Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.75

c13.75

Whatever may have been the period when the notion first obtained, that foreknowledge of events on earth might be gained by observations of planets and stars, and by astronomical computation; or wherever that fancy took its rise; certain it is, that the Hindus have received and welcomed communications from other nations on topics of astrology; and although they had astrological divinations of their own as early as the days of Parasara and Garga, centuries before the Christian era, there are yet grounds to presume that communications subsequently passed to them on the like subject, either from the Greeks, or from the same common source (perhaps that of the Chaldeans) whence the Greeks derived the grosser superstitions engrafted on their own genuine and ancient astrology, which was meteorological.