astronomy (Elst)

[Michael Witzel]

At 17:49 +0100 12/7/99, Koenraad Elst wrote:
>Friends,
>
>Not only Subhash Kak, but also TS Kupanna Sastry: The Vedanga Jyotisa of
>Lagadha, p.13 ff. have argued that the Vedanga Jyotisa dates to ca. 1300 BC.
>As an astronomical treatise, and not a hymn book containing some indirect
>astronomical hints as the RgVeda is, the VJ can be firmly dated.

astronomically, perhaps, but what about its form?
The same fallacy as in the Satapatha argument about the Krttikas.

Who has seen a Vedic text composed in Slokas, looking like Manu,
Mahabharata, or the middle level Katha Upanisad? If soemone canshow me a
PRE-iron age sloka   treatise, I am ready to believe that the Vedanga
Jyotisa is from 1300 BC., andnot just its astronomy....

See same argument in: Astronomy (Agarwal).

Such mono-lateral argumentation as used  BY KAK, SASTRY, ELST
argumentation leads nowhere.
If you see that  modern/recent birds have the structure  of dinosaurs that
does not make them
much of pre-jurassic creatures... They are recasts in a more modern form
just as the  Jyotisa ...


>Now, in
>Prof. Witzel's chronology, this would make it contemporaneous with the
>RgVeda.  Isn't that odd?

Nope, just the unilateral argument...

 ==========================================================================
Michael Witzel                          Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies
Harvard University                  www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs
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