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The primacy given to Saturn and Jupiter becomes apparent by the study of the origination of the seven day week which, contrary to common opinion, was not followed by everyone in the ancient world. The ancient Egyptians had a ten-day week. The Vedic Indians had a six-day week. The ancient Babylonians who started the month on the day after the new moon, had the first, eighth, fifteenth and the twenty second day marked out for religious services. This was a kind of seven-day week with sabbaths, but the last week might be of eight or nine days duration, according as the month, which was lunar, had a length of 29 or 30 days. The ancient Iranians had a separate name for each day of the month, but some days, at intervals of approximately seven, were marked out as Din-i-Parvan, for religious practices. The pattern followed appears to have been similar to the Babylonian practice. The continuous seven-day week was evolved on astrological grounds by unnamed Chaldean astronomers at an unknown epoch, but at least, long before the first century A.D. The Jews adopted it as a cardinal part of their faith during the days of their contact with the Chaldeans. Chaldean astronomers flourished between the seventh century B.C. and the third century A.D. They gave particular attention to the study of the movement of the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, which they identified with their gods. They believed the destiny of kings and states were controlled by the gods, (the planets), and attached the greatest importance to the observation of their positions and movements. They attached magical value to the number seven which was the number of planets or gods controlling human destiny. The two outermost planets, Jupiter and Saturn, moved slowly and solemnly and therefore determined the measured boundaries of all planets within. After every sixty years Jupiter and Saturn meet in the same general area of the zodiac. During that sixty years, Jupiter completed five circuits of the zodiac and Saturn completed two circuits. The combined number of circuits for these ponderous planets is seven. Jupiter and Saturn along with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars, were identified with the chief gods of the Babylonian pantheon. Notice that the order of the planets in table 1 coincides with the apparent average daily motion of the planets from the slowest, Saturn, to the fastest, the Moon. These seven gods, sitting in solemn conclave, control the destinies
of kings and countries, and it was believed that their will and judgment
with respect to a particular country or its ruler could be obtained from
an interpretation of the position of the seven planets in the heavens,
and the nature of the motion of the planets (direct or retrograde). Part
of the divinatory practices included knowing what part of the day or night
was being ruled or watched over by the gods. Occurrences during a particular
watch was believed to forebode particular events consistent with the nature
of the watching god.
The day was divided into 24 hours, and each of the seven gods was supposed to keep watch on the world over each hour of the day in rotation. The particular day was named after the god who kept watch at the first hour at Sunrise. Thus on Saturday, the watching god on the first hour was Saturn, and the day was named after him. The succeeding hours of Saturday were watched by the seven gods in rotation as follows: SEE FIGURE 1 Above shows the picture for Saturday. On this day Saturn keeps watch at the first hour, so the day is named after him. The second hour is watched over by (2)Jupiter, third by (3)Mars and so on. Saturn is thus seen to preside at the 8th, 15th and 22nd hours of Saturday. Then for the 23rd, 24th and 25th hours come in succession (2)Jupiter, (3)Mars and (4)Sun. The 25th hours is the first hour of the next day, which is accordingly named after the presiding planet of the hour, viz, (4) which is the Sun. We thus get Sunday following Saturday. If we now repeat the process, we get the names of the week days following each other, as follows: SEE FIGURE 2 Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Jews, it may be mentioned, reckon the days by ordinal numbers—the first, second, third.....seventh day. Although they derived their calendar almost entirely from the Babylonians, they eschewed the god names as being inconsistent with their monotheistic religion, the ordinal first day is Saturday, which is their sabbath. The ancient Indians did not use the seven day week. The most ancient usage of day names used in India was that of the Nakshatra. There are twenty seven lunar asterisms or constellations in the old lunar zodiac. This number was derived from the average number of days it took the Moon to complete one circuit of the heavens in relation to any particular star (one sidereal revolution). Since the Hindus didn't use hours to divide their day, the natural consequence of using a seven day week would not follow. Instead they divided a day into 60 equal parts called ghatikas. Each ghatika is equal to 24 minutes. The word "ghatika" means little jar and thus the use of water clocks suggest itself. A ghatika is further divided into 60 vinadikas. So between the two cultures, it was the Hindus who made direct use of the sexagesimal system whereas the Chaldeans used an indirect method of 24 hours. It wasn't until much later in the third century AD where we find the first usage of the seven day week in India. Indeed much of the rest of the world had not adopted it until after the first century AD. It was unknown to the writers of the New Testament who did not mention anything about the day of the week on which Christ was crucified or the the week day which he is alleged to have ascended to heaven. The fixing of Friday and Sunday for these incidents is a later concoction, dating from the fifth century after Christ. All that the New Testament books say is that he was crucified on the day before the Hebrew festival of Passover which used to be celebrated and is still celebrated on the full-moon day of the month of Nisan. The continuous seven day week was unknown to the classical Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus and early Christians. It was introduced into the Christian world by an edict of the Roman emperor Constantine, about 323 AD, who changed the Sabbath to the Lord's Day (Sunday), the week day next to the Jewish Sabbath. Its introduction into India is about the same time and from the same sources. The week days are not found in earlier Hindu scriptures like the Vedas of the classics like the great epic Mahabharata. They occur only from 484 AD, but not in inscriptions of 300 AD or earlier. Even now, they form but an unimportant part in the religious observances of the Hindus which are determined by the Moon's phases and lunar asterisms. In the schema of the Moon's phases we see a repeated pattern to that of Jupiter and Saturn. (See page 4). A lunar month is made up of 30 tithis. Each tithi is determined when the moon moves in advance of twelve degrees ahead of the Sun. Here we see the numbers 30 and 12 that are common with Saturn and Jupiter. A complete synodic period (a complete revolution around the zodiac in relation to the Sun) of the Moon, however, takes only 29 civil days. (A civil day for the Indians is reckoned from sunrise to sunrise). It is quite a regular occurrence for a tithi to be expunged from the consecutive civil day count. This characteristic of the Hindu calendar is not found in the Greek, Chinese or Mesopotamian calendars. Other cultures, without exception, use solely a civil day count of 28, 29 and 30 days for their lunation cycles and had not even considered a pure lunar day count independent from the civil reckoning. The consistency of the Hindu astronomical methods make it unlikely that they borrowed their knowledge from other sources. And the repeated usage of the sexagesimal measurement makes it more like that they were the inventors of the system. The lunar asterisms (nakshatras) are derived from the average daily
motion of the Moon's mean sidereal cycle, which is 13° 20' of arc.
In a circle of 360 degrees this would make twenty seven nakshatras. Each
nakshatra has a planetary ruler and they are shown as follows:
In the above table you may have noticed the two strange words "Rahu" and "Ketu". These are the node of the moon and their usage in astronomy is important for predicting the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. Although they possess no mass or density, they are treated as planets in the sense that they have an effect on human affairs. |