History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.401

v6.c82.401

Here I translate two verses (2 and 21) 'the Yavanas have declared the form of the middle dreskāna of Meṣa sign (Aries) viz. she is a female clad in red garments, intent on ornaments and food, has the mouth of a horse and has a jar-like (i e. rotund) form, she is oppressed by thirst and is standing on one leg'; 'the Yavanas have declared the appearance of the last dreskāna of Tulā (Scales) as a male having the form of a monkey, decked with ornaments, frightening deer in a forest, wearing golden armour and quiver, and holding fruits and flesh (in his hands)'. There is nothing in the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy corresponding to this and Varāha probably refers to a Sanskrit work by a Yavana writer much earlier than even Ptolemy and Manilius. Manilius, author of 'Astronomica', a didactic poem on astrology, referred to the decans but he wrote about 9 A. D. and it appears that decans had gone out of vogue in Greece by the time of Ptolemy. Bouché-Leclercq notes (p. 219) that the system of decans is a characteristic of Manilius and that after him one does not hear it spoken of any longer. On p 219 of his work Bouché-Leclercq furnishes a figure of the Decans of Manilius, which is entirely different from the descriptions of decans given by Br J. Manilius divides each sign into three parts, each of which represents no deity but the signs themselves. For example, Aries is divided into three parts and those three are the same as Aries, Taurus and Gemini. The Sārāvalī369a in chap. 49 devotes thirty-six verses to the description of 36 dreṣkānas, but the description differs from that of the Br J. as the note below will show. The Sārāvalī had probably before it a Sanskrit *yavana* work different from the one relied upon by Br. J