Orion revisited

About a century ago Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in his book named Orion, tried to date Rigveda and other Vedic scriptures, by using positions of the sun against star asterisms, at a given season. He understood these sun positions keep changing all the time because of the precession motion of the earth around its axis. I feel that the time has come to revisit this topic, primarily because of one reason.

The reason for this re-look is the successful decipherment of the ancient Indus script in 2024 by a person, who calls himself as Yajnadevam. He is an IT specialist and has great proficiency in Sanskrit and Mathematics. According to me, his find should be called the biggest discovery of 2024, in the Indian context. We can certainly presume his decipherment to be correct, as no one so far has been able to falsify it.

Yajnadevam's major finding is that the IVC language is none other than Vedic Sanskrit and IVC script is the great grandmother of Bramhi, our ancient script. What Yajnadevam has found further, is equally breathtaking. In many cases the texts found on IVC seals and tablets include quotes and words from our oldest scripture, Rigveda.

Yajnadevam's discovery has one major implication for ancient Indian history. It pushes back the Vedic period by an unknown interval of time. Now the question before us is whether we can corroborate this possibility by any other evidence or method? 

Before we start our study and go back to the Vedic period, let me first clarify an important and confusing concept of ‘Rashis’ or ‘Signs of Zodiac’. For more details, I request you, my readers, to refer to my blogpost on this subject, ‘Who introduced Signs of The Zodiac to India?’.  It should suffice to mention here, that the concept of ‘Rashis’ is a much later concept introduced in India, after arrival of Greeks, most probably by ‘King Menander’. Prior to that, we find no references in the scriptures to ‘Rashis”. There are references only to star asterisms, known in our scripturesas ‘Nakshatra’,  that are positioned near ecliptic or path of the sun in the sky round a year. If we refer to any Hindu calendar or ‘Panchang’ today. We can easily find a list of 27 ‘Nakshatras’ or star asterisms. The first star asterism that is mentioned in this list today is ‘Ashvini’ (अश्विनी) or Aries, comprising of three stars, alpha, beta and gamma Ariets. 

Let us turn our attention now, to Two of our ancient scriptures, ‘Taittariya Sanhita of Krlshna Yajurveda’ and ‘Atharva Veda’, believed to be from Vedic period. Both have a ‘sukta’ or Hymn, known as ‘Nakshatra Sukta,’ which lists names of all the ‘Nakshatras’ or star asterisms that are seen along the Zodiac, or ecliptic. This list consists of 28 names instead of 27 mentioned intoday’s ‘Panchang’. The last star asterism mentioned in this list is that of‘Abhijit”.

What is surprising here is that in both these ‘suktas’, thefirst star asterism mentioned is ‘Krittika’ (कृत्तिका)or Pleiades instead of ‘Ashvini’ (अश्विनी), as is done today. A question arises naturally, as to Why does this list begin with Pleiades, instead of Aries, as it is done today?  Obviously, there must be a reason. A simplistic reason for that could probably be  that, when this Hymn was composed, Pleiades was the first asterism, the sun crossed, when the new crop cycle or a solar year began. But things may not be that simple.

Here we come across our first difficulty.  As we just saw above, the Vedic calendar system depended on the sidereal year, linking sun’s position against star asterisms, whereas a crop cycle depended on three principal seasons observed in semi tropical India. Namely Summer, Rains and Winter. To align these two cycles, the Vedic calendar had to begin near about one of the four marker days of a solar year. Any school going lad would tell us that these marker days are obviously Spring equinox, summer solstice, Autumn equinox and winter solstice. If we agree with that, we need to find answers to a further question. Which of these solar markers was used by our ancestors to calculate the beginning day of a solar year? And how could our forefathers exactly mark out the marker days, with only their eyesight or crude primitive instruments, to assist?

To find answer to the latter of these questions, we need to travel to India’s Gujarat state and to ‘Rann of Kutch (officially spelled Kachchh)’, therein, a barren marshy tract of land that gets filled with sea water during rains and remains a marshy wasteland for rest of the year with surface covered with salt. More precisely we need to go to ‘Khadir Island’, a scarcely populated island in this wet salty desert, not very far from India’s border with Pakistan.  

On this desolate island, India’s archeologists led by Mr. Jagat Pati Joshi, made one of the significant discoveries of India’s ancient past, when in 1968, they discovered a city from the Vedic period here, located exactly on the tropic of cancer, consisting of a citadel, bailey and township. The site was near a small village known as ‘Dholavira’. Consequently, the ancient city itself started being called by that name.  What perhaps can be called a unique feature of this sight, was the fact that a huge signboard was found lying near one of the gates, displaying most probably the name of the city itself. There was a small difficulty however, as the signboard was in IVC script, and the language also was unknown. Dholavira’s ancient name remained a mystery until last year. Despite the signboard being discovered.  

In 2024, Yajndevam’s decipherment of IVC script made it possible to read Dholavira’s signboard for the first time. The language used here is classical Vedic Sanskrit and the words are “raka-vararaka-araras” (रक-वरारक-अररस). Yajnadevam translates this as “Gem of chosen gems,entrance”

Let us now return to our subject proper. During my visit to Dholavira, our guide gave us some information about the way basic calendrical information was maintained by the Dholavira people. According to him, certain staircases in the Citadel ruins were found to have 15 and 30 steps. It was easily possible, by using markers, which probably were shifted every day, to know what day of the fortnight or month that day was. By using similar methods, it was possible to know the month. This information is quite useful yet fails to provide any answer to the problem of how Dholavira people managed to align their sidereal Vedic calendar with seasonal calendar. Or in other words, how did they find the marker days mentioned above? How they did it, probably would have remained a mystery forever, but for a chance discovery of two circular structures, by two scientists: Mr. M N Vahia from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and Mr. Srikumar Menon from Manipal School of Architecture and Planning (Karnataka). 

A group of scientists now say that this discovery is the first identification of a structure used for observational astronomy during the Harappan Civilization or in other words, these two circular structures were parts of a functional astronomical observatory. With help of which, Dholavira people were able to identify marker days of solar calendar such as summer and winter solstices or spring and autumn equinoxes and use that information to conduct business, farming and other activities. My readers, who wish to find out more information about this topic may visit my blogpost “Amazing Dholavira part III”.

There is one more issue, which has much relevance and must be considered first. This is the concept of “Uttarayana” (उत्तरायण). Readers may be well aware, that sun’s position at Zenith above equator, keeps changing all year long from 24.5 degrees south of zenith point to 24.5 degrees to north of zenith point. In fact, the marker points mentioned above are all caused by this traverse.  The period (six months or half year) for which the sun traverses in northern half is called as “Uttarayan” in Hindu Panchang system and was once considered as a suitable time for carrying religious functions like Yajnas etc. Some confusion exists regarding exact period of “Uttarayana”, whether from Winter solstice to summer solstice or from Spring equinox to Autumnal equinox?   Lokamanya gets rid of this confusion by quoting from another scripture, “Shatpath Bramhana”, which says that seasons of Spring, summer and rains comprise of “Uttarayana”, a period when the sun protectsthe Devas. Original quotation has been mentioned below.

With this information in our bag, we can now turn our attention to Lokamanya’s brilliant treatise “Orion” and straight jump to the chapter, which he names as ‘Krittikas’.  Lokamanya quotes here a few important hymns from the ancient scriptures, ‘Taittariya Samhita’ alongwith “Taittariya Bramhana’ and ‘Shatapatha Bramhana’. Some of which I have listed below.

·    “Nakshatras are the houses of Gods…. The Nakhatras of the Devas begin with the Krittikas and end with Vishakha, whereas the Nakshatras of Yama begin with the Anuradhas and end with the apaBharanis” (दे॒व॒गृ॒हा वै नक्ष॑त्त्राणि (………) कृत्ति॑काः प्रथ॒मम् । विशा॑खे उत्त॒मम् । तानि॑ देवनक्ष॒त्त्राणि॑ । अ॒नू॒रा॒धाः प्र॑थ॒मम् । अ॒प॒भर॑णीरुत्त॒मम्तानि॑ यमनक्ष॒त्त्राणि॑ । यानि॑ देवनक्ष॒त्त्राणि॑ । तानि॒ दक्षि॑णेन॒ परि॑यन्ति ।यानि॑ यमनक्ष॒त्त्राणि॑ तान्युत्त॑रेण।) Taittariya Bramhana (1.5.2.7) 

·       Krittikas are the mouth of Nakshatras (कृत्ति॑कास्व॒ग्निमाद॑धीत। (…….) मुखं॒ वा ए॒तन्नक्ष॑त्राणाम्। यत्कृत्ति॑काः।} Taittariya Bramhana (1.1.2.1)

·       Vasanta (spring) is the mouth of seasons (मुखं॒ वा मुखं॒ वा ए॒तदृ॑तू॒नाम् यद्व॑स॒न्तः।) Taittariya Bramhana (1.1.2.6)

·       Phalguni full moon is the mouth of the year.(सं॑वथ्स॒रस्य॒ यत्फ॑ल्गु सं॑वथ्स॒रस्य॒ यत्फ॑ल्गुनीपूर्णमा॒सो मु॑ख॒त) Taittariya Samhita (7.4.10)

·       The sun was to be considered as moving amongst and protecting the Devas, when he turned to the north, in the three seasons of spring, summer and rains. (वसन्तो ग्रीष्मो वर्षाः ते देवा ऋतवः शरद्धेमन्तः शिशिरस्ते पितरो य एवापूर्यतेऽर्धमासः स देवा योऽपक्षीयते स पितरोऽहरेव देवा रात्रिः पितरः अथ यत्र दक्षिणावर्त्तते, पितृषु तर्हि भवति) Shatpath Bramhana (2.1.3, 1-3)

Deducing from this and several other sources, Lokmanya rightly concludes that  when manuscripts of scriptures such as “Taittariya Samhita”, “Taittariya Bramhana”  in our hand were written, the sun must be crossing the asterism of “Krittikas” or Pleiades on the day of spring equinox and a new “Samvatsara’ or year began from full moon day of month of “Falgun”, when the Sun crossed the star asterism of “Purva Bhadrapada”.  Since “Atharva Veda” also puts “Krittika Nakshatra” as first “Nakshatra” in the “Nakshatra Sukta”, obviously it was also manuscripted in that period.

Let me do some quick calculations to find number of years it must have taken the spring equinox to move to  today’s “Uttar Bhadrapada” from period of scripting “Taittariya Samhita”, when spring equinox was in “Krittika Nakshatra”. Principal star of “Uttar Bhadrapada Nakshatra” is “Algenib” or Gamma Pegasus. Its right ascension is 00h13m14s or 3.29 degrees. Whereas principal star of “Krittika Nakshatra” is “Alcyone” or Eta Tauri. Its right ascension is 03h47m29s or 56.8708 degrees. Hence the total shift in position of Spring equinox is  56,8708-3.29= 53.58 degrees. Assuming a time lapse of 72 years for shift of 1 degree, in location of an asterism due to precession, the time lapse works out to about 3858 years. This means that the manuscripts in our hands of scriptures such as Taittariya Samhita” or “Atharva Veda” were written down sometime before 1850 BCE.

It should be interesting now to find out how far back we can go, by making another quick calculation. The “Nakshatra”, which the sun had crossed before Pleiades on spring equinox, would have to be “Mrigashirsh” or Orion. The principal star of this “Nakshatra” is Lambda Orionis. Its right ascension is 05h35m08s or 83.78 degrees. Hence the total shift in this case  would be 83.78-3.29= 80.5 degrees, which works out to 5796 years from today or approximately 3300BCE. This enables us  to say  positively  that these scriptures were certainly composed, sometime afterwards of 3300BCE but not later than 1850 BCE.

It so happens that Lokamanya did not stop here and continued his quest further in past or when the sun crossed Orion on day of spring equinox and arrives at a period of 4000BCE  as the period when earliest of the scriptures must have been composed. However, I would not go to those details, as we already have enough information in our bag.

Indian archaeologists now assign following time periods to major excavations done in Indus and Sarswati Valley civilizations.

·       Mohenjo-daro 2600 to 1900 BCE

·       Harrapa                 3300 to 1600 BCE

·       Rakhigarhi            3300 to 2000 BCE

·       Banavali                2500 to 1750 BCE

·       Chanhudaro 3300 to 1300 BCE

·       Dholavira               3500 to 1800 BCE

·       Sinauli                     2100 to 1800 BCE

It can be seen from this archaeological data, that in all these major sites, the learned people or Rishis should have been well conversant with the scriptures and Yajnadevam’s finding that tabs and seals found in all such places mostly bear words from Rigveda is certainly in the realm of truth.

On broader terms, this dating effort by Lokamanya also confirms the continuity of Indian civilization from 4000 BCE to today and the idea of a dark age before birth of Buddha can be just scrapped forever.

12th March 2025