COMPUTATION OF TIME. 289 



rise to various conjectures which seem to be too vague to 

 have any value. 



The most ancient book of Hindoo astronomy is the Surya 

 Siddhanta, which the Bramins assert to be a divine revela- 

 tion received 2,164,899 years ago. Here we have another 

 example of the fabulous texture of the whole system of 

 Indian chronology and astronomy. Indeed, it is quite evi- 

 dent that it is a vain task to seek to discover the times at 

 which their systems were constructed from their own ac- 

 counts. If these possibly can be found, they must be dis- 

 covered by a careful examination of the construction of their 

 tables. This kind of analysis has been actually employed 

 by Bailly, Playfair, and at a later period by Davis and 

 Bentley ; but the great disagreement in the conclusions to 

 which these ingenious men have come, seems to leave but 

 little hope of the truth being ever absolutely discovered, or 

 even a considerable approach to it. 



Mr. S. Davis, in a Memoir on the Astronomical Compu- 

 tations of the Hindoos,* says that many treatises on astron- 

 omy in the Sanscrit tongue might be procured, and that the 

 Bramins were very willing to explain them ; he also adds, 

 that Sanscrit books in this science are more easily trans- 

 lated than almost any others, when once the technical 

 terms are understood. With a view to the computation of 

 an eclipse, he procured a copy of the Surya Siddhanta, 

 which had been brought from Benares, and also the Tika, 

 which is a commentary on it. 



According to this ancient treatise the Hindoos divide the 

 ecliptic into 360 degrees, as has been already stated. Their 

 astronomical year is sidereal, and begins at the instant the 

 sun enters the sign Aries, which they call Mesha, or when 

 he enters into the nacskatra Aswini. Each astronomical 

 month contains as many days and parts of a day as elapse 

 while the sun is in each sign, and the civil differs from the 

 astronomical account of time only in rejecting the frac- 

 tions, and beginning the year and months at sunrise, instead 

 of the intermediate instant of the artificial day and night ; 

 hence it happens that their months are unequal, and depend 

 on the situation of the sun's apsis, and the distance of the 

 equinoctial vernal colure from the beginning of Mesha in 



* Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 225. 

 Vol. III.— B b 



