In the same treatise the _Hotar_, (priest), is taught how the _Shastras_ should be repeated, and how the phenomena of sunrise and sunset are to be explained. It says: “The Agnishtoma is that one (that god) who burns. The sun _never sets nor rises_. When people think the sun is setting, it is _not so_; they are mistaken. For after having arrived at the end of the day, it produces two opposite effects, making night to what is below, and day to what is on the other side. When they (the people) believe it rises in the morning, the sun only does thus: having reached the end of the night, it makes itself produce two opposite effects, making day to what is below, and night to what is on the other side. In fact the sun never sets; nor does it set for him who has such a knowledge....”[58] This sentence is so conclusive, that even the translator of the _Rig-Veda_, Dr. Haug, was forced to remark it. He says this passage contains “the _denial_ of the existence of sunrise and sunset,” and that the author supposes the sun “to remain always in its high position.”[59] In one of the earliest _Nivids_, Rishi Kutsa, a Hindu sage of the {11} remotest antiquity, explains the allegory of the first laws given to the celestial bodies. For doing “what she ought not to do,” Anâhit (Anaïtis or Nana, the Persian Venus), representing the earth in the legend, is sentenced to turn round the sun. The _Sattras_, or sacrificial sessions[60] prove undoubtedly that so early as in the eighteenth or twentieth century B.C., the Hindus had made considerable progress in astronomical science. The _Sattras_ lasted one year, and were “nothing but an imitation of the sun’s yearly course. They were divided, says Haug, into two distinct parts, each consisting of six months of thirty days each; in the midst of both was the _Vishuvan_ (equator or central day), cutting the whole _Sattras_ into two halves, etc.”[61] This scholar, although he ascribes the composition of the bulk of the _Brahmanas_ to the period 1400-1200 B.C., is of opinion that the oldest of the hymns may be placed at the very commencement of Vedic literature, between the years 2400-2000, B.C. He finds no reason for considering the _Vedas_ less ancient than the sacred books of the Chinese. As the _Shu-King_ or _Book of History_, and the sacrificial songs of the _Shi-King_, or _Book of Odes_, have been proved to have an antiquity as early as 2200, B.C., our philologists may yet be compelled before long to acknowledge, that in astronomical knowledge, the antediluvian Hindus were their masters.