User:Rudrasharman/Notes/Jyotisha and Astrology/Pingree

Selections from Jyotiḥśāstra (1981), Vol VI Fasc 4 of J. Gonda (Ed)A History of Indian Literature, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden

Introduction[edit]

Quote (p.1): Traditionally jyotiḥśāstra is divided into three skandhas: samhitā (omens), gaṇita (astronomy), and horā (astrology) (see BS 1, 9); and, according to the medieval muhūrta treatises, was originally promulgated by the eighteen sages [list omitted]. The validity of the first tradition was maintained only by artificially including new forms of scientific writing -- e.g. treatises on mathematics, on muhūrta, or on praśna -- in one or another of the three skandhas, while there was never any validity to the second.

Vedic (ca. 1000 BC - 400 BC)
Babylonian (ca. 400 BC - 200 AD)
Greco-Babylonian (ca. 200 - 400)
Greek (ca. 400 - 1600)
Islamic (ca. 1600 - 1800)

Quote (p.67): Omens (adbhuta, utpāta, nimitta) have probably always been regarded by Indians, as by others, as a means of knowing the future. There are, for instance, various references in the Ṛgveda (II 42-43 and X 165) and in the Atharvaveda (VI 27-29 and VII 64) to an ominous bird (śakuna). But the earliest attempts to list and classify omens and to provide their ritual countermeasures (śānti) occur in the Kauśikasūtra (XIII = kaṇḍikas 93-136) of the Atharvaveda and the common source of the Adbhutabrāhmaṇa, which is adhyāya VI or V of the Ṣaḍviṃśabrāhmaṇa, the Āśvalāyanagṛhyapariśiṣṭa, and the Adbhutaśānti of the Atharvavedapariśiṣṭa. [...] One cannot but be struck by the similarity of these omens with their śānti rituals to the Babylonian omens with their namburbi rituals, though no exact parallels exist since the Indian omens are without apodoses. It is possible, however, though not demonstrable, that the original of these three Sanskrit texts was at least in part dependent on a Mesopotamian prototype that reached India slightly before or after the Achaemenid occupation of Gandhāra in the sixth century BC.