History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.463

v6.c82.463

The theory that is sought to be propounded here is that the sight of the signs of the Zodiac on such patent objects as monuments and boundary stones in the 4th and 3rd centuries B. C. excited the curiosity of Indians visiting Babylonia, that on knowing their significance they brought the knowledge back to their country and fitted it on to the nakṣatra astrology that already existed in India and developed the rāśi astrology in their own way. Varāhamihira expressly says about dreṣkāṇas that he describes them in accordance with the views of Yavanas. If the whole Indian astrology had been derived from the Yavanas there was nothing to prevent him from saying so. The verse 'Mlecchā hi yavanās &c.' (in note 743 above) implies that the Yavana astrological tradition and Indian one were not the same and that the Yavanas had composed Sanskrit works on astrology (as the author's two papers show). Varāha expressly differs from the Yavanas on several substantial points.⁹⁰¹ About 200 B. C. the vernal equinox was at the beginning of the divisional sign Aries, which very closely coincided with the picture sign Aries. The Indian astronomers, when they began to make use of the signs Meṣa and others, switched over from the reckoning with the Kṛttikās as the beginning of the series of nakṣatras on to the reckoning from the nakṣatra Aśvinī, and counted Aśvinī as the first nakṣatra, though the vernal equinoctial point has now receded owing to precession to the Uttarābhādrapadā nakṣatra group. It is difficult to trace and describe the early efforts of Indian astrologers in the centuries preceding the Christian era on the system of rāśis, since the excellent work of Varāha, the Bṛhajjātaka, eclipsed all its predecessors and led to their gradual disappearance just as the two works of Ptolemy, Syntaxis (or Almagest) and Tetrabiblos, led to the gradual loss and disappearance of Greek works on astronomy and astrology composed before Ptolemy. Though all scholars maintain that Greek horoscopic astrology was influenced by Babylonian astronomy and astrology, the connecting links have snapped and become obliterated.⁹⁰² It is likely that, as both India and Greece were influenced by the Babylonian system of signs and astrology, both show some common characteristics. But it is too wide of the mark to assert that Indian astrology as developed in Varāhamihira was borrowed from Firmicus and Paulus Alexandrinus. Prof. Neugebauer, while asserting that the Sūrya-siddhānta is based on Greek eccentric and epicyclic devices, holds that they were modified by the Indians and that what he means is not that there was copying, but an intelligent modification of the initial impetus (vide ‘Archives Internationales D’ Histoire des Sciences’ for April-June 1955 (at p. 171 and note 22) It has been shown above in note 869 that the Br J differs from Firmicus as to dreskānas and about *bhāvas* (places in the horoscope) My hypothesis is that Indian astrology about rāśis and bhāvas was developed before even Ptolemy I have pointed out the differences between Ptolemy and Varāha in many places.⁹⁰³