Indian astrology, deeply rooted in Vedic traditions, has a history that intertwines spirituality, astronomy, and mathematics. – Parappanangadi U. Panikar
Indian astrology has a long and rich history. It all starts with the Vedas. The Yaga rituals prescribed in the Rigveda demanded accuracy in all respects. The Yagasalai—the tent where the rituals are performed—had to be built with precise measurements. The means and methods to compute these measurements later evolved into Vastu or Indian architecture. The Yaga rituals were to begin at an auspicious time, when planetary positions aligned in a certain order.
The methods to compute such auspicious times—Muhurta, in Sanskrit—paved the way to the development of astronomy and astrology in India. Indian astronomy has a long and strong association with scholars from the other ancient civilisations. Suryasiddhanta, one of the ancient Indian treatises on astronomy, begins with the author’s prayer to the Sun God asking Him to reveal the secrets of the universe. The Sun God then appears and advises the seeker to go and meet Turamaya in the Romaka country to learn more about cosmological systems and their calculations. Experts in the field, including Dr Ebenezer Burgess who translated the text to English, opine that Turamaya mentioned in the text is the great astronomer Ptolemy, and Romaka stands for Roman Egypt. Indian predictive astrology too has a strong bond with Greece. One of the very first texts on predictive astrology, which is still widely used by Indian astrologers, is the Yavanajataka, or the Greek Horoscopy, authored by Sphujiddhvaja Yavaneswara.
The word Yavana derives from Ionian, and broadly means Greece. Another text of the same lineage is the Vruddha Yavana Jataka, or the Great Greek Horoscopy. The ancient astrological texts often mention the Greek astrologers and astronomers with reverence and respect. Indian astrology made its mark through Varahamihira, who is considered as the foremost authority of ancient times. His text, the Horasastra is the most widely used astrological text. Varahamihira was a Maga Brahmin, priestly class of Hindus who worshipped the Sun. Diogenes Laertius writes that the great Democritus learned from Magi priests. This could be the class of Varahamihira.
It should be noted that Varahamihira was also a great mathematician and an astronomer who authored detailed treatises on these subjects. Indian kings and the elite class had their own team of astrologers, who advised them on the military strategies. Astrology was one of the chief components of the Indian knowledge system and was metaphorically mentioned as the eye of the Veda. Under this branch, many subjects developed including astronomy and mathematics. Later, when the Mughal invaders tried to attack this knowledge system in the northern part of India, the center of Indian intellectual debates and studies shifted to the south of India. Astrology to mathematics thrived in south India. In the south they developed their own system of horary astrology, a detailed method of predicting the future, and named it Ashtamangala Prashnam. In the field of mathematics, the great Madhava of Samgamagrama independently discovered Infinite Series for the Trigonometric Functions, which is known today as the “Madhava-Gregory-Leibniz Series.” India and Indian astrology contributed heavily towards the development of science—specifically in the fields of astronomy, astrology, and mathematics.
We always appreciated and respected scholars from civilisations and cultures foreign to us too. In the Veda, there is a line “Yatra Viswam Bhavatyeka Needam” which means, here the world becomes a single nest. In the arena of knowledge systems, we lived up to it. The world was a single and simple nest to us. Many birds, scholars and intellectuals, from many trees, many countries, resided in that nest harmoniously. – The Pioneer, 9 October 2024
› Parappanangadi U. Panikar is a Vedic scholar based in Kerala.
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