20 Letters of Sir Witt1am Jones to Samvext Darts, Esq. 
Nine books of Menu’s Laws are ready for the press: they are wonderfully 
curious. Ly Jones thanks you heartily for the honey: we shall be in town 
towards the end of the month. I am, dear Sir, 
Your ever faithful 
and obed! w, JONES. 
XXIV. 
Arifnagar : 27 Dec. 1791. 
My dear Sir, 
I hasten to answer your acceptable letter. No doubt there is an inaccu- 
racy (which I beg you will find an opportunity of correcting) in my use of the 
word solstice : I felt it at the time, but wished to avoid the foreign word ayana, 
to which we must I believe have recourse; as I do not think road or path 
will do, unless we say it began, instead of it was. Solstice implies motum in 
loco, and ayana (literally going) seems to imply motum d loco ad locum ; while 
road or path imply continuity of motion. I thought the phrase dacshindyana, 
literally motus aD meridiem, might be translated, according to the Indian ex- 
pression, more concisely by southern solstice, than by the beginning of the 
sun’s motion or road to the south; for had I said northern solstice, it would 
have looked as if dacshina meant northern ; and so, mutatis mutandis, of the 
uttardyana, or ad seplentrionem itio. I would propose (and I thought of 
saying this in a note, but had not time) to write either the sun’s southern 
ayana, &c. or the beginning of the sun’s southern path ; and so of the north- 
ern. On the whole, the puzzle is purely grammatical; and I was led to 
it by a desire of translating as verbally as possible, but with all possible bre- 
vity. I cannot understand the account of Saca, and have no work by Ca- 
lidas on astrology ; but Agastya puzzles me more than any thing, one Pandit 
insisting it is Sirius, and another Canopus : pray desire your Pandit to point 
at Agastya some clear evening: I have reasons for wishing to know him, 
having seen a curious quotation from his Samhita. I shall long for your 
paper on the Cycle, and hope you will find leisure to add another in illus- 
tration of your Hindu Ecliptick, especially if your Pandit can point out the 
zodiacal stars in the firmament. I shall never find them in Harris’s Chart 
for 1690, when, by Flamstead’s observation, the first of Aswini should have 
been » 19°31’ 22’, which I cannot reconcile with the Hindu ayandnsa for 
