Indians knew water on Moon

Recently India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-I has found evidence of water on the moon. India's love for moon is a history!

In Indian myth, the moon is male though in other Asian countries, it is predominantly female. In Indian myths, the male moon marries the daughter of the sun. Several popular songs use the moon as the romantic theme of comparing the heroine to the moon.

The lunar calendar is believed to have originated in India.

In Indian mythology there are several symbols commonly associated with the moon.

In Hindu art, the god Soma represents the moon and is depicted as a bull. The god Soma evolved into a lunar deity. Soma’s twenty-seven wives were the star goddesses, the Nakshatras – daughters of the cosmic progenitor Daksha.

Soma is the name of a drink said to be consumed by the gods. Full moon is the time to collect and press the divine drink. The moon is also the cup from which the gods drink. Does it indicate water on moon?

Indian great Schloars like Varahamithira (thanks to Dr T Venugopal) mentioned moon as Jala Graha meaning watery planet. How did they know?

Surva Sidhanta, an ancient book on Indian Astronomy gives the sidereal period of moon’s nodes as 6794.443 mean solar days (very near to the exact value 6793.5 days). The Hindus knew that the solar and lunar eclipses depend on the positions of moon’s nodes at the time of conjunction and opposition. So the ascending and descending nodes are respectively known as the Rahu and Khedu in Indian Astronomy. Hindus knew that the same kind of eclipses would be repeated in the same order in a period of 6585 days. The phenomena of the eclipses are given by Bhaskara in his Sidhanta Siromoni. They knew about the parallaxes of the sun and moon.

Chandran means moon. So India’s lunar mission is named as Chandrayaan meaning ‘travel to moon’.