Korte inhoud: boekbesprekingen Indische astrologie.

Boekbesprekingen van WIN ROWE

Indian Astrology

• Al-Biruni, India ed Edward Sachau, (Lahore, West Pakistan, 1962).
  This is Al-Biruni's most celebrated work. It is a geographic, historical, ethnographic, and scientific review of the condition of India in Al-Biruni's time. There is a great deal of useful astrological information in it, as well as other important things. Al-Biruni's dates are given on the Library of Congress card, as 973 A.D.-1048 A.D. This book is still used as a reference book on Indian civilization.

• Sphujidhavaja The Yavanajataka ,ed David Pingree 2 Vols, (Cambridge, MA,Harvard University Press,1987).
  The title means "The Horoscopy of the Greeks". This book contains the text, a most excellent translation, and a superb commentary on this seminal and transitional work of Hindu Astrology. It demonstrates absolutly the origins of this art in the teaching of the hellenistic astrologers of the late classical period in the mediterranian basin. If we take the Carmen Astrologicum of Dorotheus of Sidon as a good example of where hellenistic astrology was at the beginning of this cultural transmision, and perhaps Al-Biruni's Book of Instruction as a central position on its trajectory, the landing place has to be this work of Sphujidhavaja's. Hence it is listed as contributing to our understanding of arabic astrology as well as indian, simply because arabic astrology occupies the middle of the arc of transmission.
  The emblem Pingree has chosen for vol I nails down the intellectual dependence. It is by Varahamihira, the father of Indian Astrology, "For although the Greeks are barbarians, they have brought this science to perfection, and so are honored as sages; how much more honorable, then, is an astrologer who is a Brahmana!"
  Brhatsamhita 2, 14