Development of Astronomy between the Vedāṅga Jyotis.a and Āryabhat.a

In this chapter we review the development of astronomy between two specific dates, roughly from 1300 BC to AD 500. Although this development is best understood by an examination of the Vedic and post-Vedic texts 1 , note that not all scientific knowledge of those early times can be assumed to have been committed to writing or, if written down, has survived. There are gaps in the sequence of ideas and these were filled in the past based on preconceived notions rather than a sound approach. New evidence of the past two decades has contradicted the old 19th-century model of the rise of the Indian civilization and the new, emerging paradigm has significant implications for the understanding of the development of astronomy in India. Remembering that the beginnings of Indian culture have been traced to about 40000 BC in the rock art that has been found all over India, 2 it is almost certain that the heavens had been studied for a long, long time. An examination of the motifs of the art of the earliest phases supports this view. 3 An amulet seal from Rehman Dheri (2400 BC) indicates that the naks. atra system is an old one. The seal shows a pair of scorpions on one side and two antelopes on the other (Figure 1). It has been argued 4 that this seal represents the opposition of the Orion (Mr. ga´siras, or antelope head) and the Scorpio (Rohin. ¯ ı) naks. atras. There exists another relationship between Orion and Rohin. ¯ ı, here the name of α Tauri, Aldebaran. The famous Vedic myth of Praj¯ apati as Orion, as personification of the year, desiring his daughter (Rohin. ¯ ı) (for example Aitareya Br. 3.33) represents the age when the beginning of the year shifted from Orion to Rohin. ¯ ı. For this " transgression " , Rudra (Sirius, Mr. gavy¯ addha) cuts off Praj¯ apati's head. It has been suggested that the arrow near the head of one of the antelopes represents the decapitation of Orion, and this seems a very reasonable interpretation of the iconography of the seal. The development of the early phases of Indian astronomy must be viewed in the context of a long prehistory. The Ved¯ a ˙ nga Jyotis. a (VJ) of Lagadha (1300 BC) is one of the subsidiary Vedic texts, so its contents must be considered to be roughly coeval with …