ORIGIN OF ANCIENT HINDU ASTRONOMY. 397 



nally formed in ancient Clialdea. The presumption of sucli an in- 

 fluence furnishes a simpler and more probable hypothesis than the 

 effort to trace the earliest astronomical ideas of the Hindus, as 

 M. W. Brennand has recently suggested, to a period when the an- 

 cestors of the Aryans, the Semites, and the Chinese were wander- 

 ing together over the plateaus of central Asia ! 



We know now, from the cuneiform inscriptions, that the Chal- 

 deans had, at a period far anterior to the entrance of the Aryans 

 into India, invented a double calendar, solar and lunar, with inter- 

 calary periods; discovered the proper motion of the planets; cal- 

 culated the return of eclipses; and constituted a double metrical 

 system, decimal and sexagesimal; and, as was done, too, in India, 

 had divided the circumference into three hundred and sixty de- 

 grees of sixty minutes each. It is impossible to draw the lines 

 exactly between the astronomical discoveries which the Hindus bor- 

 rowed from abroad and those which they drew from their own re- 

 sources prior to the invasion of the Greeks, but we need in no case 

 go farther than Mesopotamia for the source of the borrowed data. 



The ancient literature of India contains observations of the po- 

 sitions or conjunctions of some of the stars that carry us back to 

 positive dates in the history of the sky. The astronomers Bailly, 

 Colebrooke, and Bentley, and, more recently, M. Brennand, have 

 found notes relative to astronomical phenomena that took place 

 in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and even the twenty-first cen- 

 turies B. c. Max Miiller, however, advises prudence and reserve in 

 accepting these calculations, some of which may have been after- 

 thoughts, and others offer only apparent agreements. 



In any case, the advent of Buddhism, by depreciating the re- 

 ligious practices and astrological speculations of the Brahmans, con- 

 tributed to bringing on a decline of astronomy at the very time 

 it was taking its most vigorous stand among the Greeks. We learn 

 from a passage in Strabo that the Pramnai regarded the Brahmans 

 as boasters and mad because they were interested in physiology 

 and astronomy. itTow, there really exists an ancient Buddhist 

 treatise in which the predictions by the Brahmans of eclipses of the 

 sun and of the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets, and their 

 discussions of the appearance of comets and meteors, are treated as 

 despicable arts and lies. 



It was just at this age that Hellenic culture was developed in 

 northwest India. It held astronomy, and astrology too, in great 

 esteem. The Milinda Panda mentions the royal astrologer as one 

 of the principal functionaries of Menander. No doubt there were, 

 among the Gavanas (lonians) of Taxila and Euthydemia, minds 

 versed in the knowledge of the principal cosmological systems for- 



