Dating Methods and Antiquity of the Panchangam

Let me start with a short(ened) story - one that you may already be aware of: 

The Moon/Chandra/Soma has 27 wives. The 27 wives (who are the daughters of Prajapati Daksha) are listed starting with Kritika (Pleiades) but his (Chandra's) favorite wife was Rohini (Aldebaran). This favoritism causes a lot of unhappiness amongst his other 26 wives and they complain to Prajapati Daksha, who gives shaapa (loosely translated as 'curse') to Chandra that his body will progressively waste away. Eventually, after much pleading by Chandra, and the intervention of Shiva (to whom Chandra also prays to intercede on his behalf) Daksha Prajapati relents and while the shaapa cannot be taken back, he says that this wasting will be periodic and Chandra will recover his full body. 

The actual story is much longer and more intricate. I have shortened it to the principal parts that matter. What is hidden in this story? Per Indic tradition, the sky ecliptic is divided into 27 segments (since with respect to distant stars, Moon completes one rotation in 27 days), and a principal bright(est) star in each segment is named. Each segment is called a nakshatra, with the said bright star sharing the nakshatra name. These are the 27 wives of the Chandra, the moon, Rohini and Krittika among them. In the Moon's transit across the skies, it goes to each of these 27 segments (or wives' houses) while in observance is closer to Rohini/Aldebaran than any of the other principal stars in the 27 nakshatras/segments of the sky, hence the 'favoritism' part. The wasting/recovery relates to the phases of Chandra or the Moon.

The point here is that the story is an allegory; actual, observed astronomical phenomena were encoded into complexly woven stories for two reasons: one to make it easier to remember the phenomenon, and two, to ensure that the phenomenon itself isn't forgotten - as humans (especially those without the benefit of having writing being preserved for millennia, and Indic tradition was indeed shruti or aural-based rather than written), a good story is a better way to remember rather than dry facts. 

Now on to what I really intended to convey in this monograph: 

Pretext: Brahmanas (the scripture variety, not the person variety) are essentially manuals for prayoga attached to Veda Samhitas, which explain and instruct on the performance of Vedic rituals. The Aitareya Brahmana itself is the Brahmana of the Shakala Shakha of the Rigveda, traditionally is ascribed to a certain Mahidasa Aitareya.

There is a passage in the Aitareya Brahmana (dvitiya adhyaaya) that says thus: 

यज्ञो वै देवेभ्य उदक्रामत्‌ ते देवा न किंचना शक्‌नुवन्‌ 
कर्तु न प्राजानंस्ते ब्रुवन्नदितिं त्वयेमं यज्ञं प्रजानामेति सा तथेत्यब्रवीत्सा वै वो वरं वृणा इति; 
वृणीष्वेति सैतमेव वरमवृणीत मन्प्रायणा यज्ञाः संतु मदुदयना इति तथेति; 
तस्मादादित्यश्वरुः प्रायणीयोभवत्यादित्य उदयनीयो वरवृतो हास्याः 

Transcoding and translating this (from The Aitareya Brahmana Of Rgveda, Dr. Sudhakar Malaviya, Hindi translation, re-translated to English)

Yajna went away from the Devas. They were unable to do anything, nor know why and where Yajna had gone. They went and prayed to Aditi (the mother of all the Devas): Only with your help we will be able to find Yajna again (i.e please help us). Aditi says "I will help you but you will have to grant me a vara"(loosely translated, boon). The Devas requested Aditi to seek her vara, and she said "Let the Yajna start from me and end at me". This is why offerings are offered to Aditi both at the prAyaNIya iShTi (i,e the beginning of the Yajna) and at the udAyanIya iShTi (i.e the end of the Yajna)

* * * * *

The passage before this section (this is the beginning of the second adhyaya) speaks of prAyaNIya

स्वर्गे वा एतेन लोकमुपप्रयंति यत्प्रयणीयस्तव्यायणीयस्य प्रायणीयत्वं 

The yajamana (one who performs) of the prAyaNIya prayoga (loosely translated as rite or ritual) experiences a nearness or proximity to Svarga (the abode of the Devas). Hence this ritual is called the prAyaNIya. 

This is followed by: 

[Segue: There are 5 types of vital forces - pancha pranas - in the body, per Indic scriptures: 

prANa: upward/inward moving energy

apAna: downward/outward moving energy

vyAna: circulation of energy

udAna: balancing of energy

samAna: assimilation of energy

All these are loose translations - these are not only untranslatable words, but also interpreted variously, especially with respect to new-age Yoga. 

End Segue]

प्राणॊ वै प्रायणीय उदान उदयनीयः समानो होत भवति; 

समानौ हि प्राणोदानौ प्राणानां क्लृप्त्यै प्राणानां प्रतिप्रज्ञात्यै

 

prAyaNIya is praNa and udAyanIya is udAna. The hotr (the priest conducting the prayoga) is samAna. Because prANa and udAna are samAna, prANa is karma (action) and udAna is jnAna (knowledge). 

There are some interpretational aspects to this, but the underlying meaning on this appears to be that prAyaNIya is the beginning and udAyanIya is the end of the yajna. The deeper meaning is not very important to the current context. 

* * * * *

And the passage after the primary one in question (the one at the top) is followed by: 

अथो एतं वरमवृणीत मयैव प्रचींदिशां प्रजानाथाग्निन दक्षिणां सोमेन प्रतीचीं सवित्रोदीचीमिति

She (Aditi) asked for one more vara 'through me you shall know the direction of East, through Agni South, through Soma the West and through savitr the North' 

The following passages in this (second) adhyaya enumerate the cardinal directions and goes on to summarize that the yajna is dedicated to the five devatas namely Pathya, Agni, Soma, Savita, and Aditi herself, and go on to list the more detailed procedures that must be followed during the yajna. 

* * * * *

The only part of this entire section that has a conversation is the conversation of the Devas speaking with Aditi, in the midst of detailing how the yajna must be conducted. 

- Why would this conversation be entered here, in the middle of a practical manual? 
- What could be the objective? 
- Why be so cryptic that Yajna (himself?) is missing (or has gone away)? 
- What does it mean that they did not know where he'd gone to?
- How does it procedurally connect to the yajna itself? (remember this is a manual for prayoga/procedure)

Here in lies the secret. The eminent scholar, freedom fighter Balgangadhar Tilak recognized it for what it exactly was for: 

This is an astronomical phenomenon or occurrence that is encoded as a story/conversation. In Indic tradition, the celebration of all yajnas, festivals and other rites was attached to the celestial calendar - the celestial clock in the sky, based on star positions. If the celestial clock went out of sync, then the time of celebration of these rites also went awry. 

This appears to be the time/event when, apart from the basic (24 hour) rotation of earth, the 365.24 day revolution around the sun, the 29.5 day lunar synodic month and a 27.3 day lunar sidereal month, they also recognized the precession of the earth's axis. 

The precession of the earth's axis relates to the slow 26000 year wobble of the earth's axis because of the gravitational impact of the Sun, the moon and to a lesser extent of Jupiter. One of the consequences of this axial precession is the changing of the polestar [the star around which our skies rotate] - now Polaris/Dhruva, it can be Vega/Abhijit at the other extreme in approximately 25,772 ÷ 2 = 12886 years

In the Indic tradition, Sidereal astronomy was used to mark time.  Time was marked based on the nakshatra at cardinal spatial points (the cardinal spatial points are the two solstices and the two equinoxes). 

So for example, conventionally, in India, the beginning of a year has always been at Vernal equinox. There is a large volume of scripture indicating Krittika (Pleiades) as the nakshatra at Vernal Equinox. However, this no longer true - today the nakshatra at Vernal equinox is Uttara Bhadrapada. The closest time in the recent past that Krittika was the nakshatra at Vernal equinox was in - wait for it - 2400 BCE - and can be confirmed by Planetarium software. 

The upshot of this is that the sky-calendar shifts over time and in order to provide a firm basis of when to perform a yajna before saying how to perform it, the conversation with aditi has been added to the Aitareya Brahmana. When Aditi says all yajna will begin and end with me, it actually means that Vernal equinox will begin and end at Aditi. 

Among the 27 nakshatras is Punarvasu, which itself is made up of two stars: Diti and Aditi (Castor and Pollux). When we track back time to when Punarvasu was at Vernal Equinox point, time needs to be pushed back a staggering 6000 BCE. In other words, 8000 years ago, our ancestors were already noticing that their calendars were messed up because of axial precession and had to figure out a correction to the calendar, in turn implying that the calendar had already been in existence at least 1000 years prior (26000 years or axial precession vs 27 nakshatras of the ecliptic). 

That puts a fully observed and cataloged sky and a fully formed panchangam or calendar based on star positions to at least 9000 years ago to 7000BCE. Not to mention, around 6000BCE, finding the calendar out of whack, they not only reset the calendar to Aditi/Punarvasu, but also set up a self-correcting calendar which put the start of the cycle for Vernal Equinox at Aditi/Punarvasu, having recognized that the changing of the sidereal year was cyclic and not unidirectional. This is the actual phenomenon documented by the story of Aditi and Yajna.

Whew! When I heard Raj Vedam detail this on a podcast recently, I had rush of goosebumps! 

This is our tradition. 

This is our tradition. 

The other aspect of this is how historical and astronomical phenomena were recorded in story form. To a garden variety reader - someone unaware of context, tradition and prayoga, that is, for someone who is not a practicing Sanatani, for one who has not undergone years of traditional studies, it would be near impossible to understand it for what it is. They would peg this as (an irrelevant) a conversation/story/myth and move on (as have numerous Western scholars on the Aitareya Brahmana). Again, this goes to show the information loss that occurs when we read a colloquial (laukika) translation of Samskritam scripture rather than its yaugika intent