

   ASTRONOMY AND ANTIQUITY OF VEDIC CULTURE
    
   BY SADAPUTA DASA
    
   (c) 1991 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
   Used with permission

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   Traditional chinese stories tell of a monkey named Sun who goes through
   remarkable adventures. In one story, two "harpooners of death" capture
   him, claiming he has reached the limit of his destiny on earth and is
   due to be taken to the underworld. The story's translator tells us that
   according to the Chinese the constellation Nan Teou, the Southern
   Dipper, decides everyone's death, and the harpooners of death carry out
   the decision. 

   In my last column I compared Vedic ideas about time with similar ideas
   found in cultures around the world. We saw that many cultures share
   highly specific Vedic thoughts about how long ancient people lived and
   what happened in ancient human societies. This suggests that an ancient
   cultural tradition existed worldwide, hinted at today in many cultures
   through fragmentary and poorly understood memories but spoken of in
   detail in the Vedic writings. 

   In this column we turn from time to space. And we find that ancient
   traditions about the layout of the universe bear similar traces of 
   a common cultural background. 

   Vedic literature divides the visible heavens into regions, which
   transmigrating souls are said to reach according to their karma. We can
   think of the constellations of stars as a road map for the soul's travel
   after death. First I shall describe this map. Then I shall give some
   evidence that people in old cultures all over the world had a similar
   cosmic map, often agreeing with the Vedic map in many minute details. 

   To describe this map I need to introduce some basic ideas from
   astronomy. In both Indian and Western astronomy, the lines of latitude
   and longitude on the earth are projected onto the sky and set into 
   a daily spin about the polar axis, so that to an observer on earth they
   seem to rotate once a day with the stars. This gives us a celestial
   coordinate system in which each star has a latitude, called its
   declination, and a longitude, called its right ascension. 

   We can think of the stars as points on a huge imaginary sphere, called
   the celestial sphere, surrounding the earth. Just as the earth has 
   a northern and southern hemisphere separated by the equator, so does the
   celestial sphere. 

   Each year, against the background of stars, the sun completes a circuit
   called the ecliptic, a great circle tilted 23 1/2 degrees from the
   celestial equator. Around the ecliptic in a broad band stretch the
   twelve constellations of the zodiac and twenty-eight constellations
   called naksatras, or lunar mansions. 

   Books of Vedic astronomy list the naksatras and important stars. And
   more recent astronomers have identified the modern names of the
   constellations and stars to which these Vedic luminaries are thought to
   correspond. 


   [ANCHOR] [IMAGE] 
   The location of Vedic Star constellations on the celestial sphere.


   (The map above marks these correspondences, giving the ancient Sanskrit
   names and the modern locations.) 

   According to the Visnu Purana, north of the star Agastya and south of
   the three naksatras Mula, Purvasadha, and Uttarasadha lies the road to
   the region of the Pitrs, Pitrloka. This is said in Vedic literature to
   be the head quarters of Yamaraja, the demigod who punishes sinful human
   beings. The Srimad-Bhagavatam (5.26.5) says that this region, along with
   the hellish planets, lies in the south of the universe, beneath
   Bhu-mandala, the earthly planetary system. 

   The naksatras mentioned here match parts of the southern constellations
   Scorpio and Sagittarius, and Agastya is thought to be the star Canopus,
   which lies in the southern hemisphere. From the description in the Visnu
   Purana, therefore, we can locate Pitrloka in terms of familiar celestial
   landmarks. 

   The Milky Way is seen in the sky as a great band of light, densely
   packed with stars, running roughly north and south, cutting the
   celestial equator at an angle of about 62 degrees. A very bright region
   of the Milky Way intersects the ecliptic in the constellation
   Sagittarius. This is close to the naksatras Mula and Purvasadha, which
   form the beginning of the path of the Pitrs. 

   Just as Pitrloka is south of the ecliptic, the higher planets are to its
   north. So the mystics who follow the path to these planets, the path of
   the demigods, also begin at Mula and Purvasadha, but they travel 
   northward. Their journey is described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam
   (2.2.24-25) and in the Visnu Purana. 

   Moving along the ecliptic, the mystics travel up to Revati (this leg of
   their journey is called Vaisvanara.) From Revati they move through the
   naksatras Asvini, Bharani, and Krttika and travel on to the planet of the
   fire-god, Agni. There they are purified of all contaminations. 

   From Agni the mystics keep going north, through Brahmahrdaya and
   Prajapati, following the Milky Way, and as they reach the latitudes of
   the seven rsis they enter Visnupada, the path of Visnu. This is the path
   they follow until they at last reach the polestar, Dhruvaloka, 
   a spiritual planet within the material universe. 

   In more familiar terms, Asvini, Bharani, and Krttika match parts of the
   constellations Aries and Taurus. The seven rsis (saptarsi) correspond to
   the constellation Ursa Major, commonly known as the Big Dipper. 

   Opposite the point where the Milky Way meets the ecliptic in the
   southern hemisphere, it intersects the ecliptic in the north, at the
   boundary of Taurus and Gemini. It is here that we find the star Agni. 

   Once we locate the paths of the Pitrs and the demigods on the celestial
   sphere, we can ask whether other cultural traditions offer similar
   accounts of the soul's celestial travels. It turns out that many do.
   Here are some examples: 

     1. We return to the story of the Chinese monkey, Sun, mentioned in
     the beginning of this column. The Chinese Southern Dipper consists
     of six stars in Sagittarius. It is interesting to note that this
     constellation shares stars with two of the naksatras marking the
     beginning of the path of the Pitrs. 

     So the start of the route to Yamaraja corresponds in this Chinese
     tradition to the place in the heavens where the fate of the dead is
     decided. The Chinese tradition also has messengers of death similar
     to the Vedic Yamadutas. 

     2. The German scholar Franz Boll has analyzed ancient Greek
     traditions regarding Hades, the River Styx, and the ferryman of the
     underworld. We tend to think of Hades as lying beneath our feet,
     within the earth. Boll, however, cites texts placing this region in
     the heavens around the southern crossroads of the Milky Way and the
     ecliptic. 

     3. Boll points out a close relationship between Greek and Babylonian
     traditions. According to his analysis, the Babylonian god Dikud, the
     judge of Hades, may correspond to the star Theta Ophiuchi. This star
     lies close to the location mentioned in the Vedic writings as the
     beginning of the path of the Pitrs. Boll cites a text referring to
     this star as "the beginning of the road of the lower heavenly
     vault." 

     4. In North America the Pawnee and Cherokee say that the souls of
     the dead are received by a star at the northern end of the Milky
     Way. There the path divides. "He [God] directs the warriors on the
     dim and difficult path, and women and those who die of old age upon
     the brighter and easier path. The souls journey southwards; at the
     end of the celestial path they are received by the Spirit Star." 

     The anthropologist S. Hagar thinks the Spirit Star is Antares.
     Antares (Jyestha) lies, again, near the beginning of the path of
     the Pitrs. 

     5. The Roman writer Macrobius, in his Commentary on the Dream of
     Scipio, says that souls of the dead ascend by way of Capricorn and,
     to be reborn, descend again through the gate of Cancer. Here
     Macrobius appears to have shifted everything by one sign of the
     zodiac; Capricorn is next to Sagittarius, and Cancer is next to
     Gemini. In fact, Macrobius says in his Commentary that Capricorn and
     Cancer lie where the zodiac crosses the Milky Way. 

     6. In Honduras and Nicaragua the Sumo say that their "Mother
     Scorpion," who receives the souls of the dead, dwells at the end of
     the Milky Way. "And from her, represented as a mother with many
     breasts, at which children take suck, come the souls of the
     newborn." 

     Here the "Mother Scorpion" is reminiscent of the constellation
     Scorpius. We note that the tail of the constellation Scorpius
     corresponds to the naksatra Mula. 

     7. In general, Polynesians have traditionally believed in
     reincarnation and have held that the Milky Way is the pathway of
     transmigrating souls. The Mangaians of the Austral Islands in
     Polynesia believe that souls can enter heaven only on evenings of
     solstices (north islanders at one solstice and south islanders at
     the other). 

     The important point here is that the solstices occur when the sun is
     near the intersection of the Milky Way and the ecliptic. 


   These astronomical examples, and our earlier examples about time,
   indicate that old cultures around the world shared a view of the cosmos
   similar in many ways to the Vedic one. 

   The details that appear again and again in these stories suggest the
   existence of a common cultural tradition. Yet the stories differ, and we
   have no clear historical records of their origin. This suggests that
   their common cultural source dates from the remote past. So the
   existence of these stories is consistent with the Vedic accounts of 
   an ancient world civilization with a spiritual view of the origin and
   purpose of the universe. 


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   Sadaputa Dasa (Richard L. Thompson) earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from
   Cornell University. He is the author of several books, of which the most
   recent is Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy. Write to him c/o BTG in San
   Diego. 
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   Please call (800) 927-4152 (in USA) for more information or mail your
   comments/questions/suggestions to "jagadish@aol.com" or
   "anand@coe.wvu.edu" 
