गुप्त अभिलेख संग्रह (जे. एफ. फ्लीट - गुप्त सम्राटों एवं परवर्ती नरेशों के ऐतिहासिक पाषाण व ताम्रलेख)

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS ; APPENDIX III. 173
any calculations required.¹ But such is not the case with the passing of Jupiter from one
sign of the zodiac into another. No kind of apparatus can determine Jupiter’s mean longitude.
It is to be found only by calculations, the rules for which must have been established
after observations carried on during a very long time ; to lay down the means of determining
Jupiter's mean yearly or daily motion, is not a thing that can be accomplished in a few
years. It seems, therefore, quite evident that the system of naming the saṁvatsaras after
the nakshatras in which Jupiter rises, i.e. the heliacal-rising system, is the only origi-
nal one.
So much, as regards the antiquity of the heliacal-rising system. Let us now look into its
somewhat later use. Varâhamihira is later than Âryabhaṭa. And his verse with which
I have opened my account of the Twelve-Year Cycle, undoubtedly refers to this system.
So, also, another of his verses, in the Brihat-Saṁhitâ, viii. 27, points to the same thing.
It runs—âdyaṁ Dhanishṭhâṁ samabhiprapannô² Mâghê yad=âyâty=udayaṁ Surêjyaḥ |
¹ The phenomenon, moreover, is one to which much attention has always been paid in India.
Even in the present day, almost all the Hindu Pañchâṅgs give the dates of the heliacal rising and
setting of Jupiter. This is for religious purposes ; since, when Jupiter is invisible, some duties and
ceremonies, such as investiture with the sacred thread, marriage, pilgrimages, &c., are not to be per-
formed ; and the dates in question are necessary, in order to know when he is visible, and when he
ceases to be so. In Pañchâṅgs printed in Mahârâshṭra, the custom of naming the saṁvatsaras after
the months is not in use ; in fact, the Twelve-Year Cycle is now almost unknown to the people at
large of the Dekkan. But in a Pañchâṅg prepared by Jwâlâpati Siddhânti, and printed in the
Jñânasûryôdaya Press at Madras, I find that the author, in the saṁvatsara-phala, after giving the two
saṁvatsaras of the Sixty-Year Cycle, according to the northern and the southern reckoning, goes on
to say—sarvatra Gur-udaya-vaśât (Chaitr)-âbdô grâhyaḥ,—" all over (India) a (certain) year (i.e.
such saṁvatsaras as Chaitra, &c.), which depends on the rising of Jupiter, is to be taken ;" from
which it is evident that some such rising-system, as that described above, is followed in this Pañchâṅg
from Madras. Also, in the Chaṇḍu-Pañchâṅg, prepared for the meridian of Jôdhpur in Mârwâḍ, and
used there and by Mârwâḍîs in other parts of India, the saṁvatsaras are named as Chaitra-Varsha,
Vaiśâkha-Varsha, &c. ; the system adopted in that Pañchâṅg, however, for naming the saṁvatsaras,
is the mean-sign system.
² The reading that I give, is from my manuscript copy. But, s and ś being very liable to confu-
sion, the reading âdyaṁ Dhanishṭh-âṁśam abhiprapannô, which is given in some printed copies, may
also be of some authority. By calculation, however, I find that Jupiter does not always stand just at
the beginning of Dhanishṭhâ, at the time of his rising at the commencement of the Prabhava saṁvat-
sara. And I think, therefore, that the reading which I give, is the author's original reading. I take
âdyaṁ to qualify the word nakshatram understood. And Varâhamihira calls the nakshatra in ques-
tion "the first," because his opinion was, I think, that Dhanishṭhâ was the first nakshatra of the
Sixty-Year Cycle, as it was of the Five-Year Cycle of the Vêdâṅga-Jyautisha [see its verse—svar
âkramêtê sôm-ârkau yadâ sâkaṁ sa-Vâsavau syât tad=âdi-yugaṁ Mâghaḥ,—" when the moon and
the sun, being in (the nakshatra) Vâsava (Dhanishṭhâ), go together in the heavens, then there is the
beginning of the Yuga (and of the month) Mâgha"], which two he intends to reconcile.—[Kern would
seem to have known only the reading âdyaṁ Dhanishṭh-âṁśam. His translation (Jour. R. As. Soc.
N. S. Vol. V. p. 49 f.), which follows also the reading of pravartatê for prapadyatê, is—" when Jupi-
ter, on reaching the first quarter of Dhanishṭhâ, rises in the lunar month of Mâgha, then begins the
first year of the cycle of sixty, named Prabhava, a year salutary to all beings." And he adds the