Abstract
The Sothic Cycle. Mrs. A. S. D. Maunder has published a paper on this subject (J. Brit. Astro. Assoc., Jan.). The paper was written in answer to M. Sundaram Ayyar, who asserted the identity of the Egyptian Sothis with Arcturus, called Svati in India. It examines the sources of early Indian astronomy, and conjectures that the traditional author of the Siddhantas, Ashura Maya, may be a corruption of the Persian deity Ahura Mazda, and that these astronomical tables came from Persia. Mrs. Maunder gives a high valuation of the accuracy of the early observations made in Persia, but a much lower one to contemporary observations in Egypt, considering that the Egyptians could not then have observed the culmination of Arcturus with any accuracy. The well-known fact that the Nile flood comes close to the heliacal rising of Sirius leads her to adhere to the traditional view that Sothis is Sirius.
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Astronomical Topics. Nature 131, 332 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131332a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131332a0