Today is the winter equinox - one of the few festivals days linked to the solar calendar India. In the north - especially in Punjab the day is celebrated as Lohri, a harvest festival, while in the south and east it is Makara Shankranti.
In the zodiac, Makara (crocodile), coincides with Capricon (sea-goat), and so this day marks the farthest movement of the sun on horizon, the longest night and shortest day of the year. From here on, as the sun moves further into Makara/Capricon, the days get longer, and winter is giving way to spring.
Indian astronomy is something I always wanted to understand better. No festival or ceremony - birth, marriage, death - is complete without a precise reference to the Hindu almanac which seemed like a complicated triangulation of the position of the stars, constellations, the sun and the moon. This is also the reason why most of us celebrate two birthdays every year - the constant solar calendar date, and the luni-solar date which changes each year.
It is only recently that I came across a video that explains some of these things clearly - a lecture by Prof. Raj Vedam titled, "Indian Civilization - The Untold Story". It is a long lecture (1:37 hrs) but what fascinated me is the explanation on astro-archeology. In this the author uses references to the luni-solar dates in the ancient epics and poems to determine when these works were composed.
First a bit of background. What is the Indian astronomical model?
The main elements of the traditional astronomy are the Nakshatras and Rashis. The night sky was divided into 13&1/3 segments (Nakshatra s) and each was named after the brightest stars in that section. The 27 Nakshatras covers the space around earth (27 * 13 1/3 = 360 degrees).
Next this was combined with the location of the full moon. So the sky was also divided into 30 degree segments called the Rashi -(30*12 = 360).
Now consider Kalidasa's epic poem, "Meghadoota" (The Cloud Messenger) which is said to have been composed in the 4th or 5th century CE. The story refers to a time when "the rainy season (Varsha Ritu) began in Ashada Masa". This means that at this time, the full moon was above Ashadha nakshatra (~Sagittarius constellation), and from here it follows that that the sun, 360 deg opposite, was in Punarvasu nakshatra (castor-pullox of Gemini).
At present the rainy starts when the sun is in MrigaShirsha nakshatra (Orion constellation). There is only one logical way to explain this discrepancy - precession of equinox.
What exactly is precession? It is the wobble of a spinning top. As the earth spins on its axis (once every 24 hours), it also wobbles slowly, making the axis turn a full circle in 25,771 years. Thanks to this wobble our view of the stars also changes as time goes by. Today Polaris is the pole-star (Dhruva today); in 3000 BC it was Thuban, and in 14000 AD it will be Vega (Abhijit).
So, coming back to Kalidasa's poem, it is precession that explains a two nakshatra difference between the observation of the start of the rainy season. Precession of equinox happens at the rate of 960 years per nakshatra. Hence the event being described by Kalidasa happened 1920 years ago (960 * 2), around ~100 CE about 400 years before the commonly accepted date of the composition!
This makes you wonder about conventional wisdom, most of which is based on the observations of Western scholars. Which are the other dates waiting to be revised in our textbooks?
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REFERENCES & LINKS
* "Indian Civilization - The Untold Story" by Prof. Raj Vedam - https://youtu.be/RGyjvyXEKdc
* List of Nakshatras - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nakshatras
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