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For five or six centuries India was the scene of foreign invasions and wars, and literature and science could not have a healthy and natural growth. Much of what was achieved was also under Buddhist influences, and bore the mark of Buddhism, and later Hindu writers have not been careful in preserving such records. And lastly, scientific works composed in this period’ have been replaced to a great extent by the more exhaustive works of the Pauranik Period which followed. For all these reasons, the literary and scientific remains of the Buddhist Period are scanty indeed. ; Nevertheless intellectual pursuits were never given up in India, and there was no such thing as a “ literary CHAP. XII] ASTRONOMY, &Cc. 203 interregnum” in Hindu history. And traces of what was done in the Buddhist Age are still left to us. We have spoken of the six schools of Hindu philos- ophy in our account of the Rationalistic .Period ; but it should be Fememberd that at least two of he UE, ee were Started in the piece | in = second century B.C. or later; and all the six schools were considerably developed in this Age. Patanjali was again the writer of the celebrated Mahabhasya or Great Commentary on Panini,—a monumenht of the ee: tical culture of the Buddhist Period. In religious literature the codes of Manu and Yaj-_ navalkya belong to the Buddhist Age, while much of the large mass of Buddhist theology was composed in- this Age in the universities of Nalanda and elsewhere, - In poetry, little is left to us that clearly belongs to this period ; but nevertheless the earliest beginnings of later or classic Sanscrit poetry date from this Age. We know from the inscriptions of the Gupta kings that graceful and flowing versification was appreciated. ; Poetry’ was honored by kings in courts, and Samudra- gupta, the greatest of the Gupta kings, who reigned to. . wards the close of the fourth century, was himself a poet, and received the title of Kaviraja from his court- poets. results were achieved in the_ Buddhist Age. 1 We fave 204. BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK IV. seen before that astronomical observations were made as early as the Vedic Age; and that carly in the Epic Age the lunar zodiac was fixed, the position of the sols- titial points marked, and other phenomena carefully observed and noted. No separate astronomical works however of these ages, or even of the Rationalistic Age, have come down to us. The oldest astronomical works of which we know anything or which have come down to us belong to the Buddhist Period. . Hindu writers speak of eighteen ancient Siddhan- tas or astronomica? works which are now mostly lost. They are named below :— 1, Pardsara Siddhanta to, Marichi Siddhanta 2. Garga re 1x, Manu 35 3. Brahma ” 12. Angiras *3 4. Sfirya s 13- Romaka rf 5. Vyasa a 14. Pulisa i 6. Vasishtha ,, 15. Chyavana ” gy. Atri ” 16, Yavana Pa 8 Kasyapa 5, 17 Bhrigu * va 9. Narada ay 18. Saunakaor Soma,, A few remarks about some of these Siddhantas will throw some light on the pursuit of the science in the Buddhist Age; and we will only premise that the Hin- dus received much of their astronomical knowledge of this age from the Greeks, who cultivated the science with great success. ~ Pardsara, says Professor Weber, is considered to be the most ancient of Hindu astronomers, and the second CHAP. XIII] ASTRONOMY, &C. - 205 in order of time is Garga. Of Pardsara we know next. to nothing, except that his name is connected with the Veda Calendar. The work which professes to contain Pardsara’s teachings is called the Paradsara Tantra. It was held in high esteem in the Pauranik Period, and Varahamihira often quotes from it. “To judge from very numerous quotations, the greater part, at least a large part of it is written in prose, a striking peculiarity among the works of its class, A pretty large part is in Anushtubh, and it contains also Aryas. Interesting for the geography of India is an entire chapter which Varé- hamihira, only changing the form, but leaving the matter almost intact, has given in the 14th Chapter of the Brihat Sanhita.”* As the Yavanas or Greeks are placed by Pardsara in Western India, the date of the work cannot be much earlier than the second century B.C. Of Garga we know something more, and he is one of the few Hindu writers who tell us something of the _ Greek invasion of India of the 2nd century B.C. He could feel respect for learned men among the Greeks,— although they were considered Mlechchhas,—-and the following passage of his is well known and often quoted : “The Yavanas (Greeks) are Mlechchhas, but amongst them this science (astrology) is well established. . There- fore they are honoured as Rishis,—how much more than an astrologer who is a Brahman.” * Kern, Brihat Sanhitd, Preface, p. 32. 206 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK IV. In the historical portion of his work Garga speaks of the four Yugas, the third ending and the fourth be- ginning with the war of the Mahabharata. Further on we are told of the’Sisunaga dynasty of Magadha, and then of the Maurya kings. Speaking of Salisuka, (whom we know to be the fourth in succession from Asoka the Great) Garga says: “Then the viciously valiant Greeks, after reducing Saéketa, (Oude) Panchala country and Mathura, will reach Kusumadhvaja (Patna) ; Pushpapura (Patna) being taken, all provinces will undoubtedly be in disorder.” So rarely do Sanscrit writers furnish us with his- torical facts that we are thankful to get in the astron- omy of Garga evidence of the conquest of India as far down as Patna by the Bactrian Greeks in the 2nd century B.C. Many of our readers are aware that the profound scholar Dr. Goldstiicker discov- ered mention of this invasion of Sdketa or Oude by the Greeks in Patanjali’s work, and has thus fixed the date of Patanjali the author of the Mahabhasva and the Yoga Philosophy. - But we will. proceed with Garga. “The uncon- querable Yavanas (Greeks) will not remain in the middle-country. There will be a cruel, dreadful war among themselves, Then after the destruction of the Greeks at the end of the Yuga, seven powerful kings will reign in Oude.” Weare then told that after the Grecks, the rapacious Sakas were the. most powerful, CHAP. XIIL] ASTRONOMY, &C. 207 and we have little difficulty in recognizing in them the Yu-Chi conquerors, who destroyed the kingdom of Bactria about 130 B.C, These new conquerors conti- nued to repeat their depredations, and the annals of Garga here come to an end. From the details given above we would agree with Dr. Kern in placing Garga in the first century before Christ. We now proceed to the other Siddhantas, and we will first take up the five Siddhantas which are known as the Pancha-siddhanta, and on which Vara- hamihira based his work the Pancha-siddhantika in the 6th century A.D. They are the Brakma or Paitamaha, the S#rya or Saura, the Vasishtha, the Romaka and the Palisa. a The ancient Brahma or Paitamaha Siddhanta seems to have been entirely superseded by the cele- brated work of Brahmagupta known as the Sphuta- Brahma Siddhanta. Alberuni obtained a copy of this last work in the 11th century, and speaks of it in his account of India. : We have in the Introduction to this work given the 6th century as the date of Sarya- -Siddhanta, but that is rather the date of Varahamihira’s adopting the doctrines of Sfrya-Siddhanta in his Pancha- Siddhantika. The date of the original Sirya-Siddhanta is (like that of the other Siddhantas) much earlier Bentley placed Sarya-Siddhadnta in the rith century A.D., but this absurd supposition has been completely 208 BUDDHIST PERIOD. (BOOK IV. controverted by Whitney.* At the same time it ap- pears that the original Sdrya-Siddhanta has been re- peatedly recast ; we do not know the date of the origi- nal work, except that it must have been composed in the Buddhist Age; and we donot know when the work was recast finally in the shape in which we have it now, except that it was in the Pauranik Age. Utpala, the commentator of Varahamihira, lived in the roth century, and quotes six slokas from the Sirya- Siddhanta of his day, not one of which slokas, as Dr. Kern points out, is to be found in the present edition of the Siddhanta. Nevertheless, “the Sdrya-Siddhanta in its present edition is a lineal and legitimate descen- dant of the work mentioned by Varahamihira as one of his authorities.”+ The work, as we find it now, is divided into 14 chap- ters and treats of the mean places and true places of planets, of questions on time, of the eclipses of the moon and the sun, of the conjunction of planets and stars, of the heliacal rising and setting of planets and stars, of the phases of the moon and the position of the moon’s cusps, of the declination of the sun and the moon, of cosmography, of the construction of astron- omical instruments, and of the different kinds of time.t * Strya-Siddhénta, translation, p. 21. + Kern, Brikat Sanhitd, Preface, p, 46, } See Whitney’s translation or Bapudeva SAstri’s translation. CHAP. XIII.] ASTRONOMY, &C. 209: ‘The Vasishtha-Siddhanta was ascribed by Alberuni to Vishnu Chandra, but Brahmagupta states more cor-. rectly that the ancient work was revised by Vishnu Chandra. A work pretending to be Vasishtha-Siddhanta. now exists,—but it is undoubtedly a modern work. + The Romaka-Siddhanta is ascribed both by Brahma- gupta and by Alberuni to Sri Sena. Of course a. spurious and modern Romaka-SiddhAnta exists which 1 contains a horoscope of Jesus Christ, and an account of © the kingdom of Baber, and of the conquest of Sindh by Akbar ! ‘The Pulisa-Siddhanta was known to Alberuni, who obtained a copy of it, and he calls the author Paules the Greek.