Michael Witzel Harvard University
The Pleiades and the Bears viewed from inside the Vedic texts N. Achar and his predecessors of the past hundred- odd years, definitely have a point when they state that several nakSatra ('moon houses') can be viewed as being exactly situated on the eastern horizon at their various times of rising in the course of the night (and of the year), and that Zatapatha brAhmaNa 2.1.2.1 seems to describe the time when the Pleiades (kRttikAH) were rising due east (at c. 2900 BCE). That means the Pleiades were rising in the east at nightfall at fall equinox, while the sun rises against their background at the spring equinox (heliacal rising at vernal equinox). The question here will be how to interpret this passage and how to place it against the background of Vedic star lore.