History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.451

v6.c82.451

It has been seen above that not only was general astrology developed in early Vedic times, but individual astrology based on nakṣatras had begun to be studied even as early as the Atharvaveda.⁸⁹² That beginnings of a regular terminology resembling the later *bhāva* nomenclature had been made and prognostications had been based on the nakṣatra of birth and on the nakṣatras at certain distances from the nakṣatra of birth Here we have the germs of the basic assumptions of early and medieval astrology, viz. that a person's future is determined at the time of the birth and that his destiny can be inferred from his horoscope. It will be shown immediately that India was in contact with Mesopotamia and the countries of the Near East from very ancient times. This contact became very close after Alexander's invasion of India about 325 B C. and in the 3rd century B. C. It appears to me probable that Indians who had already the nakṣatra astrology saw the signs of the Zodiac on Babylonian monuments and boundary stones and adapted them to their own astrological purposes just about the time when the Greeks derived their inspiration for individual astrology from Babylonians.