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A well-known altar ritual says that altars should be constructed in a sequence of 95, with progressively increasing areas. The increase in the area, by one unit yearly, in building progressively larger �fire altars is 48 tithis which is about equal to the intercalation required to make the nakshatra year in tithis equal to the solar year in tithis. But there is a residual excess which in 95 years adds up to 89 tithis; it appears that after this period such a correction was made. The 95 year cycle corresponds to the tropical year being equal to 365.24675 days. The cycles needed to harmonize various motions led to the concept of increasing periods and world ages.<ref name=":0" />
A well-known altar ritual says that altars should be constructed in a sequence of 95, with progressively increasing areas. The increase in the area, by one unit yearly, in building progressively larger �fire altars is 48 tithis which is about equal to the intercalation required to make the nakshatra year in tithis equal to the solar year in tithis. But there is a residual excess which in 95 years adds up to 89 tithis; it appears that after this period such a correction was made. The 95 year cycle corresponds to the tropical year being equal to 365.24675 days. The cycles needed to harmonize various motions led to the concept of increasing periods and world ages.<ref name=":0" />
==External links==
== Rgveda and the Vedi<ref name=":0" /> ==
The number of syllables in the Rgveda con�firms the textual references that the book was to represent a symbolic altar. According to various early texts,(26) the number of syllables in the Rgveda is 432,000, which is the number of muhurtas in forty years. In reality the syllable count is somewhat less because certain syllables are supposed to be left unspoken.
The verse count of the Rgveda can be viewed as the number of sky days in forty years or 261 * 40 = 10,440 and the verse count of all the Vedas(27) is 261 * 78 = 20,358.
The Rgveda is divided into ten books with a total of 1,017 hymns which are placed into 216 groups. Are these numbers accidental or is there a deliberate plan behind the choice? One would expect that if the Rgveda is considered akin to the fi�ve-layered altar described in the Brahmanas then the fi�rst two books should correspond to the space intermediate to the earth and the sky. Now the number that represents space is 78. When used with the multiplier of 3 for the three worlds, this yields a total of 234 hymns which is indeed the number of hymns in these two books. One may represent the Rgvedic books as a fi�ve-layered altar of books as shown in Table 1.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Table 1: The altar of books
|Book 10
|Book 9
|-
|Book 7
|Book 8
|-
|Book 5
|Book 6
|-
|Book 3
|Book 4
|-
|Book 2
|Book 1
|}
When the hymn numbers are used in this altar of books we obtain Table 2.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Table 2: Hymns in the altar of books
|191
|114
|-
|104
|92
|-
|87
|75
|-
|62
|58
|-
|43
|191
|}
The choice of this arrangement is prompted by the considerable regularity in the hymn counts. Thus the hymn count separations diagonally across the two columns are 29 each for Book 4 to Book 5 and Book 6 to Book 7 and they are 17 each for the second column for Book 4 to Book 6 and Book 6 to Book 8. Books 5 and 7 in the �rst column are also separated by 17; Books 5 and 7 also add up to the total for either Book 1 or Book 10. Another regularity is that the middle three layers are indexed by order from left to right whereas the bottom and the top layers are in the opposite sequence.
Furthermore, Books [4+6+8+9] = 339, and these books may be taken to represent the spine of the altar. The underside of the altar now consists of the Books [2+3+5+7] = 296, and the feet and the head Books [1+10] = 382. The numbers 296 and 382 are each 43 removed from the fundamental Rgvedic number of 339.
The Brahmanas and the Shulbasutra tell us about the altar of chandas and meters, so we would expect that the total hymn count of 1017 and the group count of 216 have particular signifi�cance. Owing to the pervasive tripartite ideology of the Vedic books we choose to view the hymn number as 339*3. The tripartite ideology refers to the consideration of time in three divisions of past, present, and future and the consideration of space in the three divisions of the northern celestial hemisphere, the plane that is at right angle to the earth's axis, and the southern celestial hemisphere.
Consider the two numbers 1017 and 216. One can argue that another parallel with the representation of the layered altar was at work in the group total of 216. Since the Rgvedic altar of hymns was meant to symbolically take one to the sky, the abode of gods, it appears that the number 216 represents twice the basic distance of 108 taken to separate the earth from the sky. The Rgvedic code then expresses a fundamental connection between the numbers
339 and 108.
Consider now the cosmic model used by the ancients. The earth is at the center, and the sun and the moon orbit the earth at different distances. If the number 108 was taken to represent symbolically the distance between the earth and the sky, the question arises as to why it was done. The answer is apparent if one considers the actual distances of the sun and the moon. The number 108 is roughly the average distance that the sun is in terms of its own diameter from the earth; likewise, it is also the average distance that the moon is in terms of its own diameter from the earth. It is owing to this marvellous coincidence that the angular size of the sun and the moon, viewed
from the earth, is about identical.
It is easy to compute this number. The angular measurement of the sun can be obtained quite easily during an eclipse. The angular measurement of the moon can be made on any clear full moon night. A easy check on this measurement would be to make a person hold a pole at a distance that is exactly 108 times its length and confi�rm that the angular measurement is the same. Nevertheless, the computation of this number would require careful observations. Note that 108 is an average and due to the ellipticity of the orbits of the earth and the moon the distances vary with the seasons. It is likely, therefore, that observations did not lead to the precise number 108, but it was chosen as the true value of the distance since it is equal to 27*4, because of the mapping of the sky into 27 nakshatras.
The second number 339 is simply the number of disks of the sun or the moon to measure the path across the sky: � * 108 � 339.
We return to a further examination of the numbers 296, 339, and 382 in the design of the Rgvedic altar. It has been suggested that 339 has an obvious signi�ficance as the number of sun-steps during the average day or the equinox, and the other numbers are likely to have a similar signifi�cance. In other words, 296 is the number of sun-steps during the winter solstice and 382 is the number of sun-steps during the summer solstice.
There also exists compelling evidence, of a probabilistic sense, that the periods of the planets had been obtained and used in the setting up of the Rgvedic astronomical code.(28)<ref name=":0" />
== External links ==
*http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/george/vedi.html
*http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/george/vedi.html