PREFACE.

THE present volume is a sequel to my Orion or Researches
into the Antiquity of the Vedas, published in 1893. The esti-
mate of Vedic antiquity then generally current amongst Vedic
scholars was based on the assignment of arbitrary period of
time to the different strata into which the Vedic literature is
divided; and it was believed that the oldest of these strata
could not, at the best, be older than 2400 B. C. In my Orion,
however, I tried to shew that all such estimates, besides being
too modest, were vague and uncertain, and that the astronomi-
cal statements found in the Vedic literature supplied us with
far more reliable data for correctly ascertaining the ages
of the different periods of Vedic literature. These astronomical
statements, it was further shewn, unmistakably pointed out that
the Vernal equinox was in the constellation of Mṛiga or Orion
(about 4500 B. C.) during the period of the Vedic hymns, and
that it had receded to the constellation of the Kṛittikâs, or the
Pleiades (about 2500 B. C.) in the days of the Brâhmaṇas.
Naturally enough these results were, at first, received by scholars
in a sceptical spirit. But my position was strengthened when
it was found that Dr. Jacobi, of Bonn, had independently arrived
at the same conclusion, and, soon after, scholars like Prof.
Bloomfield, M. Barth, the late Dr. Bulher and others, more or
less freely, acknowledged the force of my arguments. Dr.
Thibaut, the late Dr. Whitney and a few others were, however,
of opinion that the evidence adduced by me was not conclusive.
But the subsequent discovery, by my friend the late Mr. S. B.
Dixit, of a passage in the Shatapatha Brâhmaṇa, plainly
stating that the Kṛittikâs never swerved, in those days, from