A highly interesting and well-researched paper concerning the early history of the transmission of Greek astrology into India has just been published in History of Science in South Asia and is available here.

thanks for sharing martin. when i get a chance i will read it over.. i appreciate your bringing it to our attention.

Thanks from me too for bringing this to our attention!

just getting round to reading this now. i am not a scholar or all that interested in the origins of things, or only in so far as i might be able to understand something better and even better - apply it in some way to my day to day life.

i was intrigued by the idea of a 165 year cycle that gets mentioned in this document and would like to quote from page 16 of the 23 page document.

"While many astrological concepts described in the first 78 chapters such asthe ascendent (hor?<???), decan (drekk??as/drek??as/drekkas/drekas<??????),minute (lipt?<??????) must be connected to their Greek parallels given their blatant resemblance and the lack of antecedents in the Vedic corpus, indigen-ous concepts such as karma, ?yurveda and references to Hindu deities, as well as elements not attested any extant Greek sources such as the yuga of 165 years must not be overlooked. Pingree?s views that the latter reflects Sphujidhvaja?s attempt of Hinduization and that the ?Greek original from Alexandria? belonged to a lost school of Greek astronomy are at best conjectural."

i note that the cycle of neptune is 163.72 years. maybe it is all just a coincidence and i don't know that i am going to find something to support the idea that one must now incorporate the planet neptune given the fact it seems to reflect this cycle very nicely astrologically!

thoughts anyone?