﻿OF THE HINDUS. 229 



in the first of Aries \ the planets also deviating from 

 that point only as much as is their latitude and the 

 difference between their mean and true anomaly. 



These cycles being so constructed as to contain a 

 certain number of mean "solar days, and the Hindu 

 svstem assuming that an the creation, when the pla- 

 nets began their motions, a right line, drawn from the 

 equinoctial point Lanca through the centre of the 

 earth, would, if continued, have passed through the 

 centre of the sun and planets to the first star in Aries : 

 their mean longitude for any proposed time afterward! 

 may be computed by proportion. As the revolutions 

 a planet makes in any cycle are to the number of days 

 composing it, so are the days given to its morion in 

 that time ; and the even revolutions being rejected, 

 the fraction, if any, shows its mean longitude at mid- 

 night under their first meridian of Lanca: for places 

 east or west of that meridian a proportional allowance is 

 made for the difference of longitude on the earth's sur- 

 face, called in Sanscrit the Desantara. The positions 

 of the apsides and nodes are computed in the same 

 manner ; and the equation of the mean to the true 

 place, determined on principles which will be hereafter 

 mentioned. 



The division of the Malia Yug into the Satya, 

 Treta, Dzvapar, and Call ages, does not appear from 

 the Surya Siddhanta to answer any practical astronomi- 

 cal purpose, but to have been formed on ideas simi- 

 lar to the golden, silver, brazen, and iron sges of the 

 Greeks. Their origin has however been ascribed to the 

 precession of the equinoxes by those who will of course 

 refer the JSIamvantera and Calf a to the same founda- 

 tion : either way the latter .will be found anomalistic, as 

 has been described, if 1 rightly understand the follow- 

 ing passage in the first section of the Surya Siddhanta ; 

 the translation of which is, I believe, here correctly 

 given. Q+. 2 



