12 Letters of Sir Witttam Jones to Samvet Darts, Esq. 
greatest importance in settling the antiquity of the Indian laws and lite- 
rature ; for Pardsera, the Muni cited in it, wrote a Dhermasanhitd, which 
I have, and his son Vydsa was contemporary with Crishna. 1 rely im- 
plicitly on your calculation, that the equinox had gone back about 3° 40’ 
between that Muni and the Argonauts, which would place Pardsera 1201 
years before Christ. But what shall we say of Garga, whose stanza also is 
quoted, and who, to my knowledge, is mentioned in the Véda itself? And 
after this, what becomes of the vaunted Indian antiquity? I am so young 
in astronomy (having only read the first book of Newton’s Principia, and 
gone through the ordinary course of the Elements, Conick Sections, and 
Fluxions) that you must not be surprized at my errors; but I cannot, with 
Harris’s chart before me, understand how the éenth degree of Bharani 
could only be 3° 40’ eastward of the equinoctial colure in the time of the 
Argonauts, which colure (Newt. Chron. p. 89) did in the end of 1689, cut 
the ecliptic in ¥ 6° 29/ 15”. Now, if « Arietis, with ten degrees of north 
latitude, be the yéga star of Aswin? in the eighth degree of longitude, ac- 
cording to the table, the first degree of Mésha, and consequently the first 
degree of Aswini? must appear in the chart about y 25°, from which the 
13° 20’ of Aswint and the 10 degrees of Bharani would carry us to 8 18° 
20’. But I am probably carried by haste and ignorance far beyond my 
sphere, and, as I said before, I rely implicitly on your calculation. How 
I wish you had leisure to translate the Svirya Siddhdnia verbally, and to 
seal your triumph over M. Bailly, who supposes that no European will ever 
decypher that book? Iam translating the divine Menu, the most sacred 
book next to the Vepa: to Menu and the new Digest I allot all my leisure ; 
but I am resolved to devote a whole morning in the next vacation to the 
yoga stars, all of which I hope to find in Harris’s chart; but I am puzzled 
at the outset for want of knowing exactly the first degree of Mésha, and 
the ydga star of Révati, for, on a transient view, I see only ¢ Piscium, 
which can be said to have no latitude, and even that is in Harris a little to 
the south of the ecliptic. Ialso wish you had leisure to write a short 
paper for our second volume, explaining your drawing of the Hindu 
ecliptic (which I would have engraved), and comparing it with the present 
state of the heavens and with the primitive sphere. But in the present 
state of your district, I fear you have no leisure. Say from me to Radhd- 
cheren ATA THET . I would answer his Sanscrit letter, if I were 
