Identifying Vedic Asterisms - Software?

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 07:53:16 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

In , Gautam Majumdar
wrote:
| On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 05:42:27 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

| There is a strong tradition about these names, but no reliable
| evidence that what these names signify today are the same as what
| they did long ago.
|
| Look in some History of Indian Astronomy book. Names of the
| Nakshatryas with their Arabic names are often given in those books.

I haven't seen a single one of them back that up with *analysis*. They
all simply parrot the received tradition, for which the hard evidence
peters out a little before Aryabhat - which is on the order of at least
a millenium - that's a thousand freaking years, by the way - after the
times that my post was about.

| The rest is useed only for astrology - so deleted.

Wrong. Astrology is what the received tradition is about. If you had
bothered to read my post, I was interested in the *original* provenance
of the names, not their use (or misuse) in latter days.

Sorry if I offended you by mentioning astrology. But part of your post did
suggest to me that you are after some astrological info.

Anyway, a quick google search revealed a number of interesting sites. I
suggest you look at

http://www.geocities.com/vijayabalak...akshathra.html

This site gives details of all 27 Nakshatras with their Arabic/Latin names
where available, SAO & HD catalogue numbers, brightness, etc. From that it
should be easy to find them on any planetarium program. Abhijita (Vega),
the 28th Nakshatra, is not mentioned though, probably because it was added
later to get the lunar cycle in sync with observed period.

HTH

--

Gautam Majumdar

In , Gautam Majumdar
wrote:
| On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 07:53:16 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

| If you had bothered to read my post, I was interested in the *original*
| provenance of the names, not their use (or misuse) in latter days.

| Sorry if I offended you by mentioning astrology. But part of your post
| did suggest to me that you are after some astrological info.

It looks like my English must be even worse than that, if I'm failing to
convey the basic point that using *later* texts - many, if not most,
indeed astrologically oriented - to fix the meanings of *earlier* names
is anachronistic thinking:

Text 1, dated to (say) 1000 BCE, mentions Name X.
Text 2, dated (say) 100 CE, says Name X means Star Such-and-such.
Ergo, Name X in Text 1 is Star Such-and-such.

No matter how much people may babble about "unbroken tradition" or
whatnot, this kind of retroactive attributiun is fallacious. Another
way to express this is to say that an "unbroken tradition" needs to be
demonstrated rather than presumed. Do you see that?

| Anyway, a quick google search revealed a number of interesting sites. I
| suggest you look at
|
| http://www.geocities.com/vijayabalak...akshathra.html

I found that - and a number of similar pages - a while back. It's an
absolutely classic example of the kind of anachronistic reasoning that
I'm trying to find a way around!

All these so called analyses *start* with identifying kRttikA as the
Pleiades (or just Alcyone).

Now, this is in fact true of the *later* tradition. But it is by no
means clear that the kRttikA of Vedic times - such as Taitiriya Samhita
IV.4.10 or Taittiriya Brahmana 3.1.1.1 or AtharvaVeda XIX.7 - is also
the Pleiades.

And the say-so of a later tradition doesn't make it so anyway. Or, so
one could hope.

| This site gives details of all 27 Nakshatras with their Arabic/Latin
| names where available, SAO & HD catalogue numbers, brightness, etc.
| From that it should be easy to find them on any planetarium program.

I was looking for a planetarium program that would help me examine
sections of the ecliptic band for candidate asterisms that could be
matched to the Vedic names on internal evidence alone - such as the
hints provided by differences in grammatical number and the use of
"purva" and "uttara" as prefixes for three pairs of names.

Note that the later tradition has all names in the singular - which, not
at all surprisingly, the Balakrishna article you referenced above takes
as a "given" even for the Vedic names! But, for example, what is called
the Ashwini (singular) asterism today - as part of a socalled "unbroken
tradition", we are told - was in fact originally Ashwiyujau (dual).

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.

Note that working backwards instead has led to a number of utterly
fantastic claims. For example, it has been argued that kRttikA is first
on the list because it was associated with the vernal equinox (i.e. a
"first point of Aries"). This hasn't been true of the Pleiades since
some time in the second millemnium BCE. Only crackpots would claim that
the Shatapatha Brahmana, a work that shows knowledge of iron, goes back
that far, but believe it or not, this kind of nonsense is actually being
put forward in "Balakrishna, Ph.D." style as serious science!

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 22:40:06 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

Text 1, dated to (say) 1000 BCE, mentions Name X. Text 2, dated
(say) 100 CE, says Name X means Star Such-and-such. Ergo, Name X in
Text 1 is Star Such-and-such.

No matter how much people may babble about "unbroken tradition" or
whatnot, this kind of retroactive attributiun is fallacious. Another
way to express this is to say that an "unbroken tradition" needs to be
demonstrated rather than presumed. Do you see that?

I think I got what you are after. But the "unbroken tradition" is a
myth. Historically we have a so called dark period between the Vedic
period and the much later historical period with almost a thousand years
hiatus. Very little hard facts are known for that period let alone any
information about the scientific activity of the time. Moreover, the
oldest written versions of virtually all ancient Indian texts come only
from the 3rd or 4th century BCE. Thus some (or many) of the Vedic sutras
might have already been altered between the time of their original
composition and the time of the writing of the version that we have got
today.

I was looking for a planetarium program that would help me examine
sections of the ecliptic band for candidate asterisms that could be
matched to the Vedic names on internal evidence alone - such as the
hints provided by differences in grammatical number and the use of
"purva" and "uttara" as prefixes for three pairs of names.

Note that the later tradition has all names in the singular - which, not
at all surprisingly, the Balakrishna article you referenced above takes
as a "given" even for the Vedic names! But, for example, what is called
the Ashwini (singular) asterism today - as part of a socalled "unbroken
tradition", we are told - was in fact originally Ashwiyujau (dual).

We of course don't know anything about the convention used for naming the
stars in the Vedic period. In later period all the Nakshatras were given
singular female names to conform with the mythology - they are all
daughters of Daksha & wives of the Moon.

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.

Note that working backwards instead has led to a number of utterly
fantastic claims. For example, it has been argued that kRttikA is first
on the list because it was associated with the vernal equinox (i.e. a
"first point of Aries"). This hasn't been true of the Pleiades since
some time in the second millemnium BCE. Only crackpots would claim that
the Shatapatha Brahmana, a work that shows knowledge of iron, goes back
that far, but believe it or not, this kind of nonsense is actually being
put forward in "Balakrishna, Ph.D." style as serious science!

We have to remember that many of the ancient texts are actually
compilations of the works of many people though they often go by the
name of a single author. This is often evident from the different writing
styles. Many such texts are not internally consistent. 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. Again, if the compilation was done over a long
period, i.e., later authors added their own observations to the text,
there will invariably be contradiction.

--

Gautam Majumdar

Please send e-mails to

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?

In om, Gautam
Majumdar wrote:

| 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,

One particular passage in the SB is noteworthy for the discussion it has
generated. See

http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0502/ejvs0502.txt

The figures are accessible from the TOC listing at

http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/issues.html

It's interesting stuff, except that one basic point of astronomy leaves
me quite confused: either I'm misunderstanding the astronomy, or the
discussion in the paper above seems offbase.

Azimuth 90 degrees points to true East. Should asterisms located on the
celestial equator rise at that point on any night that they are visible?
Related: except for an imperceptible-to-the-naked-eye difference due to
parallax as the earth goes around the sun, isn't this true throughout
the year? (Until the long term effect of precession relocates the
celestial equator perceptibly, of course.)

If this is so, then the verb 'cyavante' (literally, 'moves' or 'is
unstable/deflected') is being misinterpreted, as none of the asterisms
"move" in any real sense. They merely rise at different points on the
eatern horizon regardless of the season, so a verb connoting variability
seems quite misplaced.

What have I misunderstood?

In article ,
Arjun Ray writes:
Azimuth 90 degrees points to true East. Should asterisms located on the
celestial equator rise at that point on any night that they are visible?

Yes, if you ignore atmospheric refraction and other small effects and
if your altitude is not very far from sea level. For naked eye
astronomy at non-polar latitudes, and in particular from Delhi, the
approximation should be excellent.

Related: except for an imperceptible-to-the-naked-eye difference due to
parallax as the earth goes around the sun, isn't this true throughout
the year? (Until the long term effect of precession relocates the
celestial equator perceptibly, of course.)

Parallax is a tiny effect, at most an arcsecond. Very hard to
measure, even with modern telescopes.

If this is so, then the verb 'cyavante' (literally, 'moves' or 'is
unstable/deflected') is being misinterpreted, as none of the asterisms
"move" in any real sense. They merely rise at different points on the
eatern horizon regardless of the season, so a verb connoting variability
seems quite misplaced.

Every star rises at a fixed point on the horizon, regardless of the
season. (Neglecting variation of atmospheric refraction with
temperature , i.e., season and other tiny effects and of course
neglecting precession, which changes the rise point over long time
scales.)

Could "move" refer to the change in elevation as an object rises?
If, as you imply, the meaning is "Different stars rise at different
places on the horizon," a verb denoting change is indeed misused. We
have a common example in English, though, where "vary" is often
(mis-)used to describe different objects having different properties
rather than in the sense of "change."

--
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
(Please email your reply if you want to be sure I see it; include a
valid Reply-To address to receive an acknowledgement. Commercial
email may be sent to your ISP.)

In , (Steve
Willner) wrote:
| In article ,
| Arjun Ray writes:

| [The asterisms] merely rise at different points on the eastern
| horizon regardless of the season, so a verb connoting variability
| seems quite misplaced.

| Could "move" refer to the change in elevation as an object rises?

Unlikely. The context is clearly about the "eastern direction" as an
auspicious one.

| If, as you imply, the meaning is "Different stars rise at different
| places on the horizon," a verb denoting change is indeed misused. We
| have a common example in English, though, where "vary" is often
| (mis-)used to describe different objects having different properties
| rather than in the sense of "change."

Yes, as in "deviate". This is the meaning now being ascribed to the
verbal form found in the text, though a highly respected translation
runs as follows:

: etA ha vai prAcyai dizo na cyavante / sarvANi ha vA anyAni nakSatrANi
: prAchyai dizo cyavante / tat prAcyam evAsyaitad dizy Ahitau bhavataH /
: tasmAt kRttikAsv AdadhIta // (II. 1. 2.3)

: "And again they do not move away from the eastern quarter, whilst the
: other asterisms do move from the eastern quarter. Thus his (two fires)
: are established in the eastern quarter: for this reason he may set up
: his fires under the kRttikAs. (tr. Eggeling)

("prAcyai" is "East" or "forward" in the genitive or ablative case,
"dizo" - pronounced "disho" - is "direction", "na" is negation, and the
verb "cyavante" is present tense third person plural in the middle or
reflexive voice.) Dictionaries regularly define the verbal root "cyu"
to mean: stir, waver, fall, move. "Deviate" isn't that much of a
stretch, but it's a stretch nonetheless.

But even granting that, the context does not make clear whether kRttika
(the Pleiades) "not deviating from the eatern direction" is actually a
fact or just a dogmatic assertion - as, for example, could arise from a
prior, much older tradition, of *defining* "true east" as the point at
which the Pleiades rise!

The problem is that the text in question (the Shatapatha Brahmana) shows
knowledge of iron, which places it this side of 1000 BCE, whereas the
Pleiades lying on the celestial equator hasn't been true since some time
in the late third or early second millennium BCE: a difference in dating
of at least 1500 years.