Dhruva story is pivotal for Indian History Writing : Talk by Prof R N Iyengar

[Nagaraj Paturi]

[Nagaraj Paturi]

There is an older thread on BVP regarding this :

https://groups.google.com/g/bvparishat/c/8UriRbU6WbU/m/XgFUxxXzJwAJ

Prof M D Srinivas gave the summary in English in that thread :

During the first week of March there was a brilliant lecture at IIT Madras by the renowned scholar Prof. R.N.Iyengar  on the "Legend of Dhruva, the Pole Star: Importance to Indian History and Culture". Prof. Iyengar, former Professor of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and an authority on earthquake engineering and disaster mitigation, also happens to be one of the leading researchers on the Pre-siddhantic Traditions of Astronomy in India.

In his lecture, Prof. Iyengar highlighted how the Indian tradition of astronomy has the unique distinction of having observed and recorded two pole stars over a period of 5000 years. I am enclosing below a brief summary of the important points covered in the lecture.

M D Srinivas

LEGEND OF DHRUVA THE POLE STAR: IMPORTANCE TO INDIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

The north celestial pole and the south celestial pole define the axis of the daily rotation of the earth. This is also the axis of the apparent daily rotation of the stars from east to west. The axis of rotation of the earth precesses over a period of around 25,700 years, and hence the north celestial pole also shifts accordingly. When a star is located near the north celestial pole that would be the "pole star" for that epoch. What we refer to as the pole star currently, is the star Polaris (α-Ursa Minoris) which has been very close (less that  a degree away from the pole) to the north celestial pole during the last hundred years. It has been referred to as the pole star since 18th century and will continue to function as the pole star for a few more centuries.

It is important to note that there was no star near the north celestial pole prior to the 18th century for a very long period exceeding 4000 years! It was only during  the eight centuries centered around 2800 BCE (i.e. during 3200 BCE to 2400 BCE) that there was a star, the star Thuban (α-Draconis), which was fairly close to the north celestial pole.

We all know the story of Dhruva becoming the pole star as recounted in the Puranas and the ritual of  of the bride being shown the Dhruva during the wedding ceremony. The fact that this latter ritual ls mentioned in the ancient Grihya  Sutras  was cited by the German scholar Jacobi in 1897 to suggest that the Vedic literature should date back to the third millennium BCE when there was  a pole-star Thuban close to the north celestial pole. This was dismissed by all other leading Western Indologists such as Keith, Whitney, Winternitz etc., by contending that the Vedic literature did not mention any pole star Dhruva.

In his lecture, Prof. Iyengar presented clinching evidence from the Vedic literature to show that it does record the observation of the pole star Dhruva in the constellation Sisumara, which can be shown to be the same as Thuban or α-Draconis. Prof. Iyengar also presented a birds eye-view of  how the notion of Dhruva is dealt with in later Pauranic, Astronomical and other literature.

Dhruva does find a mention in the Rgveda but there is no reference to the pole star. It is in the Taittiriya Aranyaka of the Krishna Yajurveda (Prapathaka 2, Anuvaka 19) that we find a clear reference to the fourteen stars in the constellation of Sisumara (whale or porpoise) which is seen in the northern sky. The star Abhaya-Dhruva is said to be in the tail of Sisumara. The notion of the pole star Dhruva in the tail of the constellation Sisumara  is explained in greater detail in the later Puranas such as the Brahmanda Purana; and from this description it is clear that what is being referred to is the star Thuban in the Constellation of Dragon, which was the pole-star around 2800 BCE. The memory of the Vedic Dhruva continued in historic times as may be seen from the fact that while commenting on the name "Nakshatranemi"  of Vishnu-Sahasranama, all the major commentators (Adi Sankaracharya, Parasara Bhatta and Raghavendra Suri) refer to these very same verses of Taittiriya Aranyaka.

By the second millennium BCE, the north celestial pole would have shifted significantly so that one could see the movement of the star Abhaya-Dhruva  or Thuban which was the pole-star earlier. This is what is recorded in the Maitrayani Aranyaka which refers to the motion of Dhruva. This Aranyaka could be dated around 1700 BCE as it also refers to the winter solstice in the middle of the Dhanishtha Nakshatra. There are similar references to the moving of Dhruva in later literature.

The later Siddhantic astronomical works mention the north and south celestial poles but do not refer to any pole star. Brahmagupta (c. 628 CE), and later Bhaskaracarya II (c. 1150), refer to the Dhruva-Matsya (a group of twelve stars in the shape of Fish, which included some of the stars of the constellation Ursa Minor) which went around the pole. In 1423 CE, Padmanabha wrote about his Dhruva-Bhrama-Yantra, where he states that the line joining the two stars, Polaris and Kochab (α-Ursa Minoris and α-Ursa Minoris) in the mouth and tail of the fish, would function like the handle of a clock going around the north celestial pole.  He also mentions that the  Polaris (α-Ursa Minoris) was then situated around 3 degrees from the north celestial pole.

Prof Iyengar concluded his talk with the observation

"Thus, while we have the luxury of counting two Pole Stars in our long cultural history spanning some 5000 years, we bear the moral responsibility of keeping alive the legend of the Vedic-Purāṇic Dhruva. I consider in this talk the Vedic evidences, Purāṇa descriptions and also later discourses to trace how the memory of Dhruva has survived through the ages."

Prof Iyengar provided links to an article in Researchgate 

and a video recording of his talk at IITB :

First let me thank Prof.MD Srinivas for attending my talk and for posting a review here on BVP. He has the uncanny ability of squeezing out the most essential points. I appreciate the further response of other members  to the review and my work on Vedic Jyotisha. 

 The first version of my work was published in IJHS in 2011. This can be accessed at 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262558760_DHRUVA_THE_ANCIENT_INDIAN_POLE_STAR_FIXITY_ROTATION_AND_MOVEMENT

The IITM lecture is not yet available in record. However, an earlier version of this as given at IITB is available on youtube  at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AphtLcMDGKs&index=5...

I would be happy to respond to comments and questions about my work.

Regards

RN Iyengar

 

On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 8:12 PM Nagaraj Paturi <nagara...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Senior Director, IndicA

BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra

BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.

Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru

BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership

Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.