■o-f- Sixty Year j. 



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what he had learned from other treatifes merely as an aftrological maxim, 

 his SavJiita being a treatife on aflrology not on practical aftronomy ; and this 

 conjecture will appear the more reafonable, when it is confidered, that no- 

 tions wholly inconfiltent with the Utter, and which muft' have originated 

 in remote ages, when fcience of any kind had made but fmall progrefs, 

 are ftill preferved in different fdfims ; as in the Bbdgavat, which, treating 

 on thefyflem of the imiveife, places the moon above the fun, and the pla- 

 nets above the fixed flars. 



To render this paper more intelligible, I have fubjoined a diagram of the' 

 Hindu ecliptick, which may alfo ferve to illuftrate fome agronomical papers 

 in -the preceding volume. Its origin is confidered as diftant 180 degrees 

 in longitude from Spica ; a flar, which feems to have been of great ufe in re- 

 gulating their aftronomy, and to which the Hindu tables of the beft autho- 

 rity, although they differ in other particulars, agree in affigning fix figns of 

 longitude counted from the beginning oiAfwint their firft Nacjhatra. From 

 the beginning of Afwifii, (according to the Hindu preceffion, now 19° 22' 



Neither le Gentil, nor Bail ly, had any other authority for placing the origin of the Hind* 

 zodiack in longitude ios 6 Q , at the beginning of the cali yug, than refults from a computation of the pre- 

 ceffion for 3600 years, at the end of which expired term of the cali yug, it coincided with the equinox: it 

 is certain, that the Brahmens in this part of India fuppofe, as their aftronomy implies, a fimilar coincidence 

 together with a conjunction of the planets in the fame point by their mea-* motions when the cali yug began ; 

 and fince in the prefent amount of tha preceffion, and eonfequently in the origin of the zodiack, as well as- 

 in many other particulars, the .Brahmens of Tri-valore agree with thofe of Bengal, it is not at all probable, 

 that thev fhould have different fyftems. But M. BaiLey thinks the Indian zodiack has had two origins; 

 one of them as I defcribe it, the other, as he computes it for the beginning of the cali yug •: — it may in- 

 deed have had many origins, although there (eems at prefent but one to be found ; for it is not in the leaft 

 inconfiftent with the principles of the Hindu aftronomy to fuppofe, that, if ever an alteration took place in 

 the mode of beginning the year, fome alteration was at the fame time made in the origin of the zodiack 

 likcwil'e. The origin of the Chineft zodiack is defcribed to be in a part of the heavens oppofite to that of 

 the Hindus ; for Spica diftinguilhcs their conftellation Ki-v, which is the ii lit of their twenty-eight lunar 

 roanfions'; and fincc it is agreed, that both fyftems were originally the f;me, a confiderable alteration, 

 with refpeft to the origin of the zodiack, muft neceffariiy have happened in one of them. 



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