Abstract
A verse in Book One of the Rigveda mentions a cosmic tree with rope-like aerial roots held up in the sky. Such an imagery might have ensued from the appearance of a comet having a ‘tree stem’-like tail, with branched out portions resembling aerial roots. Interestingly, a comet referred to as ‘heavenly tree’ was seen in 162 BC, as reported by old Chinese records. Because of weak surface gravity, cometary appendages may possibly assume strange shapes depending on factors like rotation, structure and composition of the comet as well as solar wind patterns. Varāhamihira and Ballala Sena listed several comets having strange forms as reported originally by ancient seers such as Parashara, Vriddha Garga, Narada and Garga.
The Mahābhārata speaks of a mortal king Nahusha who ruled the heavens when Indra, King of Gods, went into hiding. Nahusha became luminous and egoistic after absorbing radiance from gods and seers. When he kicked Agastya (the southern star Canopus), the latter cursed him and he became a serpent and fell from the sky. We posit arguments to surmise that this Mahābhārata lore is a mythical recounting of a cometary event wherein a comet crossed Ursa Major, moved southwards with an elongated tail in the direction of Canopus and eventually went out of sight. In order to check whether such a conjecture is feasible, a preliminary list of comets (that could have, or did, come close to Canopus) drawn from various historical records is presented and discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Abhyankar, K.D., 2005. Folklore and astronomy: Agastya a sage and a star. Current Science, 89, 2174–2176.
Achmad, L., De Jager, C., and Nieuwenhuijzen, H., 1991. Atmospheric model parameters and shock wave field for the supergiant Alpha Carinae (F0Ib). Astronomy and Astrophysics, 249, 192–198.
Allen, R.H., 1963. Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning. New York, Dover.
Bhat, R.M., 1981. Varahamihira’s Brhat Samhita. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
Brown, D.R., 2002. Babylonian observations. Highlights of Astronomy, 12, 311–316.
Chandel, N.K., and Sharma, S., 1991. A comparative study on cometary records from the Brhat Samhita and Bhadrabahu Samhita. Indian Journal of History of Science, 26, 375–382.
Chavannes, E., 1899. Les Memoires Historiques de Se–ma Ts’ien. Three Volumes. Paris, E. Leroux.
Das Gupta, P., 2015. Comets in Indian scriptures. In Abbott, B.P. (ed.). Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena VIII: City of Stars. San Francisco, Astronomical Society of Pacific (Conference Series, 501). Pp.151–60.
Fotheringham, J.K., 1919. The new star of Hipparchus, and the dates of the birth and accession of Mithridates. Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society, 79, 162–167.
Ghurye, G.S., 1972. Two Brahmanical Institutions – Gotra and Charana. Bombay, Popular Prakashan.
Ghurye, G.S., 1977. Indian Acculturation: Agastya and Skanda. Bombay, Popular Prakashan.
Griffith, R.T.H., 1896. The Hymns of the Rgveda. Delhi, Reprinted by Motilal Banarasidass Publishers.
Halley, E., 1705. A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets. London, John Senex.
Hasegawa, I., 1979. Orbits of ancient and medieval comets. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, 31, 257–270.
Hasegawa, I., 1980. Catalogue of ancient and naked-eye comets. Vistas in Astronomy, 24, 59–102.
Hiltebeitel, A., 1977. Nahuṣa in the skies: a human king of Heaven. History of Religions, 16, 329–350.
Ho, P.Y., 1962. Ancient and mediaeval observations of comets and novae in Chinese sources. Vistas in Astronomy, 5, 127–225.
Hughes, D.W., 1985. The position of Earth at previous apparitions of Halley’s comet. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 26, 513–520.
Iyengar, R.N., 2006. On some comet observations in ancient India. Journal of Geological Society of India, 67, 289–294.
Iyengar, R.N., 2008. Archaic astronomy of Parasara and Vrddha Garga. Indian Journal of History of Science, 43, 1–27.
Iyengar, R.N., 2010. Comets and meteoritic showers in the Rgveda and their significance. Indian Journal of History of Science, 45, 1–32.
Kanda, S., 1935. Astronomical Materials in Japanese History. Tokyo, Maruzen (in Japanese).
Kanda, S., 1947. Astronomical and Meteorological Materials in Japanese History. Tokyo, Ashikabi (in Japanese).
Kane, P.V., 1975. History of Dharmasastra. Volume 5. Poona, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Kiang, T., 1972. The past orbit of Halley’s Comet. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, 76, 27–66.
Kochhar, R., 2010. Rāhu and Ketu in mythological and “astronomological” contexts Indian Journal of History of Science, 45, 287–297.
Kronk, G.W., 2003. Cometography: A Catalog of Comets. Volume 2: 1800–1899. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Mahadevan, I. 1986, Agastya legend and the Indus Civilization. Journal of Tamil Studies, 30, 24–37.
Miki, M., and Yano, M., 2010. A study on the Atharvaveda-Parisista 50-57 with special reference to the Kūrmavibhāga. Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies, 58, 1126–1133.
Parpola, A., 2009. Hind leg + fish: towards further understanding of the Indus script. Scripta, 1, 37–76.
Parpola, A., 2010. A Dravidian solution to the Indus script problem. A paper presented at the World Classical Tamil Conference, Coimbatore. Chennai, Central Institute of Classical Tamil.
Pingre, A.G., 1783. Cometographie. Paris, Imprimerie Royale.
Pingree, D.E., 1981. Jyotihsastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Robertson, W., 1831. Observations of the second comet of 1822, made at Rio de Janeiro. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 121, 1–8.
Sachs, A., 1974. Babylonian observational astronomy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 276(1257), 43–50.
Sekiguchi, R., 1917a. Ancient records of comets in Korea. Josen Kodai Kansoku Kiroku Chosa Hokoku, 177–194 (in Japanese).
Sekiguchi, R., 1917b. Meteor showers in Korean records. Josen Kodai Kansoku Kiroku Chosa Hokoku, 196–200 (in Japanese).
Sharma, S.D. 1986. Periodic nature of cometary motions as known to Indian astronomers before eleventh century A.D. In Swarup, G., Bag, A.K., and Shukla, K.S. (eds.). History of Oriental Astronomy: Proceedings of International Astronomical Union Colloquium No. 91, New Delhi, India, 13-16 November 1985. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Pp. 109–112.
Stephenson, F.R., 1988. Oriental star maps. In Débarbat, S., Eddy, J.A., Eichhorn, H.K., and Upgren, A.R. (eds.). Mapping the Sky: Past Heritage and Future Directions. Proceedings of the 133rd Symposium of the International Astronomical Union Held in Paris, France, June 1–5, 1987. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Pp. 11–22.
Stephenson, F.R., and Yau, K.K.C., 1985. Far Eastern observations of Halley’s comet–240 BC to AD 1368. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 38, 195–216.
Stephenson, F.R., Yau, K.K.C., and Hunger, H., 1985. Records of Halley’s Comet on Babylonian tablets. Nature, 314, 587–592.
Subbarayappa, B.V., and Sarma, K.V., 1985. Indian Astronomy – A Source-book. Bombay, Nehru Centre.
Tsu, W.S., 1934. The observations of Halley’s Comet in Chinese history. Popular Astronomy, 42, 191–201.
Vahia, M.N., and Subbarayappa, B.V., 2011. Eclipses in ancient India. In Sôma, M., and Tanikawa, K. (eds.). Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on History of Astronomy. Tokyo, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Pp.16–19.
Williams, J., 2014. Observations of Comets from BC 611 to AD 1640. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Witzel, M., 1995. Early Indian history: linguistic and textual parameters. In Erdosy, G. (ed.). Indian Philology and South Asian Studies. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter. Pp.85–125.
Xu, Z., Pankenier, W., and Jiang, Y., 2000. East-Asian Archaeoastronomy: Historical Records of Astronomical Observations of China, Japan and Korea. Singapore, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Yano, M., 2003, Calendar, astrology and astronomy. In Flood, G. (ed.). Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. London, Blackwell Publishing. Pp. 376–392.
Yeomans, D.K., and Kiang, T., 1981. The long-term motion of Comet Halley. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 197, 633–646.
Yeomans, D.K., Rahe, J., and Freitag, R.S., 1986. The history of Comet Halley. Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 80, 62–86.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Hindustan Book Agency 2018 and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Das Gupta, P. (2019). Comets, Historical Records and Vedic Literature. In: Orchiston, W., Sule, A., Vahia, M. (eds) The Growth and Development of Astronomy and Astrophysics in India and the Asia-Pacific Region. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 54. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3645-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3645-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3644-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3645-4
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)