14. The beginning of the text on side a of the G tablet was when heliacal Hyadum II was at 0h, i.e. 64 precessional days earlier than at the time of rongorongo.
Aldebaran, the leading star in Taurus, had therefore been given position 4 in the text. The beginning of the text on side a of the C tablet, on the other hand, had Acrux (α Crucis) in position 4 and there was no need to go back in precessional time:
The southern spring came when the Sun reached the Raven, with the September equinox in the center between Alchita (α Corvi) and Acrux.
At that time of the year the Julian date for spring equinox was close to the face of the Full Moon (Hotu), half a year away when the Sun reached September 24. The nakshatra method could be used for finding a position which was half a year away: ... In Hindu legend there was a mother goddess called Aditi, who had seven offspring. She is called 'Mother of the Gods'. Aditi, whose name means 'free, unbounded, infinity' was assigned in the ancient lists of constellations as the regent of the asterism Punarvasu. Punarvasu is dual in form and means 'The Doublegood Pair'. The singular form of this noun is used to refer to the star Pollux. It is not difficult to surmise that the other member of the Doublegood Pair was Castor. Then the constellation Punarvasu is quite equivalent to our Gemini, the Twins. In far antiquity (5800 B.C.) the spring equinoctial point was predicted by the heliacal rising of the Twins (see fig. 6.6). By 4700 B.C. the equinox lay squarely in Gemini (fig. 6.7).
Punarvasu is one of the twenty-seven (or twenty-eight) zodiacal constellations in the Indian system of Nakshatras. In each of the Nakshatras there is a 'yoga', a key star that marks a station taken by the moon in its monthly (twenty-seven- or twenty-eight-day course) through the stars. (The sidereal period of the moon, twenty-seven days and a fraction , should be distinguished from the synodic, or phase-shift period of 29.5 days, which is the ultimate antecedent of our month.) In ancient times the priest-astronomers (Brahmans) determined the recurrence of the solstices and equinoxes by the use of the gnomon. Later they developed the Nakshatra system of star reference to determine the recurrence of the seasons, much as the Greeks used the heliacal rising of some star for the same purpose. An example of the operation of the Nakshatra system in antiquity can be seen in figure 6.9
Here we see that the spring equinox occurred when the sun was at its closest approach to the star Aldebaran (called Rohini by the Hindus) in our constellation Taurus. But, of course, the phenomenon would not have been visible because the star is too close to the sun for observation. The astronomers would have known, however, that the equinoctial point was at Aldebaran by observing the full moon falling near the expected date or near a point in the sky exactly opposite Aldebaran (since the full moon is 180º from the sun), that is, near the star Antares ... |
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