1877.] 
411 
Contributions to the explanation of the Jyotisha- Veddnga.—By 
G. Thibaitt, Ph. Dr. 
The small metrical treatise known by the name of the Jyotisha-vedan- 
ga has attracted the attention of scholars since the first time when Sanskrit 
literature began to he studied by Europeans. Especially it was the 
celebrated verses containing a statement regarding the place of the winter- 
solstice at some ancient, although as it finally has turned out, rather 
indefinite period, which gave rise to a good deal of comment and speculation. 
They have been discussed in all their bearings by Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, 
Bentley, Davis in the beginning of this century, and were submitted 
at a more recent period to renewed investigation; it may suffice to refer to 
Prof. A. Weber’s papers on the nakshatras (especially the second one, 
p. 355), Prof. M. Muller’s preface to the fourth volume of his large edition 
of the Rik-samhita, which moreover contains some calculations by Arch¬ 
bishop Pratt and Prof. W. E. Donkin, and the important paper by Prof. 
Whitney in the first volume (new series) of the Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society of Great Britain, the substance of which is reproduced in 
the twelfth essay, second series, of his “ Oriental and Linguistic Studies.’’ 
These verses about the places of the winter-solstice, bearing as they do on 
the question of the chronology of Yedic literature, certainly are the most 
important of the whole treatise, and may justly claim a much larger 
amount of interest than we can accord to the remainder of the Jyotisha ; 
nevertheless the Jyotisha being avowedly the oldest Indian work referring 
to astronomy which has come down to our time, it was highly desirable that 
we should be enabled, by a publication of the entire work, to judge of its value. 
This was at last rendered possible by the paper of Prof. A. Weber “ Ueber den 
Vedakalender, Namens Jyotisham” published in the transactions of the 
Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, 1862 ; which contains an edition of 
the complete text based on the comparison of a great number of manu¬ 
scripts, the gloss on the text by Somakara, a translation of the text which is 
founded on Somakara’s explanations as far as these owing to the excep¬ 
tionally bad state of the manuscripts could be made out, and a very in¬ 
structive commentary by Prof. Weber himself, in which there is collected a 
large amount of material from divers sources tending to the elucidation of 
the obscure verses of the Jyotisha. But in spite of the important step 
in advance made in Prof. Weber’s edition, there remains, as he has himself 
acknowledged, much to be done before we can claim fully to understand the 
Jyotisha. The first obstacle in our way is of course the style of the treatise 
itself with its enigmatical shortness of expression, its strange archaic forms 
and its utter want of connexion between the single verses. The second ob- 
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