The Nativity of Rama

Abstract

I HAVE been much interested in the letter of “Kanhaiyalal,” which appears in your issue of August 31. I fully agree with him in the view taken in regard to the verification of dates by astronomical methods, and it really does seem somewhat singular that the example of Sir William Jones, the pioneer of Orientalism in Europe, should have been entirely neglected by his learned colleagues and successors in this department of research. From many considerations it must be obvious that wherever mention of planetary “yogams” or conjunctions, siderial and lunar positions, &c., are given in the text of any classical work, they are to be preferred to any arguments drawn merely from literary style and other empirical data—so much relied upon by Orientalists and scholars generally—when the question is one of a calendaric date.