ORIGIN OF ANCIENT HINDU ASTRONOMY. 399 



lected and condensed as includino' all tlie astronomical science of 

 his time, there are two, the Bomaka and the Pauliga, the names 

 of which suggest directly — the first the scientific culture of the 

 Roman world, and the other Paulus, a celebrated Alexandrian as- 

 tronomer of the third century a. d.* 



We apparently find, likewise, the names of Manetho (fourth cen- 

 tury A. D.) in ManiWia or Manimda; of Spensippus in Sporedji- 

 vadja; and of Ptolemy in Asoura Maya, whom the Sounya 8id- 

 dhdnta designates as the founder of astronomy, and who another 

 treatise says was born at Romakapouri, " the city of the Romans." 



In this order of ideas the natives of India have never tried to 

 deny their sources. The Gavanas, we read in the Gargi Samhitd, 

 are barbarians; but this science (astrology) has been constituted 

 by them, and they must be revered as saints. M. "Weber affirms 

 that a treatise on astrology bearing their name, the Gavana Castra, 

 was reputed to have been written in the land of the Gavanas by the 

 god Sourya in person, when, expelled from heaven by the resent- 

 ment of his divine rivals, he came down and was born again in the 

 city of the Romans, f 



We find, further, that the Greek calendar appears to have sur- 

 vived Hellenic domination in northern India. General Cunning- 

 ham, in 1862, read in the inscriptions of the Indo-Scythians the 

 names of the Macedonian months Artemisios and xippellaios. Since 

 then the names of two other months of that calendar — Panemos and 

 Daisies — have been found in inscriptions in the Kharosthis char- 

 acter. 



Another era of Grecian origin, that of the Seleucidse, seems 

 likewise to have furnished the Hindus their first historical compu- 

 tation.:}: It should be observed, in fact, that their most ancient era, 

 that of the Mauryas, dates from the year 312 b. c, or the beginning 

 of the era of the SeleucidaB. This had been adopted by the Grecian 

 sovereigns of India, as is attested by a coin of Plato, struck in the 

 year 166 b. c. 



Beginning with the Indo-Scythians, India generally adopted the 

 era of the Cakas, which began, not, as had been long supposed, with 

 the expulsion of the Scythians, but with the coronation of their prin- 



* The Romaka SiddAnta employs, as a measure of time, the Chiga of 2,850 years or 

 1,040,953 days, giving a tropical year of 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds, 

 ■which is exactly the figure proposed by Ptolemy and Hipparchus.— ^wr^ess. Journal of the 

 Royal Asiatic Society. 



\ The term Romakapouri does not necessarily imply the city of Rome ; the name was 

 probably extended to Alexandria and perhaps also to Byzantium. In other writings we 

 find the name Gavanapouri, the city of the Greeks (or lonians), applied to Alexandria. 



X Till then, the Hindus hardly seem to have sought for a common measure of time 

 except for astronomical or mythological purposes. 



