In om, Gautam
Majumdar wrote:
| On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 22:40:06 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

| The point would be to determine several candidate sets as part of a
| "clean room analysis" and only *then* see if they can be winnowed down
| to a single set, and only *then* determine if the later tradition is
| consistent with the evidence from earlier times.

| One possibility is to take a set of candidate stars and run the
| planetarium program backwards to see if any of them matches up a specific
| observation mentioned in the Vedic texts - such as a particular
| conjunction with a planet or the moon - in the likely timeframe.

Yes, that's what I had in mind. :-)

Unfortunately, astronomical references are very few in the Vedic texts,
and there again subject to variant interpretations. The differences
arise from the fact that the texts are about rituals, so what on literal
reading might look like an astronomical observation could actually be a
mythologised or formalised rationalisation of some aspect of the ritual.
Nevertheless, unless these formalisations were concocted wholecloth,
there could be some observational basis, so we're entitled to take them
as hints rather than as precise recordings.

In general, there are two clusters of such "references". One set has to
do with kRttikA (the Pleiades in later times) and associations with the
vernal equinox, and the other set has to do with maghA (Regulus in later
times) and associations with the winter solstice. The problem is that
in the canonical listing, kRttikA is first and maghA is eighth. If the
former is the spring equinox and the latter the winter solstice, then
the enumeration is westward along the ecliptic, whereas the clearly
lunar basis of "27 mansions" would suggest an eastward sequence, unless
the Vedics enjoyed counting backwards.

So there is a prima facie case that what the Vedics were talking about
is *not* what the later Sutra/Purana tradition asserts.

| As for the specific example of Shatapatha Brahmana, D P Chattopadhyaya
| in his book Science & Technology in Ancient India, suggested that some
| of the observational findings included were traditional, i.e., observed
| long time ago, possibly even in the Indus Valley period, but not checked
| for the authenticity at the time of compilation.

I wouldn't be surprised at all. The Shatapatha is relatively late among
the canonical texts, and tradition could indeed have hardened to blind
orthopraxy by then.

BTW, any advice on software?