[18] The initial point of the Hindu Zodiac (see Plate III.) is about 9½ degrees to the west of the boundary line of the constellation Aries, as it is drawn on our celestial globes. One foot of Aries, however, extends beyond the boundary line, and touches a line drawn through the initial point of the Hindu Zodiac and the poles of the ecliptic. At page 132, the question of the date of the fixation of this initial point is discussed, and a high antiquity for it is claimed. There are many considerations which may lead us to the opinion that not only in India, but amongst the ancients generally, the first degree of the constellation coincided with the Hindu initial point, and not with the boundary line of the constellation, as it is now drawn. Greek and Latin authors, writing in the first century B.C., speak of the solstitial and equinoctial colures, as being “at the eighth degree of the Zodiac,” and these statements, which have caused modern commentators much perplexity (see _Handbuch der Klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft_; _Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer_, Unger), may be easily explained, if we realize that they, in all likelihood, counted the degrees of the Zodiac from the same initial point as that in use amongst Hindu astronomers, which in the first century B.C. was eight degrees to the west of the equinoctial point. Dupuis, writing at nearly the same date as Bailly, about a hundred years ago, and in conflict with him on many points relating to the Zodiac, was also struck by the choice of this same inconspicuous point in the great circle of the ecliptic, not only by the Brahmins of India, but also by other ancient nations. He further explains that the difference in the choice of initial point by the Chinese, and by the other nations, is only an apparent, and not a real difference. On the wonderful agreement shown by so many nations, in their choice of the stars by which they marked the beginning of their Zodiacs, Dupuis relied to support his views concerning the unity of the astronomical and religious myths of all nations. At the end of his work, _Mémoire Explicatif du Zodiaque_, Dupuis gives in a diagram several Zodiacs in concentric circles; some divided into twelve, some into twenty-seven or twenty-eight parts. He represents the colures by a cross which quarters these concentric Zodiacs, and speaking of the twenty-seven- and twenty-eight-fold divisions, he observes as follows: