the tenth degree of Bharani and 3°20' of Visacha; but in the time of Varaha, the solstitial colure passed through the 10th degree of Punarvasu and 3°20' of Uttarashara, while the equinoctial colure cut the Hindu ecliptic in the first of Aswini and 6°40' of Chitra, or the Yoga and only star of that mansion, which, by the way, is indubitably the Spike of the Virgin, from the known longitude of which all other points in the Indian Zodiac may be computed. It cannot escape notice, that Parasara does not use in this passage the phrase at present, which occurs in the text of Varaha; so that the places of the colures might have been ascertained before his time, and a considerable change might have happened in their true position without any change in the phrases by which the seasons were distinguished; as our popular language in astronomy remains unaltered, though the Zodiacal asterisms are now removed a whole sign from the places where they have left their names. It is manifest, nevertheless, that Parasara must have written within twelve centuries before the beginning of our era, and that single fact, as we shall presently show, leads to very momentous consequences in regard to the system of Indian history and literature.
Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 408 – c. 355 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer, mathematician, scholar, and student of Archytas and Plato. All of his works are lost, though some fragments are preserved in Hipparchus' commentary on Aratus's poem on astronomy...
The years of Eudoxus' birth and death are not fully known but the range may have been c. 408 – c. 355 BC, or c. 390 – c. 337 BC...
-- Eudoxus of Cnidus, by Wikipedia
On the comparison which might easily be made between the colures of Parasar and those ascribed by Eudoxus to Chiron, the supposed assistant and instructor of the Argonauts, I shall say very little; because the whole Argonautic story, (which neither was, according to Herodotus, nor, indeed, could have been originally Grecian) appears, even when stripped of its poetical and fabulous ornaments, extremely disputable; and whether it was founded on a league of the Helladian princes and states for the purpose of checking, on a favourable opportunity, the overgrown power of Egypt, or with a view to secure the commerce of the Euxine and appropriate the wealth of Colchis; or, as I am disposed to believe, on an emigration from Africa find Asia of that adventurous race, who had first been established in Chaldea; whatever, in short, gave rise to the fable, which the old poets have so richly embellished, and the old historians have so inconsiderately adopted, it seems to me very clear, even on the principles of Newton, and on the same authorities to which he refers, that the voyage of the Argonauts must have preceded the year in which his calculations led him to place it.[!!!]
Jason... was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece featured in Greek literature....
Pelias was the progeny of a union between their shared mother, Tyro ("high born Tyro"), the daughter of Salmoneus, and the sea god Poseidon.....
Aeson's wife Alcimede I had a newborn son named Jason... Fearing that Pelias would eventually notice and kill her son, Alcimede sent him away to be reared by the centaur Chiron....
Jason arrived in Iolcus, having lost one of his sandals in the river Anauros ("wintry Anauros") while helping an old woman (actually the goddess Hera in disguise) to cross.... Pelias replied, "To take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the Golden Fleece." Jason readily accepted this condition....
The isle of Lemnos ... was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their husbands. The women had neglected their worship of Aphrodite, and as a punishment the goddess made the women so foul in stench that their husbands could not bear to be near them.
The men then took concubines from the Thracian mainland opposite, and the spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed all the male inhabitants while they slept. The king, Thoas, was saved by Hypsipyle, his daughter, who put him out to sea sealed in a chest from which he was later rescued....
After Lemnos the Argonauts landed among the Doliones, whose king Cyzicus treated them graciously. He told them about the land beyond Bear Mountain, but forgot to mention what lived there. What lived in the land beyond Bear Mountain were the Gegeines, which are a tribe of Earthborn giants with six arms and wore leather loincloths....
Soon Jason reached the court of Phineus of Salmydessus in Thrace. Zeus had sent the harpies to steal the food put out for Phineus each day. Jason took pity on the emaciated king and killed the Harpies when they returned...
The only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them....
Jason arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea coast of Georgia) to claim the fleece as his own. It was owned by King Aeetes of Colchis. The fleece was given to him by Phrixus. Aeetes promised to give it to Jason only if he could perform three certain tasks.... However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea, fall in love with Jason. As a result, Medea aided Jason in his tasks.
First, Jason had to plow a field with fire-breathing oxen, the Khalkotauroi, that he had to yoke himself... Then, Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field. The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors (spartoi)....
His last task was to overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece. Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea, distilled from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to seize the Golden Fleece.
He then sailed away with Medea. Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into the sea...
On the way back to Iolcus, Medea prophesied to Euphemus, the Argo's helmsman, that one day he would rule Cyrene. This came true through Battus, a descendant of Euphemus. Zeus, as punishment for the slaughter of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the Argo and blew it off course. The Argo then spoke and said that they should seek purification with Circe, a nymph living on the island of Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their journey home.
Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens—the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs.
The Argo then came to the island of Crete, guarded by the bronze man, Talos. As the ship approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at bay. Talos had one blood vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal casting by the lost wax method). Medea cast a spell on Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to death....
In Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry Creusa (sometimes referred to as Glauce), a daughter of the King of Corinth... Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on....
Then Medea killed the two boys that she bore to Jason... She fled to Athens in a chariot of dragons sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios....
As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He was asleep under the stern of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly.
-- Jason [And the Argonauts and the Quest for the Golden Fleece, by Wikipedia
Nor shall I meddle with Sir Isaac Newton's astronomical argument for fixing the time of the Argonautic expedition (and of course the time of the fall of Troy, which was only one generation later), from the position of the solstitial and equinoctial points on the sphere which Chiron made for the use of the Argonauts. I am too little acquainted with the science of astronomy to speak pertinently on the subject. I shall only observe that Mr. Whiston does not agree with Dr. Shuckford concerning the grounds of the argument.
"The fallacy of this argument (says Dr. Shuckford) cannot but appear very evident to any one that attends to it: for suppose we allow that Chiron did really place the solstices, as Sir Isaac Newton represents (though I should think it most probable that he did not so place them), yet it must be undeniably plain, that nothing can be certainly established from Chiron's position of them, unless it appears, that Chiron knew how to give them their true place."If indeed it could be known what was the true place of the solstitial points in Chiron's time, it might be known, by taking the distance of that place from the present position of them, how much time has elapsed from Chiron to our days.
But I answer, it cannot be accurately known from any schemes of Chiron what was the true place of the solstices in his days; because, though it is said that he calculated the then position of them, yet he was so inaccurate an astronomer, that his calculation might err four or five degrees from their true position."
Mr. Whiston (p. 991) writes thus:"As to the first argument from the place of the two colures in Eudoxus from Chiron the Argonaut, preserved by Hipparchus of Bithynia, I readily allow its foundation to be true, that Eudoxus's sphere was the same with Chiron's, and that it was first made and showed Hercules and the rest of the Argonauts in order to guide them in their voyage to Colchis. And I take the discovery of this sure astronomical criterion of the true time of that Argonautic expedition (in the defect of eclipses) to be highly worthy the uncommon sagacity of the great Sir Isaac Newton, and in its own nature a chronological character truly inestimable. Nor need we, I think, any stronger argument in order to overturn Sir Isaac Newton's own Chronology, than this position of the colures at the time of that expedition, which its proposer has very kindly furnished us withal."
In p. 996:I now proceed to Eudoxus's accurate description of the position of the two colures as they had been drawn on their celestial globes, ever since the days of Chiron, at the Argonautic expedition, and as Hipparchus has given us that description in the words of Eudoxus."
Again (p. 1002):"Sir Isaac Newton betrays his consciousness how little Eudoxus's description of Chiron's colures agreed to his position of them, by pretending that these observations of the ancients were coarse and inaccurate. This is true if compared with the observations of the moderns which read to minutes; and, since, the application of telescopic sights to astronomic instruments, to ten or fewer seconds. But as to our present purpose this description in Eudoxus is very accurate, it both taking notice of every constellation, through which each of the coloures passed, that were visible in Greece; and hardly admitting of an error of half a degree in angular measures, or thirty-six years in time. Which is sufficiently exact."
How far Mr. Whiston has succeeded in his argumentation about the neck of the swan and the tail of the bear, &c. I must leave to others to consider. I shall only observe, with regard to the last paragraph cited from his discourse, that when Sir Isaac Newton calls the observations of the ancient astronomers coarse, he cannot well be understood to use that word but in a comparative sense, that sense in which Mr. Whiston admits it may be justly used. For otherwise Sir Isaac would not have inferred any thing as certain from those ancient observations. Now, in p. 95, after he has finished his argument from Chiron's sphere, he thus writes:"Hesiod tells us, that sixty days after the winter solstice, the star Arcturus rose at sunset: and thence it follows, that Hesiod flourished about 100 years after the death of Solomon, or in the generation or age next after the Trojan war, as Hesiod himself declares.
From all these circumstances, grounded upon the coarse observations of the ancient astronomers, we may reckon it certain, that the Argonautic expedition was not earlier than the reign of Solomon: and if these astronomical arguments be added to the former arguments taken from the mean length of the reigns of kings according to the course of nature; from them all we may safety conclude, that the Argonautic expedition was after the death of Solomon, and most probably that it was about forty-three years after.
The Trojan war was one generation later than that expedition -- several captains of the Greeks in that war being sons of the Argonauts,"
&c.
By the last words here cited, I am brought round again to the point from whence I set out in this discourse, the fall of Troy...
-- Remarks on the History of the Seven Roman Kings, Occasioned by Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to the Supposed Two Hundred and Forty-Four Years’ Duration of the Regal State of Rome, from The Roman History From the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, Illustrated with Maps, by N. Hooke, Esq., 1823
Battus built Cyrene, says our great philosopher, on the site of Irasa, the city of Antaeus, in the year 633 before Christ; yet he soon afterwards calls Euripylus, with whom the Argonauts had a conference, king of Cyrene; and in both passages he cites Pindar, whom I acknowledge to have been the most learned, as well as the sublimest, of poets. Now, if I understand Pindar (which I will not assert, and I neither possess nor remember at present the Scholia, which I formerly perused) the fourth Pythian Ode begins with a short panegyric on Arcesilas of Cyrene; “Where,” says the bard, “the priestess, who sat near the golden eagles of Jove, prophesied of old, when Apollo was not absent from his mansion, that Battus, the colonizer of fruitful Lybia, having just left the sacred isle (Thera) should build a city excelling in cars, on the splendid breast of earth, and, with the seventeenth generation, should refer to himself the Therean prediction of Medea which that princess of the Colchians, that impetuous daughter of AEetes, breathed from her immortal mouth, and thus delivered to the half-divine mariners of the warrior Jason."
IV. FOR ARKESILAS OF KYRENE, WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.
Pindar has made this victory of Arkesilas, King of the Hellenic colony of Kyrene in Africa, an occasion for telling the story of Jason's expedition with the Argonauts. The ostensible reason for introducing the story is that Kyrene had been colonised from the island of Thera by the descendants of the Argonaut Euphemos, according to the prophecy of Medea related at the beginning of the ode. But Pindar had another reason. He wished to suggest an analogy between the relation of the Iolkian king Pelias to Jason and the relation of Arkesilas to his exiled kinsman Demophilos. Demophilos had been staying at Thebes, where Pindar wrote this ode, to be afterwards recited at Kyrene. It was written B.C. 466, when Pindar was fifty-six years of age, and is unsurpassed in his extant works, or indeed by anything of this kind in all poetry.
* * * * *
This day O Muse must thou tarry in a friend's house, the house of the king of Kyrene of goodly horses, that with Arkesilas at his triumph thou mayst swell the favourable gale of song, the due of Leto's children, and of Pytho. For at Pytho of old she who sitteth beside the eagles of Zeus—nor was Apollo absent then—the priestess, spake this oracle, that Battos should found a power in fruitful Libya, that straightway departing from the holy isle he might lay the foundations of a city of goodly chariots upon a white breast of the swelling earth, and might fulfil in the seventeenth generation the word of Medea spoken at Thera, which of old the passionate child of Aietes, queen of Colchians, breathed from immortal lips. For on this wise spake she to the warrior Jason's god-begotten crew: 'Hearken O sons of high-hearted mortals and of gods. Lo I say unto you that from this sea-lashed land the daughter of Epaphos shall sometime be planted with a root to bring forth cities that shall possess the minds of men, where Zeus Ammon's shrine is builded....
-- The Extant Odes of Pindar, by Pindar
From this introduction to the noblest and most animated of the Argonautic poems, it appears, that fifteen complete generations had intervened between the voyage of Jason and the emigration of Battus; so that, considering three generations as equal to an hundred or an hundred and twenty years, which Newton admits to be the Grecian mode of computing them, we must also place that voyage at least five or six hundred years before the time fixed by Newton himself, according to his own computation, for the building of Cyrene; that is, eleven or twelve hundred and thirty-three years before Christ: an age very near on a medium to that of Parasara. If the poet means afterwards to say, as I understand him, that Arcesilas, his contemporary, was the eighth in descent from Battus, we shall draw nearly the same conclusion, without having recourse to the unnatural reckoning of thirty-three or forty years to a generation; for Pindar was forty years old when the Persians, having crossed the Hellespont, were nobly resisted at Thermopylae, and gloriously defeated at Salamis. He was born, therefore, about the sixty-fifth Olympiad, or five hundred and twenty years before our era; so that, by allowing more naturally six or seven hundred years to twenty-three generations, we may at a medium place the voyage of Jason about one thousand one hundred and seventy years before our Saviour, or about forty-five years before the beginning of the Newtonian chronology.
The description of the old colures by Eudoxus, if we implicitly rely on his testimony and on that of Hipparchus, who was, indisputably, a great astronomer for the age in which he lived, affords, I allow, sufficient evidence of some rude observation about 937 years before the Christian epoch; and, if the cardinal points had receded from those colures 36° 29' 10" at the beginning of the year 1690, and 37° 52' 30" on the first of January in the present year, they must have gone back 3° 23' 20" between the observation implied by Parasar and that recorded by Eudoxus; or, in other words, 224 years must have elapsed between the two observations.
-- [Sir William Jones] "According to my calculations ..."
But this disquisition having little relation to our principal subject, I proceed to the last couplets of our Indian astronomer Varaha Mihira, which, though merely astrological, and consequently absurd, will give occasion to remarks of no small importance. They imply, that when the solstices are not in the first degrees of Carcata and Macara, the motion of the sun is contrary to nature; and being caused, as the commentator intimates, by some utpata, or preternatural agency, must necessarily be productive of misfortune; and this vain idea seems to indicate a very superficial knowledge even of the system which Varatha undertook to explain, but he might have adopted it solely as a religious tenet, on the authority of Garga, a priest of eminent sanctity, who expresses the same wild notion in the following couplet:
Yada nivertate praptah sravishtamuttarayane,
Asleshan dacshine praptastadavidyanmahadbhayan.
“When the sun returns, not having reached Dhanishftha in the northern solstice, not having reached Aslesha in the southern, then let a man feel great apprehension of danger."
Parasara himself entertained a similar opinion, that any irregularity in the solstices would indicate approaching calamity: Yadaprapto vaishnavantam, says he, udanmarge prepadyate, dacshine aslesham va mahabhayaya, that is, “When, having reached the end of Sravana, in the northern path, or half of Aslesha in the southern, he still advances, it is a cause of great fear." This notion, possibly, had its rise before the regular precession of the cardinal points had been observed; but we may also remark that some of the lunar mansions were considered as inauspicious, and others as fortunate; thus Menu, the first Indian lawgiver, ordains, that certain rites shall be performed under the influence of a happy Nacshatra; and, where he forbids any female name to be taken from a constellation, the most learned commentator gives Ardra and Revati as examples of ill-omened names, appearing by design to skip over others that must first have occurred to him. Whether Dhanishtha and Aslesha were inauspicious or prosperous, I have not learned; but, whatever might be the ground of Varaha's astrological rule, we may collect from his astronomy, which was grounded on observation, that the solstice had receded at least 23° 20' between his time and that of Parasara; for, though he refers its position to the signs, instead of the lunar mansions, yet all the Pandits, with whom I have conversed on the subject, unanimously assert, that the first degrees of Mesha and Aswini are coincident. Since the two ancient sages name only the lunar asterisms, it is probable, that the solar division of the Zodiac into twelve signs was not generally used in their days; and we know from the comment of the Surya Siddhanta, that the lunar month, by which all religious ceremonies are still regulated, was in use before the solar. When M. Bailly asks, "Why the Hindus established the beginning of the precession, according to their ideas of it, in the year of Christ 499?” to which his calculations also had led him, we answer, because in that year the vernal equinox was found by observation in the origin of their ecliptic; and since they were of opinion that it must have had the same position in the first year of the Caliyuga, they were induced by their erroneous theory to fix the beginning of their fourth period 3600 years before the time of Varaha, and to account for Parasara's observation, by supposing an utpata, or prodigy.
To what purpose, it may be asked, have we ascertained the age of Munis? Who was Parasara? Who was Garga? With whom were they contemporary, or with whose age may theirs be compared? What light will these inquires throw on the history of India or of mankind? I am happy in being able to answer those questions with confidence and precision.
All the Brahmens agree, that only one Parasara is named in their sacred records;...
There are several texts which give reference to Parashara as an author/speaker. Modern scholars believe that there were many individuals who used this name throughout time whereas others assert that the same Parashara taught these various texts and the time of writing them varied. The actual sage himself never wrote the texts; the various texts attributed to him are given in reference to Parashara being the speaker to his student.
-- Parashara, by Wikipedia
that he composed the astronomical book before cited, and a law-tract, which is now in my possession; that he was the grandson of Vasishtha, another astronomer and legislator, whose works are still extent, and who was the preceptor of Rama, King of Ayodhya; that he was the father of Vyasa, by whom the Vedas were arranged in the form which they now bear, and whom Crishna himself names with exalted praise in the Gita; so that, by the admission of the Pandits themselves, we find only three generations between two of the Ramas, whom they consider as incarnate portons of the divinity; and Parasara might have lived till the beginning of the Caliyuga, which the mistaken doctrine of an oscillation in the cardinal points has compelled the Hindus to place 1920 years too early. This error, added to their fanciful arrangement of the four ages, has been the source of many absurdities; for they insist that Valmic, whom they cannot but allow to have been contemporary with Ramachandra, lived in the age of Vyasa who consulted him on the composition of the Mahabharat, and who was personally known to Balarama, the brother of Crishna. When a very learned Brahmen had repeated to me an agreeable story of a conversation between Valmic and Vyasa, I expressed my surprize at an interview between two bards, whose ages were separated by a period of 864,000 years; but he soon reconciled himself to so monstrous an anachronism, by observing that the longevity of the Munis was preternatural,...
I should think that the great mistake of the annalists who wrote of the first ages after the flood is not in allowing so many as 100 or 120 years to three reigns, but in not allowing more. [The fourteen first Egyptian kings of Thebes are said to have reigned 414 years, i.e., from A.M. 1772 to 2186, or till three years after the death of Abraham (who died at the age of 175), and though they lived in these times of longevity, yet they reigned but twenty-nine years some months a-piece; they are not made to reign so long as the fourteen Latin kings, after the fall of Troy, which is supposed to have happened A.M. 2820, 634 years after the last of the fourteen Egyptian kings.] They seem to have known nothing of the fact, that men's lives extended to so great a length, during some centuries after the flood, as they are represented to do in Scripture: for had they known this, surely they would never have made their accounts of kings' reigns in the earlier and later ages agree so well together.
-- Remarks on the History of the Seven Roman Kings, Occasioned by Sir Isaac Newton’s Objections to the Supposed Two Hundred and Forty-Four Years’ Duration of the Regal State of Rome, from The Roman History From the Building of Rome to the Ruin of the Commonwealth, Illustrated with Maps, by N. Hooke, Esq., 1823
and that no limit could be set to divine power. By the same recourse to miracles or to prophesy, he would have answered another objection equally fatal to his chronological system. It is agreed by all, that the lawyer Yagyawalcya was an attendant on the court of Janaca, whose daughter Sita was the constant but unfortunate wife of the great Rama, the hero of Valmic's poem; but that lawyer himself, at the very opening of his work, which now lies before me, names both Parasara and Vyasa among twenty authors, whose tracts form the body of original Indian law. By the way, since Vasishtha is more that once named in the Manavisahhita, we may be certain that the laws ascribed to Menu, in whatever age they might have been first promulgated, could not have received the form in which we now see them, above three thousand years ago. The age and functions of Garga lead to consequences yet more interesting: he was confessedly the purohita, or officiating priest, of Crishna himself, who, when only a herdsman’s boy at Mathura, revealed his divine character to Garga, by running to him with more than mortal benignity on his countenance, when the priest had invoked Narayan. His daughter was eminent for her piety and her learning, and the Brahmans admit, without considering the consequence of their admission, that she is thus addressed in the Veda itself: Yata nrdhwan no va samopi, Gargi, esha adityo dyamurdhanan tapati, dya va bhumin tapati, bhumya subhran tapati, locan tapati, antarah tapatyanantaran tapati; or, “That Sun, O daughter of Garga, than which nothing is higher, to which nothing is equal, enlightens the summit of the sky; with the sky enlightens the earth; with the earth enlightens the lower worlds; enlightens the higher worlds, enlightens other worlds; it enlightens the breast, enlightens all besides the breast.” From these facts, which the Brahmans cannot deny, and from these concessions, which they unanimously makes, we may reasonably infer, that, if Vyasa was not the composer of the Vedas, he added at least something of his own to the scattered fragments of a more ancient work, or perhaps to the loose traditions which he had collected; but whatever be the comparative antiquity of the Hindu scriptures, we may safely conclude that the Mosaic and Indian chronologies are perfectly consistent; that Menu, son of Brahma, was the Adima, or first, created mortal, and consequently our Adam; that Menu, child of the Sun, was preserved with seven others, in a bahitra or capacious ark, from an universal deluge, and must therefore be our Noah; that Hiranyacasipu, the giant with a golden axe, and Vali or Bali, were impious and arrogant monarchs, and most probably our Nimrod and Belus; that the three Ramas, two of whom were invincible warriors, and the third not only valiant in war but the patron of agriculture and wine, which derives an epithet from his name, were different representations of the Grecian Bacchus, and either the Rama of scripture, or his colony personified, or the Sun first adored by his idolatrous family; that a considerable emigration from Chaldea into Greece, Italy, and India, happened about twelve centuries before the birth of our Saviour; that Sacya or Sisak, about two hundred years after Vyasa, either in person or by a colony from Egypt, imported into this country the mild heresy of the ancient Bauddhas; and that the dawn of true Indian history appears only three or four centuries before the Christian era, the preceding ages being clouded by allegory or fable.
As a specimen of that fabling and allegorizing spirit which has ever induced the Brahmens to disguise their whole system of history, philosophy, and religion, I produce a passage from the Bhagavat, which, however strange and ridiculous, is very curious in itself, and closely connected with the subject of this essay. It is taken from the fifth scandha, or section, which is written in modulated prose. “There are some,” says the Indian author, “ who, for the purpose of meditating intensely on the holy son of Vasudeva, imagine you celestial sphere to represent the figure of that aquatic animal which we call Sisumara; its head being turned downwards, and its body bent in a circle, they conceive Dhruva, or the pole-star, to be fixed on the point of its tail; on the middle part of the tail they see four stars, Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Dherma, and on its base to others, Dhatri and Vidatri: on its rump are the Septarshis, or seven stars of the Sacata, or wain; on its back the path of the Sun, called Ajavithi, or the Series of Kids; on its belly the Ganga of the sky: Punarvasu and Pusliya gleam respectively on its right and left haunches; Ardra and Aslesa on its right and left feet, or fins; Abhijit and Uttarashadha in its right and left nostrils; Sravana and Purvashadha in its right and left eyes; Dhanishtha and Mula on its right and left ears. Eight constellations, belonging to the summer solstice, Magha, Purvaphalguni, Uttaraphalguni, Hasta, Chitra, Swati, Visacha, Anuradha, may be conceived in the ribs of its left side; and as many asterisms, connected with the winter solstice, Mrigasiras, Rohini, Crittica, Bharani, Aswini, Revatli, Uttarabhadrapada, Purvabhadrapada, may be imagined on the ribs of its right side in an inverse order. Let Satabhisha and Jyeshtha be placed on its right and left shoulders. In its upper jaw is Agastya, in its lower Yama; in its mouth the planet Mangala; in its part of generation, Sanaischara; on its hump, Vrihaspati; in its breast, the Sun; in its heart, Narayan; in its front, the Moon; in its navel, Usanas; on its two nipples, the two Aswinas; in its ascending and descending breaths, Budha; on its throat Rahu; in all its limbs, Cetus, or comets; and in its hairs, or bristles, the whole multitude of stars." It is necessary to remark, that, although the sisumara be generally described as the sea-hog or porpoise, which we frequently have seen playing in the Ganges yet susmar, which seems derived from the Sanscrit, means in Persian a large lizard. The passage just exhibited may nevertheless relate to an animal of the cetaceous order, and possibly to the dolphin of the ancients.
It was the Ancient Greeks that originally gave us the word dolphin! ...Homer used it in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. According to this explanation, the ancient Greek word for dolphin is related to the word delphys (delphus) meaning ‘womb’. In fact, in ancient Greek, the word ‘delphus’ means both dolphin AND womb.
Womb? What on earth do dolphins have to do with wombs?...
I managed to find a variety of theories [on the Internet] about the relationship between a womb and a dolphin....
The first, that is the one that most dictionaries tend to favor is the relationship between the shape of a womb and the shape of a dolphin. That is, that a dolphin got its name by virtue of it resembling a womb. Maybe long long ago, an ancient Greek guy who was, for whatever reason, intimately familiar with the shape of internal organs, spied a dolphin frolicking in the waters and thought to himself “wow! That animal bears a striking resemblance to a uterus! I will tell all of my friends that and from now on this animal shall henceforth be known as ‘uterus’!”...
The second explanation is the relationship between the word dolphin and the idea that the word “dolphin/womb” was used to describe fraternal associations in human relationships. The word Adelphi means ‘of the same womb’ -– a reference to the idea that two brothers once shared their mother’s womb and hence a strong bond....
On a similar note, another explanation would consider the dolphins to be ‘our brothers of the sea’, an idea that dolphins and humans share a special bond. There is no doubt that the ancient Greeks had special affinity for the friendly dolphin; they appear in Greek art and mythology. Also, note that the temple of Delphi –- that most ancient of oracle -– is renamed after the dolphin because of the temple’s association with Apollo, a powerful Greek god who often took the form of a dolphin and who took control of the temple that now bears his nickname.
Lastly, there has been speculation that the Greeks called a dolphin a ‘womb fish’ for the simple reason that it was a kind of fish that had a womb, which is, of course, a uniquely mammalian organ. And also, that the reference to the womb is tied up with the idea that dolphins give birth to live young.
-- Where Does the Word "Dolphin" Come From?, by Dolphin Communication Project
Before I leave the sphere of the Hindus, I cannot help mentioning a singular fact in the Sanscrit language: Ricsha means a constellation and a bear, so that Maharesha may denote either a great bear or a great asterism. Etymologists may, perhaps, derive the Megas arctos of the Greeks from an Indian compound ill understood; but I will only observe, with the wild American, that a bear with a very long tail could never have occurred to the imagination of any one who had seen the animal. I may be permitted to add, on the subject of the Indian Zodiac, that, if I have erred in a former essay, where the longitude of the lunar mansions is computed from the first star in our constellation of the Ram, I have been led into error by the very learned and ingenious M. Bailly, who relied, I presume, on the authority of M. Le Gentil. The origin of the Hindu Zodiac, according to the Surya Siddhanta, must be nearly a 19° 21' 54", in our sphere, and the longitude of Chitra, or the Spike, must of course be 199° 21' 54" from the vernal equinox; but since it is difficult by that computation to arrange the twenty-seven mansions and their several stars as they are delineated and enumerated in the Retnamala, I must for the present suppose with M. Bailly, that the Zodiac of the Hindus had two origins, one constant and the other variable[???!!!]; and a farther inquiry into the subject must be reserved for a season of retirement and leisure.