[ 30 ] beginning of Cancer is a complete answer to the question we have been discussing, Dr. Thibaut, the learned editor of the Panchasiddhántiká, however, finds difficulty in accepting Saka -427, as the date of the composition of the work. As far as I can gather from his in- troduction to the work, his main objection lies in a statement of A'mrája, quoted by Bháu-Dajt, that "Varáha-mihira Acharya went to heaven in the 509th year of the Saka kála, i. E. A. D. 587." For, if Varáha be supposed to have written the work in Saka 427, he must have lived to the good old age of eighty two years after the composition ; and supposing him to have writton it at the age of twenty years, he must have seen 102 summers. Seeing that Varáha lived long enough to write a very large number of works, there is nothing in the statement intrinsically impossible. On the other hand, if the Saka year were not the epoch of his Karaga, be defeated his own purpose. Indeed, the ides of a Karaya-writer using a date borrowed from some older Siddhánta, as has been supposed in this case, and thus represent- ing & time other than that for which the work is written, is to say the least, self-contradictory. Then again, as has been pointed out by Pandit Dvivedi, there is absolutely no proof of the validity of A'mrája's assertion. Dr. Thibaut admits that if Saka 427 be taken as the epoch of Varáha's work, several facts, not otherwise explainable, become easy of explanation. All those considerations, together with tradition about Varába's time, point to the con- clusion we have already arrived at by discussing ayanáinsa. Assuming, then, that the zodiac at present in use was fixed in Saka 427, let us explain a few facts connected with it. First Digitized by Google
