152 
Gr. Thibaut— Babylonian Origin of the Lunar Zodiac. [No. 4, 
each station of that zodiac into two parts, is intelligible; for divisions 
comprising thirty degrees each naturally would, for many purposes, 
be found inconveniently large. For the same reasons we can under¬ 
stand the establishment of a series of thirty-six stars, three for each 
sign of the zodiac. I do not see any proof of a series of twenty-four 
stations having ever actually been employed by the Babylonians; but 
as said just now, a motive for its formation is at any rate imaginable, in 
the case of those who, as a matter of fact, started with a zodiac consist¬ 
ing of twelve parts. But for what purposes should we imagine that 
hypothetical zodiac of twenty-four members to have been borrowed by 
the other nations ? What we positively know is that the Hindus, 
Arabs and Chinese possessed zodiacs comprising twenty-eight or twenty- 
seven members, i.e., zodiacs having a special reference to the moon’s 
motion. Professor Hommel would have us believe that the Chinese, 
Arabs and Hindus independently borrowed from the Babylonians a 
zodiac of twenty-four asterisms; that this zodiac was afterwards ex¬ 
panded by the Chinese into one of twenty-eight members; that the 
Hindus independently did the same; and that the Arabs finally added 
four members to their zodiac at the time when they became acquainted 
with Hindu astronomy. Now the zodiac of the Hindus is from the 
earliest time at which it appears a decidedly lunar one; the nakshatras 
are primarily those asterisms with which the moon in her periodic revo¬ 
lution successively enters into conjunction, and that the Hindu Series 
of twenty-eight or twenty-seven asterisms should have been preceded 
by one of twenty-four members, is therefore, d priori, quite improbable. 
The same may be said of the Arab manzils ; and also of the Chinese 
sieu. The lunar character of the sieu is not so clearly apparent as that 
of the nakshatra and manzil. Bat just for that reason an amplifica¬ 
tion of an earlier list of 24 asterisms — which would have fully satisfied 
all practical requirements—into one of twenty-eight members is all 
the less probable. 
Professor Hommel speaks in several places of the twenty-four 
' lunar ’ stations. But a series of twenty-four stations can in no 
way be called ‘lunar.’ A ‘lunar’ zodiac — whether we understand 
thereby a zodiac of lunar origin or one of prevailingly lunar applica¬ 
tion—can be constituted only by a series of either twenty-seven or 
twenty-eight asterisms. 
There are further considerations which render improbable the 
hypothesis of the Babylonian Series of normal stars having been the 
prototype of the different lunar zodiacs. With the Arabs as well as 
the Hindus and Chinese, the tw T enty-eiglit or twenty-seven members of 
their zodiacs appear from the very outset as stations, i.e., sections of 
