157 
1894.] G. Thibaut— Babylonian Origin of the Lunar Zodiac. 
(Balance), and 8 and (3 Scorpionis as Uis-akrabi. (Head of the Scorpion). 
It would be of interest, could we apply this latter test also to the three 
purva and uttara pairs of the Hindu series. The Babylonian list, how¬ 
ever, exhibits not any stars either of Sagittarius—in which the two 
Ashddhds of the Hindus are situated—nor of Pegasus, and Andro¬ 
meda, to which the two Bhadrapadas belong. Of the three stars, 
on the other hand, which constitute pilrva and uttara-phalgunl (viz., 0 
and 8 Leonis; (3 Leonis) one only, indeed, viz., (3, occurs in Pro¬ 
fessor Hommel’s list; but another (viz., 6) is added in Epping’s list 
(Z. f. A., December 1892), and as the names of the two are zibbat-arii 
(tail of the Lion) and zibbat-Jcalab (?) aru, it seems that here the Baby¬ 
lonians also viewed the stars of two stations, as forming one group only. 
There is, of course, no better positive historical evidence for the 
Mendzil of the Arabs ever having been less than twenty-eight, than there 
is in the case of the naJcshatras. In one case (viz., that of the two 
Far ah ) we have a designation which, in a manner analogous to that of 
the Hindus, points to two stations being viewed as parts of one large 
constellation; but the case is the most striking one of the three men¬ 
tioned above, in which this mental combination is almost inevitably pro¬ 
voked by the configuration of the group. In the case of the three 
other mendzil (as-Sarfa; al-Iklil; al-Balda ), which Professor Hommel 
is inclined to view as having sprung from the later subdivision of large 
groups of stars into two stations, there is no other reason than the 
hypothetical later bi-partition of the corresponding asterisms of the 
Hindu Series. Professor Hommel wishes to connect the amplification 
of the assumed original series of twenty-four mendzil into the known 
one of twenty-eight, with the introduction of Hindu astronomical doc¬ 
trines into Islamitic countries. But this hypothesis has absolutely no¬ 
thing to rest on. 
We now advance to the last step in Professor Hommel’s argumenta¬ 
tion, viz., the attempt to show that the series of asterisms composing 
the different lunar zodiacs is fundamentally identical with the stars and 
groups of stars which the Chaldean Astronomers employed as their 
normal stars. This is clearly the most important link in the chain of 
attempted proof. What we have considered so far might indeed be 
termed merely preliminary, or even comparatively irrelevant. It does 
not, after all, greatly matter—an advocate of the Babylonian origin 
of the lunar zodiacs might say — whether the stations of the Hindus, 
Arabs, and Chinese were originally twenty-four or not; nor whether 
the Babylonian normal stars can be shown, or not, to fall into twenty- 
four groups; nor what the exact historical relation of the stations of 
the Arabs and Hindus may have been; nor how far the star groups of 
