Mathematics A Missing Factor in Assessing the Antiquity of Vedanga Jyotisa

While reading ancient texts one has to be cognizant of the assumptions made about the past. One has to ask: Are these assumptions valid? Are we projecting the present views into the past? A case in point is the dating of Vedanga Jyotisa. This note reports that due to mathematics being overlooked in the various attempts of assessing the time of composition of the text, the latter was dated much before the period when its mathematics was actually feasible.