Lithin wrote:

Based only on the English translations presented above, it seems to me that they refer to a tropical zodiac unless the vernal point coincided with a sign boundary of an equal-sign 'sidereal' zodiac when the book was written and / or for the period described.

That is our basic problem here. As this is a 3rd century CE text it seems the two zodiacs did coincide very closely at this point.

To quote Martin Gansten:

The text as we have it is date by Pingree (from text-internal evidence) to 269/270 CE. It is said to be based on an earlier text from 149/150 CE, but we can't really know what was in the original. It's a bit like the Dorotheus situation.

The ayanamsa of the following popular sidereal zodiacs were all around 0 in this period:

Lahiri: 285 CE

Krishnamurti: 292 CE

Fagan-Bradley 221 CE

Mark

If the original text was from 170 AD and Aries 0 co-incidence of the two Zodiacs was in 280 AD then "early Cancer" term would be sidereal term and ahead of the tropical !!

At Midnight 21/12/170 AD Greenwich.
The sidereal Sun was in Capricorn 1deg 29 min 56 sec (lahiri)
Whereas Tropical Sun was in Sagittarius 29 deg 54min 42 sec.
The precession being - 1deg 35min

So the sidereal capricorn or cancer part would indeed have been (aadi or early) if the ingress being promoted was a Tropical Cancer/Capricorn.
Sidereal ingress would have taken place earlier than the tropical ingress and not vice versa like now.
Take that for the beauty of Sanskrit.
The Yavan was covering both bases

We can only speculate here. As Martin said how can we be certain that bit of the text was relying on an older source?

And if it was I find it highly unlikely that source was proposing a tropical zodiac that early. The Tetrabiblos was probably written around 160 CE towards the end of Ptolemy's life:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrabiblos

Those ideas took a long time to disseminate and become accepted within the wider astrological community in the west. Indeed the process took centuries for the tropical zodiac based on 0 Aries to be fully accepted. Even then one can find historical exceptions into the middle ages. So I find it rather it unconvincing that a text from 170 CE would even be proposing a tropical zodiac. If the older source text really was a Greek astrological work this discussion needs to be seen in the context of what was credible in terms of western astrological understanding of precession and adoption of a 0 tropical zodiac in this period.

For more on that see the article Ancient Rejection and Adoption of Ptolemy?s Frame of Reference for Longitudes by Alexander Jones.In Ptolemy in Perspective, Use and Criticism of his Work from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century Edited by Alexander Jones. Published by Springer

Mark

Good afternoon,

There are even more dates proposed and calculable for the 'Beginning of the Age of Pisces' than there are arcs of precession recommended by notable proponents of various 'sidereal' equal-sign zodiacs, a score or more in many astrology software programmes. More are still being added based for example on the supposed position of the 'Galactic Centre', although it is astronomically considered more a region than a point.

The problem is fraught will even more difficulties, ex. gr.:

1. Should one assume an equal-sign 'sidereal' zodiac or attempt to use the unequal astronomical constellations for measurement, implying Ages of unequal lengths expressed in years?

2. Even if one chooses the unequal constellations, where do they exactly begin and end in terms on ecliptical longitude, since they are often not precisely on the ecliptic?

3. Should one include constellations as defined by the IAU that perhaps have no bright stars, for example Ophiuchus, but are occasionally closer to the ecliptic than others, ex. gr. Scorpius? (Some astrologers have developed '13-sign' astrology.)

4. Which fixed star(s) or other astronomical items should be chosen to peg a 'sidereal' zodiac? What are the applicable selection criteria?

5. Over many years 'fixed' stars exhibit 'proper motion' and 'nutation'. How, if at all, should these be considered in the calculations?

In Appendix 10, page 488, of The Book of World Horoscopes by Nicolas Campion, 2004, one finds some 100 different dates from 1447 to 3621 CE published by various authors for the beginning of the 'Age of Aquarius' so highly regarded in 'New Age' sub-cultures. The author mentioned that, prior to the 19th century, the famous 'precession' (geocentrically a procession of the fixed stars) of the equinoxes was not used to determine astrological mundane ages.

If one really desires for whatever reasons to use an equal-length 'sidereal' zodiac pegged to fixed star(s), my humble suggestion would be Hipparchos' tropical zodiac that began the sign of Aries just after the fixed star Alrisha, Alpha Piscium. His zodiac included the alpha fixed star of each of 12 zodiacal unequal constellations in the like-named equal sign and indicated a year around 130 BCE.

Best regards,

lihin

Mark,

the rising times indicated in the Yavanajataka with identical values for Aries and Pisces are tropical. However, tropical rising times were also used in sidereal systems. So, this does not help much.

Incidentally, I have only managed to download a version without David Pingree's commentary. Has anyone read his commentary? What view did Pingree take on the text and the type of zodiac involved?

Pingree is not partiuclarly interested in this question. He does not even comment on the verse 79.30 that gave rise to the controversy. But (in my opinion) his edition and commentary of the whole chapter indicate a tropical zodiac.

I have not been aware of Shukla?s article mentioned by pankajdubey. With Shukla?s "improvements" for Pingree?s edition of the Yavanajataka, the year becomes considerably longer, and even far away from the sidereal year:
tropical year 365.2422
sidereal year 365.2564
Suryasiddhanta 365.2588
YJ (Shukla) 365.284 !
However, Shukla's year length and the solar daily motion as given on p. 223 seem to be inconsistent! But both values result in a year length beyond 365.28. Can this be correct?

Without a careful study, I am not able to say more, but it is hard to imagine that Pingree was *that* wrong.

Dieter

I have very limited time and energy to put into this discussion, but here are some stray remarks:

I agree wholeheartedly with Mark's comment about set agendas. As for the question on rising times: yes, the rising times of Aries and Pisces are said to be equal; but so they would have been, even sidereally, around that time. (This is actually a much larger discussion, but I'll leave it at that for now.)

I also agree with Mark that there is a prima facie improbability about the suggestion that precession was known, and a tropical zodiac proposed, in India as early as the YJ. It is made even more unlikely by the fact that I have not yet seen a single Indian horoscope cast in the tropical zodiac, or an Indian text explicitly advocating the astrological use of that zodiac, prior to the late 19th century. (The various Indian calendar systems, however, generally follow the seasons of the tropical year.)

If a tropicalist outlook with respect to the zodiac is ascribed to the YJ, then (as Dieter pointed out earlier) either we must accept that the nak?atras, too, were defined tropically, or that the text is self-contradictory. Neither supposition is necessary if we accept that Indian horoscopic astrology began as it has continued; and really, the burden of proof should be on those who believe otherwise.

I haven't read the paper by Shukla which Pankaj links to, but my overall experience of Pingree's translations from Sanskrit is that he is generally sound on the mathematical parts; less so on astrological content.

I doubt I'll have much more to add on this thread, but I hope we can all keep it polite; I'd prefer not to put my moderator hat on.

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Good evening,

When reading ex. gr. the Hellenistic author Vettius Valens' Anthologies it seems at times difficult if not impossible to know whether he wrote about astronomical constellations or equal astrological signs. The number of degrees he stated per constellation (or sign?) does not always total 30. The difficulty is aggravated by the relative closeness of constellations and tropical signs during that epoch.

Two questions, please:

1. Might something similar have occurred in India in some texts concerning either the lunar mansions or the solar signs or both?

2. In the Sanskrit text Yavana Jataka, are the references concerning the lunar mansions to a) asterisms of unequal length, b) to equal-length lunar signs roughly equivalent to the unequal astronomical asterisms or c) to tropical equal-length lunar signs basically detached from the astronomical positions of the corresponding asterisms?

Best regards,

lihin

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delete

Good morning,

Hopefully no one will mind my opening a new specific thread on the interesting point Mr Varuna II has brought up concerning an eventual anachronism in Claudios Ptolomaios' explanations of planetary domiciles in his Tetrabiblos, Book I, Chapter 18.

Best regards,

lihin

Martin,

but I hope we can all keep it polite; I'd prefer not to put my moderator hat on.

I am sorry if my tone was not respectful. I do respect your authority in Sanskrit language and literature. But I am allowed to add that I graduated in Sanskrit in 1984, that my studies did not end in that year, and that I did a *lot* of translation work in my life...

If a tropicalist outlook with respect to the zodiac is ascribed to the YJ, then (as Dieter pointed out earlier) either we must accept that the nak?atras, too, were defined tropically, or that the text is self-contradictory.

Neither supposition is necessary if we accept that Indian horoscopic astrology began as it has continued; and really, the burden of proof should be on those who believe otherwise.

I agree, as long as the text itself does not give an answer, which I believe it does ? if Pingree?s text and translation are correct in the verses under discussion.

But I am not sure about that anymore. After looking into Shukla and the Sanskrit text, I feel that Shukla is partly right and Pingree in error. In the crucial verses 79.6 and 7, Pingree refers te??m to days where grammatically it should refer to tithi (in 6) and to tithi where it should refer to days (dinar?tram, in 7). The numbers are also a problem. But Sukla?s solutions do not convince me either...

No answer required. Anyway, I have to withdraw from the discussion because the weekend is over.

Dieter