s • * 
Chronology of the Hindoos, 563 
365 c!. 6 h. 12' 30^ ; and as they fuppofe the annual move- 
ment of the ftars in longitude, or the precefiion of the equi- 
noxes^ to be 54 feconds of a degree, or 21 7 J6' 7 of tune (ad- 
mitting, with them, the fun to move at the rate of a degree 
each day), their tropical year will be 365 d. 5I1. 50' 54^ (f) : 
but as the fun really moves over 5 4' 7 in 2i 7 55 /7 , its length is 
ftridfcly 365 d. 5 h. 50' 35", or i 7 52 77 greater than the tropical 
year as determined by Mayer at 365 5 b. 48' 43 77 . I he 
true precefiion being 5c 77 , 3, which fpace the fun defcribes in 
20 7 25 77 , the true fydereal year is 36 5 d. 6 h. 9 7 8 /7 , and con- 
fequently the Hindoo year exceeds it by f 22 7/ , or one day in 
430 years. If the opinion of aftronomers is well founded, 
that a fenfible diminution in the length of the year, as well as 
in the angle of obliquity of the ecliptic, has gradually taken 
place in the lapfe of many ages, it w r iil follow, that this error 
may not have exifted, or been fo great, at the period of adjuft- 
ing the Hindoo tables : and when we confider that there appears 
no ground to believe their apparatus for obferving was ever 
much fuperior to what it is difcovered amongft the Brahmans 
of this day (c), we are led to wonder at the precifion attained 
to in this determination, and which, in the calculation of the 
moon’s apogee, isftill more remarkable. 1 he defect" of art can 
have been compenfated only by the remote antiquity in which 
the feries of their obfervations originated, affording an oppor- 
tunity of correcting the inaccuracy of particular meafurements 
by a mean of large numbers and diftant intervals. 
They divide the zodiac into twenty-eight lunar and into 
twelve folar conftellations or figtis (^), and their aftronomical 
year commences with the fun’s arriving at the firft point of 
their conftellation of Aries. This divifion of the zodiac, fo 
far as the. accuracy of their obfervations allows, is connected 
v 4 D 2 with 
