On Saptarsi
or The Great Bear
Michio
Yano
Whereas we know the Great Bear, a constellation comprising seven fixed stars, does not change its place relative to other fixed stars, there prevailed in ancient India a tradition that the Seven Sages (saptarsi-), grouped together, should tour round the heavenly vault, changing their abode periodically from one lunar mansion (naksatra) to another.
This peculiar tradition is well attested in Puranic sources. We read, for instance, in Visnu-P. IV, 24, 33-34:
saptarsinam ca you purvau drsyete uditau divi/ tayos to madhyanaksatrarn drsyate yat samara nisi/ tena saptarsayo yuktas tisthanty abdasatam nrnam// to to pariksite kale maghasv asan dvijottamal tada pravrttas ca kalir dvadaiabdasatatmakah//
Similar remarks are found in Matsya-P. 273, 42-44; Bhagavata-P. XII, 2, 27-29; Vayu-P. 99, 421-423- namely, within that chapter of each Puranic text which deals with the chronology of the ancient Indian dynastiesl).
What underlies this tradition is, according to P. C. Sengupta2) and J. Filliozat3), the movement of North Pole due to the precession of the equi-noxes. Here is a summary of the second writer's view, which interests us all the more as Filliozat begins with an ingenious interpretation of the very Visnu-P. passage just now quoted:
The constellation Great Bear is here deemed "conjunct" (yuktas, 3rd line) with such and such lunar mansion, in terms of the "conjunction", with this last, of the middle point of a and jS U (rsae) Ma (joris) (yau purvau, 1st
1) Cf. F. E. Pargiter, The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (2nd ed., Varanasi, 1962), p. 57ff.
2) P. C. Sengupta, Ancient Indian Chronology (Calcutta, 1947), p. 57.
3) J. Filliozat, Notes d'astronomie ancienne de l'Iran et de l'Inde: JA 1962, p. 325ff.
-975-(57) On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano)
line; tayos...madhya-, 2nd line)4). More precisely, when a lunar mansion is observed to be cut by a great circle passing through North Pole in its con-temporary position on the one hand, and the "middle point of a and UMa." on the other, then the Seven Sages are called "conjunct" with that particular naksatra. (Notice should be taken that Filliozat, for the explanation, uses the simple figure of Northern Hemisphere and connects the three points the said middle point; North Pole; a Leonis by a straight line.) In fact, however, it will at once turn out that the circle (or the line) as described above cannot cut but these three lunar mansions: Pusya (5 Cancri), Aslesa (a Cancri) and Magha (Regulus, a Leonis). In other words, it was only with these three naksatras that the "conjunction" of the Seven Sages could take place if ever in ancient India, and that according to Filliozat's calculation respectively around 3100 B. C. (with Pusya), 2600 B. C. (with Aslesa) and
1000 B. C. (with Magha).
It is therefore likely, concludes Filliozat, that Hindu belief in the Great Bear's movement had for its origin a haphazard attempt of generalization, ventured on a single astronomic phenomenon witnessed then or little before: i.e., the constellation's "conjunction" (in the aforesaid sense) with the Re-gulus (naksatra Magha: cf. maghasu, 4th line), which must have occurred circa 1000 B. C. as noted above, and its coming to an end after an approximative duration of 100 years (abdasatam, 3rd line), duration which is verifiable itself by modern calculation. That means the Puranic tradition in the matter may well date back towards the borders of the 1st and the 2nd millenia B. C., as is reasonable, besides, in view of the date that the modern scholarship assigns commonly to Pariksit's reign (pariksite, 4th line).
Now, the present writer would have remained in an unreserved and most enthusiastic admiration of the French savant's genius fully displayed here,
4) Here seems to be good reason, though Filliozat is not explicit, to emend the 2nd line as follows: tayos to madhyena ksetra* Metre changes from pathya to vipula 3; ksetra-, as synonymous with naksatra-, is more than once attested with Varahamihira (cf. M.-Williams' Dictionary, s.v.); madhyena...samam: on the same level (=on one and the same line/circle) with the middle point.
On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano) (58) unless there had come in notice a totally different date 371 B. C., instead of Filliozat's circa 1000 B. C. assigned earlier by Sengupta to the very conjunction with Magha, while holding a similar view on what conjunc-tion really means. For, in search of the chronological point when the right ascension of the middle point of a and j3 UMa. could be identical with that of a Leonis, my own calculation undertaken by means of P. V. Neu-gebauer's Tables) has resulted in giving an approximate figure of 300 B. C., tending thus to support far rather P. C. Sengupta's dating. Admittedly, it is always an arduous task to have a spherical surface represented satisfac-torily by a plane figure. Was Professor Filliozat free of error in this whole process, especially when he drew a straight line as refered to above on the plane figure thus projected?
But, by contesting Filliozat in such a way, I should necessarily be doomed to a desperate dilemma since I have myself no idea, neither is Sengupta explicit, as to how to reconcile so late a date as the 4th century B. C. with the mention of Pariksit in the 4th line of the cited Puranic passage. while Filliozat's view on the "conjunction" that is to say, his interpretation of the 2nd line still seems to me so inspiring and so convincing as to allow no other alternative! The rest of the present article, to the writer's regret, will help only to confirm the dilemma.
The Great Bear's movement, to be sure, was known to the great astro-nomer Varahamihira (6th ? century A. D.), the 13th chapter of his Brhat-sa zhita being entitled precisely Saptarsicara. At first sight, indeed, verses 3-4 of the said chapter look to form a counterpart to the abovecited Puranic passage, all the more so since the last line, when read in conformity with Bhattotpala's cornmentary6>, does contain the word samyuktah so as to make us anticipate an elucidation by Varahamihira of the notion at stake
"con junction"
5) P. V. Neugebauer, Sterntafelen, Leipzig, 1912.
6) Cf. Avadhavihari Tripathi (ed.), Brhatsamhita with the Commentary of Bhatt-otpala (=Sarasvatibhavan Granthamala, Vol. 97: Benares, 1968), p. 254ff.
(59) On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano) asan maghasu munayah sa"sati prthivim yudhisthire nrpatau/ saddvikapancadviyutah sakakalas tasya rajnas ca//
ekaikasminn rkse ratam iatam to caranti varsanam/ pragudayato 'py avivarad rjunnayati tatra samyuktah//
In the first stanza, the mention of Yudhisthira (instead of Pariksit), any more than that of 2526 years lapse from the king down to the beginning of the Saka era (instead of 1200 divine years duration prophesied on the Kali age be-ginning with the king's reign), does not constitute an essential divergence from the Puranic evidence. As regards the latter stanza, the first half refers, needless to say, to that centenary cycle alleged by generalization, as we al-ready noted, together with the tour of the Seven Sages. But, now, the real question is to know how to construe the last line, which [Bhatta-) Utp [ala) comments upon as follows (punctuation, quotation marks and other supplemen-tary elements mine)
avivaran=nirantaram pragudayatah: prak=purvasyam disi, udayato (scil.) yan naksatram tesam rjunnayati=spastatam saptarsipanktya nayati
tatra=tasmin naksatre sa ,myuktah=sthita iti/
etad uktam bhavati:yasya naksatrasya pragudayatah saptarsipanktih spasta bhavati, tasminn eva sthita itil
Let us remark the following points:
1) Utp. fails to explicitize what the adverbial avivarat qualifies and whether vivara-=antara-is said of space or of time. Is it in its temporal value, whether by itself (instantly? incessantly?) or in connection (though
less probably) with an Abl. form (cf. infra 2: immediately before", by fur-ther analogy nirantaram=anantaram?), that the word is understood to qualify the finite verb (un-) nayati (cf. infra 4)? It seems to me far more
like-ly that avivarat qualifies the adjective rju-, and that in this spatial sense of the word: without (blurred? perturbed?) interstice, flawlessly.
2) In pragudayato, Utp. sees a nominal compound (the rising in the east), put in Abl. sg. (not appositional with avivarat, but perhaps associable otherwise with this latter: cf. supra 1). In his view, besides, the rising is said of the lunar mansion, rksa-=naksatra-(cf. yasya naksatrasya pragudayatah,
-972-On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano) (60) towards the end), and not at all of the Seven Sages. Attention should be drawn, in passing, to Utp.s complete silence as to the possibility to read prag udayato in two separate words (before the rising, prak in its tem-poral meaing). -I think it preferable, even necessary, to take udayato for Acc. pl. (cf. infra 4) of the present participle (rising), udi- being said of the Sages and qualified by prak (spatial sense: in the east).
3) Was Utp. really clear in the identification of the form nayati, al-though his recourse to an relative clause Cyan naksatram...nayati) is in itself a reasonable expedient for paraphrase's sake? -Here is undoubtedly the present participle of (un-) ini-, put in Loc. sg. in apposition with tatra
rkse (=naksatre). From the grammatical point of view, such must be the sole interpretaion possible here, despite this eventual clumsiness that the same Seven Sages are referred to by udayato rjun (Acc.: cf. supra 2, infra 4) and by te samyuktah (Nom.) in one and the same simple sentence.
4) Is Utp.'s gloss rju-=spasta-, although said to be habitual to him, verily reliable at least here, not to mention his obscurity (largely intentional?) as regards the choice between rju (adv.) unnayati and rjun (adj.: scil. tan munin) nay ti? -The second alternative seems to be the better, seeing that the transitive verb ini-, whether or not prefixed by ud-, does anticipate the Acc. case explicitly used (whence also udayat-o, cf. supra 2). In either case, the adjective rju- had better be taken more literally: either (arrayed in a) straight (line) or (arrayed in one's) right (manner) admitting that this latter may practically mean clear(ly visible under their collective form): spasta-saptarsipanktya, as Utp. remarks.
Finally, Utp. glosses samyukta-simply by sthita-("settled"), seemingly in a sheer ignorance of the Puranic parallel passage as a whole, of its key-word yukta-(conjunct) in particular. At this, it is true, one may neither be alarmed nor disappointed, because the text itself has no Instr. form to be construed with samyukta-. Disappointment, however, cannot but be real and total if failure has to be owned to draw, from all the foregoing textual observations, anything definite of astronomical significance. Regret-tably enough, such is in fact the case, whether the last line in question
-971-(61) On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano)
may be rendered in submission to Utp.'s commentary (a,a) or inaccord-ance with my own grammatical preference (b, b)7):
Settled (as they are deemed,) in that (lunar mansion)
a)-which renders them clearly visible at once (or: al the time) by dint of its rising in the east;
a) -which renders them clearly visible immediately after its rising in the east";
b) which conducts them, right (from the stage) when they are rising in the east, (so that they can be) arrayed in flawless rectitude;
b) -which lifts them up with flawless rectitude, right (from the stage) when they are rising in the east".
Notice should be taken, in passing, that the Brhatsamhita passage of our present concern has served D. G. Dhavale as the very starting-point of his recent attempt to determine "The Date of Varahamihira8). Of the crucial last hemistich, however, is adopted this variant reading (which Dhavale says he found himself in a certain manuscript)
prag udayato 'py avivarad rjudayams tatra samyuktah//
Acknowledging, then, the difficulty to interpret the line as it is in such a way that it can make sense from the point of view of Varaha's astrono-my, Dhavale proposes to use an explanation of this line given by...Bhatt-otpala in his commentary on Brh. S. But, curiously, he does not quote here but the closing portion (subsequent to etad uktam bhavati) Of Utp.s commentary discussed above, and he proceeds to translate the line by as-suming if prak here is understood to mean before-this quite contrary to Utp.s understanding, clear from the preceding gloss which Dhavale should not have dismissed (cf. paragraph before last, under 2). As for his English rendering thus presented and ensuing remark:
7) F. K. Ginzel shows a German rendering close in substance to my own b). Cf. his Handbuch der mathematischen and teclinischen Chronologie (Leipzig, 1966), p. 382f.
On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano) (62) The Saptarsis are in that asterism rising before which they are fully visible. That is to say, they are in that asterism which rises (in the east) after they are fully visible.
-his little care about textual literality and half way allegiance to Utp.s commentary cannot but tempt me to question, amongst others, how the v.
1. (rju) udayams' he adopts, Nom. sg. msc. of the participle "rising", could be associated with the word sainyuktah in Nom. pl., accordingly with the Seven Sages. Paradoxically enough, the purport Dhavale is desirous to obtain from the line seems to me somehow procurable by sticking, on the contrary, to the very lectio underlying Utp's commentary:
Read prag udaya-to py avivarad rjunnayati tatra samyuktah:
Settled (, as they are deemed,) in that (lunar mansion) which, already before (its own) rising, raises (them) up in flawless rectitude (=clarity?).
Be that as it may, it would not be worth while here to communicate what Dhavale goes on to demonstrate. For, however rich this may be in astrono-mical substance, the author reveals the same indifference as Utp. to the Puranic parallel passage which, containing the word yukta-(definitely
conjunct, in no way assimilable to sthita-), must needs imply such a delicate problem as remains open, in my opinion, despite Filliozat's penetrating study.
Desperate obscurity not only of the Brhatsamhita XIII, 4cd as abovecited, but also of Utp.'s commentary thereupon, reminds me of the state of things where H. Fern found himself as it is noted in the Appendix of his citical edition9). Regarding the hemistich in question, said to abound with variae lectiones often corrupt or meaningless, the acknowledged unintelligibilty of Utp.'s commentary itself prevented fern from preferring, as elsewhere, the reading followed by this native commentator; so that, instead of that read-ing which has been exclusively of our concern, the eminent editor contented himself, for want of better, with adopting this lectio facilior:
praguttaratas caite sadodayante sasadhvikahll
and rise constantly in the northeast, together with Arundhati (=80 UMa. J 10).
(63) On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano)
Although literally clear, such a passage obviously belongs to the simple level of common sense, being susceptible of no particular interpretation whatsoever from the astronomical point of view.
Kern judged Utp.'s commentary here to be incomprehensible after all, and I share naturally this impression. I had already occasion, besides, even to wonder if obscurity was not intentional on the part of the commentator. In any case, it seems to me quite far from likelihood that, as Dhavale assumes, the criterion he C=Varaha) used is rightly understood by Utpala and is given in his commentary on the second line of the 4th verse. On the contrary, the particular abundance, reported about this very hemistich, of variant readings largely corrupt tempts me further to fancy that Utp.'s obscurity, seem-ingly intentional, may have been itself a forced one, forced by the original author Varahamihira who may have fallen back on equivocation, himself forced by his own situation open to a conjecture like the following:
Significant is the fact that Varahamihira tells about the Great Bear's movement, not in his strictly jyotisa treatise Pancasiddhantika, but solely here within the Brhatsamhi to an encyclopaedic treasury of all Hindu lores, going far beyond the framework of astronomy and astrology. That means, when engaged in this latter work, Varahamihira behaved primarily as a man of impeccable erudition and culture, which he certainly was as the Vikramaditya legend counts him, without fail, amongst the nine jewels (navaratna-) believed to have embellished the fabulous imperial court. Accordingly, when taking up for this work the Seven Sages as one of his topics, he would not pass over in silence the Sages' "tour", even "conjunc-tion", as described in the venerable Puranic literature in which he was perfectly versed. For all that, however, he could hardly cease to be a se-rious scientist and, in this capacity, he had to reject the Puranic account concerned as being verifiable neither by calculation nor observation on the soil of his contemporary India, even though the precession of the equinoxes, discovered by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, may have been known to
On Saptarsi or The Great Bear (M. Yano) (64) Varahamihira through his perusal over the antecedent "Five Siddhantas"
especially those of Romaka and Paulisa which suggest their western origin by their very titles. Under such circumstances, he could not but resign himself to a last recourse, namely, substituting an arya hemistich, conscious-ly redacted in a mystifying manner, to a more faithful reproduction of that Puranic passage which he believed to be incompatible with the empiric truth. Hence a series of tremendous confusion among the subsequent com-mentators and scribes over this passage of the Brhatsamhita, witness Utp.s irremediable obscurity and a large number of meaningless variants!
Of the Great Bear's movement, to conclude, the primordial tradition seems to have been maintained in India, as Filliozat rightly remarks less in the milieu rigorously specialised in astronomy than for its interest noticeable purely and simply from the chronological point of view. Apart from Varahamihira solely in the Brhatsamhita of the said nature, no author of jyotisa is found to refer to this subject, while in Kashmir, for instance, there was current until much later a calendar called saptarsikala (alias Zokakala or laukika), as is testified amongst others by Kalhanas Rajatarangini I, 5 (mid-12th centutury A. D.)11). It might be added that, such a divorce once admitted between astronomy and chronology on the subject, one could easily explain, by a corruption having thus crept inevitably into the Puranic transmission
itself, certain variants known about the account in question: -e.g. sap-tarsinam ye purva (plural) in the Vayu-P., in place of yau purvau (dual) as cited above from the Visnu-P.
Attention might be called, finally, to a statement both ironical and enig-matic by Al-Biruni (early 11th century A. D.)-that Arabian connoisseur
of all things Indian, above all versed in Hindu astronomy:
It would be much more suitable in the present time to represent Seven Rishis as standing in Magha than in the time of Yudhisthira.12)
11) Kalhana loc. cit., equates, kaliyugakala 4249 with Saptarsikala (24) 24. Cf. also Ginzel, Zoc cit.
12) Al-Biruni's India (tr. Sachau), i, p. 390.
