156 G. Thibaut— Babylonian Origin of the Lunar Zodiac. [No. 4, 
ently made by tbe Hindus only, and merely borrowed by the Arabs 
when they first became acquainted with Indian astronomy. We also 
have seen that Professor Hommel draws his reason for suspecting four 
Indian Nakshatras from their names. But the very indefinite indica¬ 
tion supplied by the nomenclature certainly does not suffice to make 
up for the total absence of positive evidence as well as general probabi¬ 
lity. The Hindu Series, at any rate, appears from its very beginning as 
intimately and specially connected with the moon, 1 and we, therefore, 
neither expect to find, nor do we actually find, any trace of there having 
ever been less than twenty-seven or twenty-eight nakshatras. That in 
three cases two consecutive nakshatras are specially connected by having 
the same name—only differentiated by the addition of ‘ earlier ’ and 
‘later’ — certainly does not suffice to prove that there originally existed 
a list of twenty-four stations, but can very well be accounted for by the 
supposition that when a series of twenty-seven or twenty-eight stations 
was established, there either already existed such names as purva- and 
uttara-phalguni ; or that existing names such as phalguni were, for 
the purposes of the lunar zodiac, to be established, differentiated by 
the addition of purva and uttara ; or else, the asterisms then being 
named for the first time, that two stations were united by a common 
name because they struck the eye as constituting one whole as it were. 
The fact is, that in each case the stars of which the three pairs of 
purva and uttara consist, form an obvious and conspicuous square, 
so that nothing was more natural than to comprise them under one 
name, even on the part of those who distinctly viewed them as two 
stations. But even if there should have originally been an asterism 
called simply phalguni , this would not prove that such an asterism 
ever formed a member in a series of twenty-four nakshatras. 
The name anurddha finally, meaning ‘ that which follows on radhd,’ 
has no force whatever, to prove that the two stations were originally con¬ 
sidered as one only, not any more than the name of the Arab Manzil 
al-Debardn , i.e ., ‘ the following one,’ proves that station to have been 
at first one with the preceding station, viz., Thurayya, the Pleiades. 
Had radhd and anurddha, i.e., a , /?, 8, i Librae and /3, 8, tv, Scorpionis, 
ever constituted one primitive station, we might, moreover, reasonably 
expect to meet with the same stars combined in one group in the 
primitive Babylonian series assumed by Professor Hommel. But this 
is distinctly not the case, for we there find a and j3 Librae as Zibdnitu 
1 As has been raised beyond doubt by Professor Weber, in the course of the 
lengthy controversies carried on by him with several other scholars, concerning the 
original character of the nakshatras. 
