1880.] 



Dr. G. Thibaut — On the Suryaprajnapti. 



201 



jnapti, would succeed in solving some more of the riddles presented to us by 

 the former work. 



It must be remembered that there is no indissoluble connexion between 

 that part of the system of the Suryaprajnapti, which might be called the 

 chronometrical one, viz., the doctrine of the quinquennial yuga and its 

 various subdivisions and that part which propounds the theories accounting 

 for the apparent motions of the sun and the moon ; it might therefore be 

 that the Vedanga agrees with the Suryaprajnapti only in the former point 

 and follows a different course with regard to the latter. There occurs, how- 

 ever, one expression in the Vedaiiga which makes it appear likely that the 

 analogy between the two books extends to the second point also, viz., the 

 " suryamaiidalani" mentioned in verse 22. 



^flt<Tq^«TJr«i: "^IV^HT f^Ji'^r frrf^HT I 



WSIVTTJT^ ffrNrsf^t Jl^T \f^' II 



It certainly looks as if by these " sun circles" in which the sun is said 

 to be at the end of a tithi, we had to understand daily circles of the same 

 kind as those which, according to the Suryaprajnapti, the sun describes 

 round Mount Meru. 



A few words may here be added on the principal feature common to 

 the cosmological systems of the Puranas, Buddhists and Jainas, viz., the 

 doctrine of sun, moon and constellations revolving round Mount Meru. In 

 order rightly to judge of these conceptions we must remember that they 

 arose at a time when the idea of the sphericity of the earth had not yet 

 presented itself to the Indian mind, at a time ( — if we may assume that 

 the Puranic-Buddhistic cosmological system is not later than the period 

 of the rising of Buddhism — ) when this then truly revolutionary idea 

 first suggested itself to the early Greek philosophers. And if we carry our 

 thoughts back to that early stage of the development of scientiGc ideas and 

 try to realize the conceptions which then were most likely to present them- 

 selves to enquirers, the old Indian system will lose much of its apparent 

 strangeness and arbitrariness. How indeed could men ignorant of the fact 

 that the earth is a sphere freely suspended in space explain to themselves 

 the continually recurring rising and setting of the heavenly bodies ? what 

 could their ideas be regarding the place to which sun and moon went after 

 their setting, and the path which \inseen by man they followed so as to 

 return to the point of their rising ? Certainly the difficulty was a very 

 great one to those as well who had some vague notion about the earth 

 extending in all directions to an unlimited distance as to those who imagin- 

 ed it to be bounded at a certain distance by a solid firmament surrounding 

 and shutting it in on all sides. We may recall, as one of the fancies to 

 which the difficulty of this question gave rise, the old poetical idea, pre- 



