﻿THE INDIAN ZODIAC. 3C5 



Vcdangas y one of which is the astronomical Saslra, 

 Were not then commercial, and, most probably, nei- 

 ther could nor would have conversed with Arabian 

 merchants. The hostile irruption of the Arabs into 

 Hindustan, in the eighth century, and that of the Mo- 

 guls under Chenglz, in the thirteenth, were not likely 

 to change the astronomical system of the Hindus ; but 

 the supposed consequences of modern revolutions arc 

 out of the question ; for, if any historical records be 

 true, we know with as positive certainty, that Amarsihn 

 and Calidas composed their works before the birth of 

 Christ, as that Menander and Terence wrote before that 

 important epoch. Now the twelve signs and twenty- 

 seven mansions are mentioned, by the several names 

 before exhibited, in a Sanscrit vocabulary by the 

 first of those Indian authors ; and the second of them 

 frequently alludes to Rohini and the rest by name in 

 his Fatal Ring, his Children of the Sun, and his Birth 

 of Cumara; from which poem I produce two lines, that 

 my evidence may not seem to be collected from mere 

 conversation : — 



Maitre muhurte sasalanch'hanena, 

 Yogam gatasuttarap'halganishu. 



" When the stars of Uttarufhalgun had joined in 

 € * a fortunate hour the fawn-spotted moon." 



This testimony being decisive against the conjecture 

 of M. Montucla, I need not urge the great antiquity 

 of Menus Institutes, in which the twenty- seven aste- 

 risms are called the daughters of Dacsha and the con- 

 sorts of Soma, or the Moon j nor rely on the testimony 

 of the Brahmans, who assure me with one voice, that 

 the names of the Zodiacal stars occur in the Vedas ; 

 three of which I firmly believe, from internal and 

 external evidence, to be more than three thousmid 



