[INDOLOGY] 'Vedic' astrology

Nagaraj Paturi nagarajpaturi at gmail.com
Wed Nov 16 19:09:47 UTC 2016


All cultures, religious and other traditions are made of continuities,
changes and discontinuities;  unities in diversities. To be able to grasp
the whole picture with all the intricacy of relations in a cultural complex
with a long history and a wide geographical spread that is outside the
researcher's own culture needs a great amount of patience, empathy and
delicate observation and fine understanding. In this difficult balance beam
exercise, tight rope walk, it is easy to loose the balance and fall into
discontinuities and diversities and miss to connect the continuities and
unities.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 9:16 PM, Dagmar Wujastyk <d.wujastyk at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
> "Also, of course, Dagmar's reference to āyurveda, though I don't think
> anyone has yet decided to call that system 'Vedic medicine' (or have
> they?)."
>
> So, in fact, the Maharishi people do call their medicine (and everything
> else they do, including astrology) Vedic. That is, they call medicine
> Maharishi Ayurved, and it's trademarked, but they insist it's Vedic.
>
> On 16 November 2016 at 01:47, Martin Gansten <martin.gansten at pbhome.se>
> wrote:
>
>> Bill,
>>
>> I have read and re-read that section, and searched for various phrases
>> within the book as a whole (searchable PDF files are a boon), but I can't
>> find any mention of 'Vedic astrology' or anything like it. Dikshit seems to
>> have a western academic understanding of 'Vedic' as a historical period,
>> and he claims that the 'seeds' of a predictive system are present in
>> Atharvajyotiṣa, but he is also very clear that such a system is not the one
>> based on the twelve-sign zodiac, although he thinks it 'probable' that the
>> latter system, when it was imported into India, was influenced by the
>> parallel, indigenous system. (Which undoubtedly it was, if perhaps not to
>> the extent that Dikshit would have liked to think. The nakṣatras are used
>> in horā, after all.) This is stated at the beginning of p. 100.
>>
>> In my view this is quite different from the development that we have seen
>> over the past few decades, where practitioners themselves label all Indian
>> astrology (often including the Tājika school) as 'Vedic', typically without
>> any idea of that label referring to a particular historical period -- if it
>> is used in any historical sense, it is with reference to a vague, mythical
>> past. 'Vedic' is used here simply in the sense of 'traditional Indian', the
>> implied idea being a tradition that is not only ancient and unbroken, but
>> essentially unchanged (and, as Robert has pointed out, sanctioned by
>> Brahmanic authority).
>>
>> Jean-Michel's mention of so-called Vedic mathematics in this context
>> seems very relevant; does anyone know when that designation first appears?
>> Also, of course, Dagmar's reference to āyurveda, though I don't think
>> anyone has yet decided to call that system 'Vedic medicine' (or have they?).
>>
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> Den 2016-11-15 kl. 21:45, skrev Bill Mak:
>>
>>> Martin, not exactly. This was precisely my point. Dikshit did refer to
>>> horoscopy under Vedic astrology. See “Jātaka branch of astrology” under
>>> “Atharva jyotiṣa” in the section Vedaṅga (Vol.1 p.97-98). Things might have
>>> come to the forefront in recent time, but such ideas have certainly been
>>> around.
>>>
>>> Bill
>>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )


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