Does the Shiv-Puran narrative encode the Moon’s orbital evolution?

Introduction: 

This is the first post in a series, exploring my structural hypothesis about the Soma (Moon) and Rohiṇī narrative from the Shiva Purāṇa. In the Shiva Purāṇa’s 4th Saṃhitā, the Koṭirudra Saṃhitā, there is a story of the Somanātha Jyotirlinga. There we get a fascinating account of the Moon’s story — his marriage, his favouritism, past misconduct, penance, and so on.

Since childhood, when I heard this story for the first time, I always looked at it as an actual description of the Moon’s orbiting around the Earth. After doing some research, studying many papers on topics like the Earth-Moon system, ancient history of the Moon, etc., I have now come up with this hypothesis.

My hypothesis proposes that the narrative encodes a remarkably accurate description of the Moon’s orbital evolution from its ancient past upto its present stable state.

I will try to use the following standard structure to present my hypothesis. 

Source → Observation → Question → Hypotheses → Predictions → Evidence → Calculations → Falsification → Likelihood → Conclusion.

In this first part, I will briefly touch on Source, Observation, Question, Hypotheses, Predictions, and Evidence. More details on these and the remaining aspects like Calculations, Falsification, and Likelihood will be addressed in subsequent posts as the argument is developed.

Source:

The key source of the mentioned story is the Shiva Purāṇa (शिवपुराण). The Shiva Purāṇa consists of a total of seven Saṃhitās (Books). We will be referring to the 4th Saṃhitā, i.e., the Koṭirudra Saṃhitā (कोटिरुद्रसंहिता). It consists of 43 Adhyayas (अध्याय) or Chapters, the majority of which are devoted to the origins of the twelve Jyotirlingas.

Our focus will be on the 14th Adhyay (अध्याय), which is the prologue to the glory and origin of the first Jyotirlinga, Somanātha. (ज्योतिर्लिङ्गमाहात्म्य-प्रस्तावना तथा सोमनाथ-प्रसङ्गः)

Primary text used: THE ŚlVAPURĀNA, PART III, Koṭirudra Saṃhitā, Chapter 14 (J.L. Shastri translation, 1950), and online source- https://vedapath.app/en/shiva-purana/kotirudra/14

Key research papers: Touma & Wisdom (1998); Ćuk & Stewart (2012); Ćuk (2016); Tian & Wisdom (2020); Garrick-Bethell (2006); Rufu & Canup (2020) and similar other research papers. Key sources and references will be provided in detail in the subsequent posts

Observations:

The 14th adhyay of the Koṭirudra Saṃhitā of Shiva Puran narrates the well-known story of Daksha-Soma(moon)-Rohini and consequently tells the glory of the Someshwar Jyotirlinga at Gujrat. The story involves following key points:

1. Daksha’s 27 daughters married to the Moon— Daksha Prajapati had 27 daughters. He arranged their marriage with the Moon. All of them, including the moon, were happy.
2. The Moon’s exclusive preference for Rohiṇī — Rohiṇī, among the 27 wives, soon became the favorite of the Moon. The remaining 26 daughters complained to their father Daksha about the Moon’s disproportionate favor among them.
3. Daksha’s curse of ‘kṣaya’ upon the Moon — After repeated requests to the Moon, his son-in-law, Daksha finally cursed him with “consumption” (a wasting disease). Soma’s brilliance waned progressively.
4. Brahma’s recollection of the Moon’s past misdeeds — The gods asked Brahma to intervene. Brahma recalled and told them the Moon’s past misdeeds. Brahma told that in the past, the Moon had once gone to Bṛhaspati’s domain and abducted his wife Tārā, and they had a son together. Then later the Moon went to the Daityas’ territory. As a remedy for the curse, Brahma advised the gods to ask Soma to do penance at Prabhāsa Kshetra (which is in today’s Gujarat).
5. The Moon’s penance at Prabhāsa Kshetra — The Moon agreed to do the penance. The Moon performed his penance devotedly. 
6. Shiva’s resolution instituting the fortnightly cycle — After six months, pleased by his penance, Shiva appeared and granted him a boon: that from then on, for one fortnight he would wane and for the next he would wax.
7. Glory of Somanātha Jyotirlinga —The story further tells the glory of the place and the Jyotirlinga. The place is now famous as the Somanātha Jyotirlinga of Prabhāsa, Gujarat, India.

Question:

Is this chapter encoding the sequential stages of lunar orbital history, in temporal sequence from the deep past to the time of its composition? Could it represent directly observed and/or extrapolated kinematic orbital behaviour of the Moon up to its current regular, circularized orbit?

Hypotheses:

The narrative has a multi-phase structure. Each appears to correspond to a distinct phase in the Moon’s orbital history. It covers the period before the Moon’s entering the Earth system, then its entering Earth’s influence and following a complex orbital path, then gradual dampening of its motions, and finally the present fortnightly orbit.

The hypothesis proposes that the text’s composer combined “direct observations” of the Moon’s then-current orbit with “past observations and social memories” along with “kinematic extrapolation backward in time”, and deliberately wove the data into a dramatised story, so that the phenomena would remain preserved for ages to come.

I am proposing that the narration describes a Moon-entry event, either capture or an impact with Earth event. Though the description is at variance with the standard giant-impact hypothesis, and I will address this divergence in a subsequent post. 

Based on the story, we can divide the orbital history of the Moon into four phases:

1. Pre-capture phase – A past period of the Moon, which encodes its dynamic interactions before entering the Earth system. It includes the Moon’s encounter with an entity termed Bṛhaspati’s wife Tārā. This phase is narrated through Brahma’s words, when he tells the gods of the Moon’s past misconduct. (See Observation point 4.) Current hypothesis is not particularly focusing on this phase. I am aware that the Tārā-Bṛhaspati episode is more described in other texts like the Padma Puran. I am studying it and will try to add the details in subsequent posts.
2. Highly eccentric phase – This is a section of the Moon’s initial orbital phase around the Earth. The Moon had just been captured into the Earth system. During this time, the orbit was highly eccentric. Its apogee was oriented toward the Rohiṇī nakshatra. Due to this, the Moon often seemed to linger near apogee (Rohiṇī) and rapidly skimmed through the other 26 nakshatras. The orbital plane was steeply inclined to the ecliptic (possibly 30°–45° or more), making the synodic phase (i.e., the waxing/waning cycle) irregular or not readily noticeable. This is described in the text as: though the Moon was married to all 27 nakshatras, he would only be seen with Rohiṇī. (See Observation points 1 and 2.)
3. Dampening and circularization phase – A period during which the perigee distance to Earth was at its minimum, eccentricity dropped, and the semi-major axis contracted — corresponding to the post-evection orbital contraction phase. The orbit was gradually regularised. The narration describes this as the penance period, during and after which the orbital irregularities (i.e., high eccentricity and inclination) were reduced. The orbit became circularized, and the orbital plane angle shifted closer to the ecliptic, as it is today. (See Observation point 5.)
4. Present fortnightly orbit phase – This period corresponds to the time of the text’s composition. The Moon moved through all 27 nakshatras, with a noticeable, regular waxing-waning cycle. This stable orbit was observed at the time of the text’s composition and is also observable today. (See Observation point 6.)

Following video visualises and compares this phase with the current one

Predictions:

If we assume this hypothesis (H₁) is true, then we should expect to find the Moon’s orbital history matching the descriptions in the text. We should expect to find that the Moon’s orbital apogee was oriented toward the Rohiṇī nakshatra, and that the Moon was seen disproportionately more often near Rohiṇī. We should also find that the Moon once had irregularity in its phase cycle, which was later regularised.

As more astronomical and other data are gathered, a more realistic orbital history will be derived. Future orbital calculations should reproduce similar phenomena.

Evidence summary:

Modern planetary dynamics now independently corroborate the general sequence of orbital states described by the Shiva Purāṇa narrative as explained here. Most modern research papers also perform backward time extrapolation using current data, through numerical simulations of the evection resonance, the Laplace Plane Transition, and so on. Collectively, they agree that the Moon’s past orbit must have been more irregular than it is today. Various studies and extrapolated data corroborate the Moon’s individual orbital states as narrated in the Shiva Purāṇa.

I will give more details in the subsequent posts.