Sepharial The Science of Foreknowledge

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century B.C., the Indians had already fully worked out a national culture
of their own, unaffected by foreign influences, a development which has
remained unchecked and unmodified down to the era of the British
occupation.
5. The perpetual custom of oral teaching among the Aryans warrants the
statement that the beginning of Indian poetry and science goes back to a
time when writing was unknown, and it therefore follows that if the art of
writing was of Semitic origin in the ninth century B.C., as stated by
Professor MacDonell, the fully worked out national culture, which was
but partially embodied in the Siddhantas, must have been originally self-
evolved and inclusive of astronomical learning, to which neither the
Phoenicians, nor Arabs, nor Chaldeans, nor Egyptians contributed; and
this learning must have been orally transmitted long before it came to be
written.
It is impossible to reconcile a fully worked out national culture with the
idea that the Suryasiddhanta owes anything whatsoever to foreign tradition. Indeed,
Professor MacDonell gives us quite sufficient ground for doubting whether the
Yavanas were capable of communicating any mathematical or scientific knowledge,
which was not already in an advanced condition with the Indians centuries before that
knowledge was embodied in the works under review in the History of Sanskrit
Literature.
Mr. B. Suryanarain Row is to be commended for his enthusiastic defence of
Hindu traditional knowledge and scientific and literary achievements among the
Aryans. But a good deal of unnecessary fire is kindled to consume that most
combustible of creations, the straw man. Speaking of the attacks made upon the
Hindu sciences by Orientalists, and notably the assertion that the Hindus borrowed
their astronomy from the Chaldeans, Mr. Suryanarain Row reports that a great
Orientalist says that the horoscope of Rama is not given in the Ramayana, etc.
Now, it was never put forward that Dr, Richard Garnett or Mr. George Wilde
claimed any status among Orientalists. Dr. Garnett distinctly stated that he availed
himself of a translation of the Ramayana, but was unsuccessful in finding the
horoscope of Rama therein. It was also suggested that his failure herein was due to
the voluminous character of the work. Of course, the horoscope is in every copy of
the original epic, and is, no doubt, to be found in the translation referred to. One of
my correspondents, Mr. N. N. Ghose, Barrister-at-Law, gives the exact quotation
viz., Balakandam, canto xviii., verses 8-10. With this gentleman I am quite in
agreement as to the extensive and accessible nature of astrological references in the
early Sanskrit literature, and also as regards the great and unexplored wealth of
astrological writings to be found in India, in contrast with the absolute dearth of
Chaldean records of the same nature.
56
The digest of all the Egyptian knowledge of astronomy and astrology is to be
found in the works of Claudius Ptolemy, notable his Alnagest and Tetrabiblos ;
but this record was made in the second century, and yet is not in any way an advance
upon the knowledge current among the Brahmins many centuries before that period.
The Assyrian records at Assurbanipal contain some references to eclipses
and other astronomical phenomena, and the Chinese records of the same nature
are probably the most complete to be found in any literature. Here and there we
find an astrological observation attaching to the astronomical fact, as, for instance,
in the Chinese record of the eclipse of September 5, 775 B.C. ( Siao Ya, ix.4),
the text of which conveys this meaning:
In the tenth Moon, of which the first day is Sin Mao, the Sun was very badly
eclipsed. The Moon hid herself even as the Sun was hidden. And the people
of the Earth mourned. This lunation foretells suffering (if) the people do not
amend their ways. The four kingdoms are evilly disposed, and do not consult
their good. The Moon in eclipse is only a common thing, but this eclipse of
the Sun is very evil.
Laplace consulted the ancient Chinese records, which go back to the third
millennium B.C., in order to determine the obliquity of the ecliptic. As far back as
1110B.C. the nature and use of the magnetic needle was known and recorded in
China, over 2,000 years before it was known in Europe. The Chinese also knew the
resolutions of the right-angled triangle five centuries before the fact that the square of
the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the perpendicular and base, was
demonstrated by Pythagoras. Comets were observed and put on record by Chinese
astronomers as far back as 2241 B.C. Nothing of this sort has yet been discovered
among the Chaldean records. There is, so far as we know, no system of astrology or
astronomy to be attributed to the Chaldeans. The notion that they were the custodians
of a superior knowledge at a time when all the people of the Earth were of one
language is peculiar to the Semitic record and it is well known that the Hebrew
record is confined to the history of that race, small area of the habitable earth. It is
commonly observed that when once a theory has been espoused it is the nature of
some people to worry it off the bone, as the saying is; but when as in the case of
the Chaldean system of astrology, of astrology, there is nothing but the bone to
begin with, the discussion is not likely to prove of much advantage.
On the other hand, the merits of Hindu astrology, of which there is an
extensive exposition, are passed over with a disparaging silence because some wise
man of the West has suggested a Chaldean origin. This looks to me like refusing the
meat for the sake of holding on to the bone.
There is a great deal more evidence for a common ground of origin for both
Chinese and Aryan astrology than for any tradition between the Indian and Chaldean. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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