ALLUSIONS IN SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. 



193 



tude 49° is — like that of the polar regions— a Japhetic experi- 

 ence and record, not a Semitic nor a Hamitic one. The Iranian 

 derived it from his own ancestry ; he borrowed it neither from 

 Jew, Babylonian, Egyptian nor Greek. Further, the division of 

 the day is a peculiar one ; it is neither into twelve parts, 

 as with the Babylonians, nor into twenty-four, as witli the 

 Egyptians, but into eighteen. 



The Bundahis. 



I can find the date, neither of the sojourn of Yim within the 

 polar regions, handed down in the Yendidad, nor of the sojourn 

 in latitude 49° north, embodied in the Bundahis ; both belong 

 to Iranian pre-history. But of the date when the Bundahis 

 itself was compiled, the evidence is clear and unmistakable, for 

 its framework is connected with the constellations, and the 

 references to these are consistent throughout its 34 chapters. 



Thus in Chapter IT, Varak, the Bam, is given as the first of 

 the signs, and in Chapter Y the summer solstice is placed at 

 the first degree of the Crab (Kalakancj), showing that it is later 

 than Hipparchus. Chapter YII, verse 2, states that : 



" Every single month is the owner of one constellation : the 

 month Tir is the fourth month of the year, and Cancer the fourth 

 constellation from Aries." 



The solar year is therefore the one in use, as its months are 

 arbitrary and conventional months, not natural months or luna- 

 tions, as with the Jews and Babylonians. But Chapter XXX1Y 

 allows us to date the book more precisely. It gives the chrono- 

 logy of the world, stating that " Time was 12,000 years," and 

 that each millennium was placed under the rule of a sign of the 

 zodiac* For the first 3,000 years under the reigns of Aries, 



* This is evidently a misrendering and misunderstanding of the great 

 discovery of Hipparchus, made 128 B.C., who found that the equinoctial 

 point moved backwards through the signs at a rate which, according to 

 his determination, would complete the revolution in 36,000 years. The 

 writer of the Bundahis (circ. a.d. 40) evidently supposed that the move- 

 ment was a forward one, and was three times as rapid as Hipparchus 

 had computed. But it is evident that, in spite of these mistakes, the 

 compiler was attempting to place the Magian revealed religion on a 

 sound scientific basis— a basis of science up-to-date. But before this 

 astronomical discovery of Hipparchus could have thus been accepted as a 

 part of divine revelation, not only by his own, but by other nations, 

 some long period of time must have elapsed. For it was accepted so 



O 



