ZODIACAL SIGNS. 16? 



Gcminus and Varro, scarcely half a century before oui 

 era; and as the Romans, from the time of Augustus 

 to Antoninus, became more strongly imbued with a pre- 

 dilection for astrological inquiry, those constellations which 

 "lay in the celestial path of the sun" acquired an ex- 

 aggerated and fanciful importance. The Egyptian zodi- 

 acal constellations found at Dendera, Esneh, the Propylon of 

 Panopolis, and on some mummy-cases, belong to the first 

 half of this period of the Roman dominion, as was maintained 

 by Visconti and Testa, at a time when the necessary materials 

 for the decision of the question had not been collected, and the 

 wildest hypothesis still prevailed regarding the signification 

 of these symbolical zodiacal signs, and their dependence on 

 the precession of the equinoxes. The great antiquity which, 

 from passages in Manu's Book of Laws, ValmikTs Ramayana 

 and Amarasinha's Dictionary, Augustus William von Schlegel 

 attributed to the zodiacal circles found in India, has been 

 rendered very doubtful by Adolph Holtzmann's ingenious 

 investigations. 80 



many of the names of the twenty-seven " houses of the moon," 

 and the Dodecatomeria of the zodiac, that we also meet with 

 the sign of the Balance among the Indian Nakschatras (Moon- 

 houses), which are undoubtedly of very great antiquity. ( Vues 

 des Cordilleres, t. ii. pp. 6-12.) 



80 Compare A. W. von Schlegel Ueber Sternbilder des 

 Thierkreises im alien Indien, in the Zeitschrift fur die Kunde 

 des Morgenlandes, bd. i. Heft 3. 1837, and his Commentatio de 

 Zodiaci antiquitate et origine, 1839, with Adolph Holtzrnan, 

 Ueber den griechischen Ur sprung des indischen Thierkreises,I84I, 

 s. 9, 16, 23. " The passages quoted from Amorakoscha, and 

 Ramayana," says the latter writer, " admit of undoubted inter- 

 pretation, and speak of the zodiac in the clearest terms ; but 

 if these works were composed before the knowledge of the Greek 

 signs of the zodiac could have reached India, these passages 

 ought to be carefully examined for the purpose of ascertaining 

 \vhether they may not be comparatively modern interpolations/' 



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