1 W. Whiston, in New Theory of the Earth (1696), expressed his belief that before the Deluge the year was composed of 360 days. He found references in classic authors to a year of 360 days, and as he recognized only one major catastrophe, the Deluge, he related these references to the antediluvian era.
2 Thibaut, "Astronomie, Astrologie und Mathematik," Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Alterthumskunde (1899), III, 7.
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consists of 360 days, nowhere refer to the five or six days that actually are a part of the solar year." 3
This Hindu year of 360 days is divided into twelve months of thirty days each.4 The texts describe the moon as crescent for fifteen days and waning for another fifteen days; they also say that the sun moved for six months or 180 days to the north and for the same number of days to the south.
The perplexity of scholars at such data in the Brahmanic literature is expressed in the following sentence: "That these are not conventional inexact data, but definitely wrong notions, is shown by the passage in Nidana-Sutra, which says that the sun remains 13/3 days in each of the 27
Naksatras, and thus the actual solar year is calculated as 360 days long." "Fifteen days are assigned to each half-moon period; that this is too much is nowhere admitted." 5
In their astronomical works, the Brahmans used very ingenious geometric methods, and their failure to discern that the year of 360 days was 5M days too short seemed baffling. In ten years such a mistake accumulates to fifty-two days. The author whom I quoted last was forced to conclude that the Brahmans had a "wholly confused notion of the true length of the year." Only in a later period, he said, were the Hindus able to deal with such obvious facts. To the same effect wrote another German author: "The fact that a long period of time was necessary to arrive at the formulation of the 365-day year is proved by the existence of the old Hindu 360-day Savana-year and of other forms which appear in the Veda literature." 6
Here is a passage from the Aryabhatiya, an old Indian work on mathematics and astronomy: "A year consists of twelve months. A month consists of 30 days. A day consists of 60 nadis. A nadi consists of 60 vinadikas." 7
robin-bobin
A month of thirty days and a year of 360 days formed the basis of early Hindu chronology used in historical computations.
3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. «Ibid.
6 F. K. Ginzel, "Chronologie," Encykhpadie der mathematischen Wissenschaften (1904-1935), Vol. VI.
7 The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhatta, an ancient Indian work on mathematics and astronomy (transl.
W. E. Clark, 1930), Chap. 3, "Kalakriya or the Reckoning of Time," p. 51.
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The Brahmans were aware that the length of the year, of the month, and of the day changed with every new world age. The following is a passage from Surya-siddhanta, a classic of Hindu astronomy. After an introduction, it proceeds: "Only by reason of the revolution of the ages, there is here a difference of times." 8 The translator of this ancient manual supplied an annotation to these words: "According to the commentary, the meaning of these last verses is that in successive Great Ages . . . there were slight differences in the motion of the heavenly bodies." Explaining the term bija, which means a correction of time in every new age, the book of Surya says that "time is the destroyer of the worlds."
The sacerdotal year, like the secular year of the calendar, consisted of 360 days composing twelve lunar months of thirty days each. From approximately the seventh pre-Christian century on, the year of the Hindus became 565% days long, but for temple purposes the old year of 360
days was also observed, and this year is called savana.
When the Hindu calendar acquired a year of 365M days and a lunar month of twenty-nine and a half days, the older system was not discarded. "The natural month, containing about twenty-nine and a half days mean solar time, is then divided into thirty lunar days (tithi), and this division, although of so unnatural and arbitrary a character, the lunar days beginning and ending at any moment of the natural day and night, is, to the Hindu, of the most prominent practical importance, since by it are regulated the performances of many religious ceremonies, and upon it depend the chief considerations of propitious and unpropitious times, and the like."9
The double system was the imposition of a new time measure upon the old.
The ancient Persian year was composed of 360 days or twelve months of thirty days each. In the seventh century five Gatha days were added to the calendar.10
8 Surya-siddhanta: A Text Book of Hindu Astronomy (transl. Ebenezer Burgess, 1860).
9 Ibid., comment by Burgess in note to p. 7.
10 "Twelve months ... of thirty days each . . . and the five Gatha-days at WORLDS IN COLLISION 333
In the Bundahis, a sacred book of the Persians, the 180 successive appearances of the sun from the winter solstice to the summer solstice and from the summer solstice to the next winter solstice are described in these words: "There are a hundred and eighty apertures [rogin] in the east, and a hundred and eighty in the west . . . and the sun, every day, comes in through an aperture, and goes out through an aperture. ... It comes back to Varak, in three hundred and sixty days and five Gatha days." ll
Gatha days are "five supplementary days added to the last of the twelve months of thirty days each, to complete the year; for these days no additional apertures are provided. . . . This arrangement seems to indicate that the idea of the apertures is older than the rectification of the calendar which added the five Gatha days to an original year of 360 days."12
The old Babylonian year was composed of 360 days.13 The astronomical tablets from the period antedating the Neo-Babylonian Empire compute the year at so many days, without mention of additional days. That the ancient Babylonian year had only 360 days was known before the cuneiform script was deciphered: Ctesias wrote that the walls of Babylon were 360 furlongs in compass, "as many as there had been days in the year." u
The zodiac of the Babylonians was divided into thirty-six decans, a decan being the space the sun covered in relation to fixed stars during a ten-day period. "However, the 36 decans with their robin-bobin
decades require a year of only 360 days."15 To explain this apparently arbitrary length of the zodiacal path, the following conjecture was made: "At first the astronomers of Babylon recognized a year of 360 days,
the end of the year." "The Book of Denkart," in H. S. Nyberg, Texte zum mazdayasnischen Kalender (Uppsala, 1934), p. 9.
11 Bundahis (transl. West), Chap. V.
12 Note by West on p. 24 of his translation of the Bundahis.
13 A. Jeremias, Das Alter der babylonischen Astronomie (2nd ed., 1909), pp. 58 ff.
liThe Fragments of the Persika of Ktesias (Ctesiae Persica), ed. J. Gilmore (1888), p. 38; Diodorus ii. 7.
15 W. Gundel, Dekane und Dekansternbilder (1936), p. 253.
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and the division of a circle into 360 degrees must have indicated the path traversed by the sun each day in its assumed circling of the earth." 16 This left over five degrees of the zodiac unaccounted for. The old Babylonian year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, the months being computed from the time of the appearance of the new moon. As the period between one new moon and another is about twenty-nine and a half days, students of the Babylonian calendar face the perplexity with which we are already familiar in other countries.
"Months of thirty days began with the light of the new moon. How agreement with astronomical reality was effected, we do not know. The practice of an intercalary period is not yet known." 17