Michael Witzel
Harvard University
The Pleiades and the Bears viewed from inside the
Vedic
texts
N. Achar and his predecessors of the past hundred-
odd years, definitely
have a point when they state that several nakSatra
('moon houses') can
be viewed as being exactly situated on the eastern
horizon at their
various times of rising in the course of the night
(and of the year),
and that Zatapatha brAhmaNa 2.1.2.1 seems to
describe the time when the
Pleiades (kRttikAH) were rising due east (at c.
2900 BCE). That means
the Pleiades were rising in the east at nightfall
at fall equinox,
while the sun rises against their background at
the spring equinox
(heliacal rising at vernal equinox). The question
here will be how to
interpret this passage and how to place it against
the background of
Vedic star lore.