to be correct,) and in part, though not to the full extent, with the Caribbees; but the same natural process must have influenced both, which proves that my theory is rational and probable, and really has a principle of human nature for its foundation. I think the fact of the Caribbees having proceeded by the same route, but having only gone part of the way, is a strong circumstance to confirm my hypothesis.
9. The natives of Java have the quinary system, or calculation by fives. And it is remarkable that the word lima, which means five, means also the hand. It appears from Mr. Crawford, that in early times they had only the quinary system, which by degrees they improved to the denary.
10. In support of the idea which I have suggested above relative to the period of twenty-eight days, several circumstances or historical facts of the earliest nations of whom we have any account, may be cited. The almost universal adoption of the septenary cycle, which as a religious ordinance was certainly not known to the Israelites before the time of Moses, can in no other way be accounted for, and is in itself not of trifling moment. When man advanced in astronomical science, and parcelled the path of the moon in the heavens into divisions, he did not choose for this purpose twenty-nine or twenty-seven, but twenty-eight; and, accordingly, this was the number of mansions of the moon into which the Lunar Zodiac was divided by the astrologers of Egypt, of Arabia, of Chaldea, and of India. It was not, in my opinion, until a late date, comparatively speaking, that the mansions in India were more correctly divided into twenty-seven; but I do not state this as a fact, because I think it is not clearly made out which of the two Indian divisions, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with which we meet, was the most ancient. If it were twenty-seven, I should consider this as a circumstance strongly tending to support the doctrine of Bailly, advocated by me in my Celtic Druids, that a highly civilized nation had formerly existed, of which the learning of India and Egypt was a remnant. I think, from various circumstances which will be noticed in the following work, the reader will be induced to believe that the Indian division was originally the same as those of the Chaldees and Arabians. All the three Zodiacs differ in the figures on them in such a manner as to make it likely that they are not copies from one another, but that they have each given their own figures to the divisions previously made into twenty-eight, from some common source. A learned astronomer, Mr. Bentley, in his work lately published, called Ancient and Modern Hindoo Astronomy,[1] states them to have been originally twenty-eight.
11. The Chinese also have a Lunar Zodiac divided into twenty-eight parts or mansions, and seven classes, four of which are assigned to each of the seven planets. But they do not, like the Hindoos, the Chaldees, and the Arabians, give them the forms of animals.[2] Here is evidently the same system, which so completely accords with my theory of the first lunar observations of uncivilized or infant man. And the circumstance of their Zodiac being without the forms of animals seems to confirm my idea, that the Hindoo, the Chaldean, the Arabic, and Egyptian Zodiacs, must have been drawn from some common source which originally was without them. There must have been some common reason for all these different nations adopting a Zodiac of twenty-eight divisions. I know not any so probable as the supposed length of the Moon’s period. The animals in those Zodiacs are many of them natives of low latitudes: for instance, the elephant of Africa and India—which shews where the persons lived who gave them these animals. The Solar Zodiac, which has not the elephant, shews that it is not the produce of any nation where the elephant was indigenous. If the elephant and camel had been natives of the country where the Solar Zodiac was invented, they would not have been left out, to substitute goats or sheep. The modern astronomer, Mr. Bentley, was told by a learned Mohamedan, that the Lunar Zodiacs originally came from a country north of Persia and north-west of China—the evident birth-place of the Solar Zodiac.[3]
12. My opinion on this subject is confirmed by that of the learned Professor Playfair, who says, “It is also to the phases of the Moon that we are to ascribe the common division of time into weeks, or portions of seven days, which seems to have prevailed almost over the whole earth.”[4]
13. It has been observed by Bishop Doyly, in an attack upon Sir W. Drummond, that the Zodiac is not of Indian extraction, but of Greek, because the animals of which it is composed are not natives of India.[5] The argument seems fair; for it is not credible that the elephant should have been omitted in an Indian composition. The same argument applies to Egypt and the remainder of Africa. But this is by no means a proof that it is the invention of the Greeks. The climate of Samarcand, in Tartary, is the same as that of Greece, and as I consider that the latter is quite out of the question, I maintain that it tends strongly to confirm my hypothesis.
- ↑ P. 5.
- ↑ Encyclop. Brit.
- ↑ Bentley on Hind. Ast., p. 251.
- ↑ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. Vol. II. p. 140.
- ↑ The whimsical sign called Capricorn, in the Indian Zodiac, is an entire goat and an entire fish; in the Greek and Egyptian, the two are united and form one animal. It has been observed, that this is itself a presumptive proof that the Indian is the older of the two. And the Indian name, as noticed by Mons. Dupuis, (Tome III. p. 332,) is, as he has justly observed, probably taken from a primeval language whence both the Greek and Indian have been formed.
B 2
