Archaeoastronomy and Vedic chronology

Modern authors have attempted to date the Vedic period based on archaeoastronomical calculations. In the 18th century William Jones tried to show, based on information gathered from Varaha Mihira, that Parashara muni lived at 1181 BCE.

Quotes

• The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest, and that from which the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews derived Hindus their knowledge.
  • Jean-Sylvain Bailly. source:: The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

• That Hindu astronomical lore about ancient times cannot be based on later back-calculation, was also argued by Playfair’s contemporary, the French astronomer jean-Sylvain Bailly: “The motions of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the [modern] tables of Cassini and Meyer. The Indian tables give the same annual variation of the moon as that discovered by Tycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school of Alexandria and also the Arabs.”
  • Jean-Sylvain Bailly. source: World as Seen Under the Lens of a Scientist, Dr Vithal B. Shetty Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House. Quoted in S. Sathe: In Search for the Year of the Bharata War, Navabharati, Hyderabad 1982, p.32. , quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• ...it is unwise, in my opinion, to reject the astronomical evidence in too hasty a fashion. As has long and continuously been pointed out by numerous scholars, the Brahmana texts have a significant number of references that might point to the position of the sun in Kritika (Pleiades) at the vernal equinox some time in the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Granted, as Whitney (1895), Thibaut (1985) and more recently Pingree (1973) point out, the zodiac may not have been divided in the exact same way in the ancient period as in the historic, and the computing skills of the ancient Indo- Aryans may not have been as accurate as they became. But, at the same time, there are actually no demonstrable grounds to assert that they were not. The astronomical treatise, the Vedangajyotisa, albeit open to similar objections, gives very precise astronomical information on all four solsticial and equinoctial points corresponding to the late 2nd millennium B.C.E., and this text is much later than the Brahmanas. These data are as valid evidence for an early date for the Rgveda (which long proceeded all these texts), as any evidence brought forward to promote a later date.
  • Edwin Bryant . "'Somewhere in Asia and No More,' Response to 'Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda' by Kazanas." Journal of Indo-European Studies 30.3-4 (2003): 341-353

• A few things can be established with certainty, others with a good degree of likelihood, and yet others remain entirely uncertain.
  • Writing about the astronomical evidence in the Vedas
  • H.H. Hock. quoted in Philology and the historical interpretation of the Vedic texts, in: Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. page 297 . quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

• “The observations on which the astronomy of India is founded, were made more than three thousand years before the Christian era. (…) Two other elements of this astronomy, the equation of the sun’s centre and the obliquity of the ecliptic (…) seem to point to a period still more remote, and to fix the origin of this astronomy 1000 or 1200 years earlier, that is, 4300 years before the Christian era”.
  • John Playfair in Dharampal: Indian Science and Technology, p-118. , quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• If we exclude the possibility of every astronomical notice in Vedic literature being a record of ancient tradition, which is extremely unlikely, we can say that there is strong astronomical evidence that the Vedas are older than B.C. 2500. They might be as old as B.C. 4000. There is some support for this date, but it is not convincing.
  • Gorakh Prasad (1935) quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12
  • Prasad, Gorakh. 1935. "Astronomical Evidence on the Age of the Vedas." Bihar and Orissa Research Society 21:121-136.

• ...a reference in Satapatha Br II, 1, 2, 2-3 to the effect that the Krttikás/Pleiades are fixed in and do not swerve from the east. This reference has been examined, analysed, interpreted and discussed ad nauseam yielding all kinds of results according to the scholar’s desires. S. Kak arrived at a date 2950 (1994:35). This comes very close to what Achar finds, namely that such astronomical events could have been observed only c 3000. Achar mentions that S. B. Dikshit had propounded the very same idea about 100 years earlier but later Western scholars rejected it by claiming that the ÍB phrase "never swerve from the east" means something else.
  • Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda: Indo-Aryan migration debate. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.

• He [Jacobi] thinks that the Rigveda shows that the winter solstice took place in the month Phalguna, and on the ground of the precession of the equinoxes this must mean that the observation thus recorded was made in the third millenium B.C. This view ... he supports by the fact that in the Grhya Sitras, or manuals of domestic ritual, of much later date, the ceremonial of the wedding includes an injunction to the wife to look at a star called Dhruva, “fixed,” and this can only have originated at a time when « Draconis was in the vicinity of the pole, there being no other star which could be called fixed at any period coincident with the probable age of the Rigveda: further he contends that the fact that Krttikas, the Pleiades, are placed at the head of the list of twenty-seven or twenty-eight Naksatras, “lunar mansions,” in the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda Samhitas means that Krttikas marked the vernal equinox when the list was compiled, and this date fell in the third millenium B.C.'
  • A.B. Keith 1925, quoted in Levitt S.H. 2003 'The Dating of the Indian Tradition' Anthropos vol 98 (341-59).

Quotes from Ancient Indian texts used in Archaeoastronomy

Quotes from Ancient Indian texts that have been used to make Archaeoastronomical claims on Indian history

• They establish the consecration soma-pressings before(hand). They should consecrate themselves one day after the new moon of Taisa, or of Magha, so they say. Now, either (view) is widely proclaimed; but that of Taisa is more (commonly) proclaimed, as it were. They obtain this thirteenth, additional month. So great indeed is the year as this thirteenth month. So here the entire year is obtained.
  • Kausitaki (or Sankhayana) Brahmana. 19.2-3 quoted from Hans Henrich Hock. Philology and the historical interpretation of the Vedic texts, in: Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. 296-7

• He (the sun) rests at the new moon of Magha, about to turn northward; these (the priests) rest (too), about to sacrifice with the introductory atiratra; so they obtain him first . . . [A clear reference to the winter solstice, after which the sun “turns northward,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the north each day] He goes northward for six months; him they follow with six-day sacrifices in correct order. Having gone north for six months, he stays, about to turn south; they rest, about to sacrifice with the vifuvat ( midsummer) sacrifice; so they obtain him a second time. [A clear reference to the summer solstice, after which the sun “turns south,” i.e. begins to rise farther and farther to the south each day] He goes south for six months; they follow him with six-day sacrifices in reverse order. Having gone south for six months, he stays, about to return north; they rest, about to sacrifice with the mahavrata sacrifice; so they obtain him a third time [a clear reference to the winter solstice again].
  • Kausitaki (or Sankhayana) Brahmana. 19.2-3 quoted from Hans Henrich Hock. Philology and the historical interpretation of the Vedic texts, in: Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. 296-7
  • According to Hock, this text has been used to support estimates with a range from 2350 BC (Tilak for the related Taittiriya- Sayhita passage), to 1391 BC (Davis and Colebrook), to as late as 1181 BC (Jones and Pratt), or even 800–600 BC (Macdonell and Keith’s conclusion). A recent publication by Rajaram (1995: 41–3) fixes the date even earlier than Tilak, to around 3000 BC. quoted from Hans Henrich Hock. Philology and the historical interpretation of the Vedic texts, in: Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.