वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

44* THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS. in early ages as they are at present, though the past and present climatic conditions of these places may be totally different. But the axis of the earth has a small motion round the pole of the ecliptic, giving rise to what is known as the precession of the equinoxes, and causing a change only in the celestial, and not in the terrestrial, poles. Thus the polar star 7,000 years ago was different from what it is at present, but the terrestrial pole has always remained the same. This motion of the earth's axis, producing the precession of the equinoxes, is important from an antiquarian point of view, inasmuch as it causes a change in the times when different seasons of the year begin; and it was mainly by utilising this chronometer that I showed in my Orion or Re- searches in the Antiquity of the Vedas that the vernal equinox was in Orion when some of the Ṛig-Vedic traditions were formed, and that the Vedic literature contained enough clear evidence of the successive changes of the position of the vernal equinox upto the present time. Thus the vernal equinox was in the Kṛittikâs in the time of the Taittirîya Saṁhitâ and Brâhmaṇa, and the express text stating that "The Kṛittikâs never swerve from the due east; all other Nakṣhatras do.", (Shat. Brâ. II, 1, 2, 3.), recently published by the late Mr. S. B. Dixit, serves to remove whatever doubts there might be regarding the interpretation of other passages.* This record of the early position of the Kṛittikâs, or the Pleiades, is as important for the determination of the Vedic chronology as the orientation of pyramids and tem- ples has been shown to be in the case of the Egyptian, by Sir Norman Lockyer in his Dawn of Ancient Astro- nomy. But the chronometer, which I now mean to employ, is a different one. The. North Pole and the Arctic regions

• See The Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXIV, (August, 1895), p. 245. The text is:—एता (कृत्तिकाः) ह वै प्राच्यै दिशो न च्यवंते सर्वाणि ह वा अन्यानि `नक्षत्राणि प्राच्यै दिशश्च्यवंते । शत. ब्रा. ।