from what source did they derive their knowledge of them. We can assign no other but that of their own discoveries and observations.

It has been said that the Indian and Arabian divisions of the zodiac were the same. It may very possibly be so: and many who have considered the subject and admit this, are disposed to think, that the Arabians took their divisions from the Hindūs. The learned orientalist, Mr. Colebrooke, who has examined the subject, finds, however, that in some respects they differ from each other; but he is nevertheless of opinion that they must have had one common origin. He says: The coincidence appears to me too exact, in most instances, to be the effect of chance: in others, the differences are only such, as to authorize the remark, that the nation, which borrowed from the other, has not copied with servility. I apprehend that it must have been the Arabs who adopted (with slight variations) a division of the zodiac familiar to the Hindus. This, at

least, seems to be more probable than the supposition, that the Indians received their system from the Arabians: we know, that the Hindus have preserved the memory of a former situation of the Colures, compared to constellations, which mark divisions of their zodiac in their astronomy; but no similar trace remains of the use of the lunar mansions, as divisions of the zodiac, among the Arabs, in so very remote times.”*

And again, some pages after, he observes:-"The result of the comparison shews, I hope satisfactorily, that the Indian asterisms, which mark the divisions of the ecliptic, generally consist of nearly the same stars, which constitute the lunar mansions of the Arabians: but, in a few instances, they essentially differ. The Hindus have likewise adopted the division of the ecliptic and zodiac into twelve signs, or constellations, agreeing in figure and designation with those of the Greeks; and differing

* Asiat. Res. 8vo. vol. ix. p. 324.

merely in the place of the constellations, which are carried, on the Indian sphere, a few degrees further west than on the Grecian. That the Hindus took the hint of this mode of dividing the ecliptic from the Greeks, is not perhaps altogether improbable: but, if such be the origin of it, they have not implicitly received the arrangement suggested to them, but have reconciled and adapted it to their own ancient distribution of the ecliptic into twentyseven parts."

"In like manner, they may have either received or given the hint of an armillary sphere as an instrument for astronomical observation; but certainly they have not copied the instrument which was described by Ptolemy; for the construction differs considerably."

Astrologers also reckon twenty-eight yogas, which correspond to the twenty-eight Nacshatras, or divisions of the moon's path; varying, however, according to the day of the week. As the Indian almanacks some

yoga

times appropriate a column to the moon's for each day, I shall insert in a note a list of these yogas, with the rule by which they are determined.

Another topic, relative to the zodiac, and connected with astrology, remains to be noticed. I allude to the Dreshcanas answering to the Decani of European astrologers. The Hindūs, like the Egyptians and Babylonians, from whom that vain science passed to the Greeks and Romans, divide each sign into three parts, and allot to every such part a regent, exercising planetary influence under the particular planet whom he there represents.

The description of the thirty-six Dreshcanas, is given towards the close of Varahamihira's treatise on the casting of nativities, entitled Vrihat Jataca."

But, supposing the Indian astronomy to be indigenous, it is nevertheless possible, that the Greeks, in the course of practice, may in certain things have made improvements, which having been communicated to the Indians, were adopted by them;

though (as Mr. Colebrooke has observed) not implicitly, but reconciling them with what they anciently practised.

Each of the twelve parts, or signs of the Indian zodiac, has its particular name. Each sign contains thirty degrees; but the Hindus also divide the twelve signs into twenty-seven parts,* which they call constellations, or places of the moon, reckoned in the twelve signs; every sign is equal to two constellations and a quarter, each constellation consists of thirteen degrees, twenty minutes, and has its particular name.

This division of the zodiac is extremely natural in the infancy of astronomical observation, because the moon completes her circle among the fixed stars nearly in twenty-seven days, and so makes an actual division of that circle into twenty-seven equal parts.

* See Voyages dans les Mers de l'Inde, par M. le Gentil. Astronomie Indienne et Orientale, par M. Bailly; and La Croze, vol. ii. liv. 6.