[INDOLOGY] 'Vedic' astrology

Thu Nov 17 04:50:15 UTC 2016

Nagaraj,

regarding your last email over 'most' v 'many' I was specifically referring
to the people that I have interviewed. Perhaps this could have been more
clearly articulated. This was not some broad, insensitive generalisation. I
can assure you that from my data set over 50% of people, which apparently
is the cut off mark for determining whether to use 'most' or 'many',
responded that they don't really know what 'Vedic maths' is. Not a single
person (mostly westerners) raised the distinction you make regarding the
difference between the varieties of maths from the sulba sutras and
chandas. It is interesting, I think, that, *many*people have responded in
one of two ways to the question: What is 'Vedic mathematics?': 1) "I don't
know what it is"; or 2) "It's something to do with counting faster". When I
think of 'Vedic maths' it is also with the 'speed maths' variety in mind.
Thank you for clarifying the differences. I appreciate it.

All the best,

Patrick McCartney, PhD
Fellow
School of Culture, History & Language
College of the Asia-Pacific
The Australian National University
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On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 1:54 PM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Patrick,
>
> >The same can be said for my tentative investigations into people's
> attitudes toward 'vedic maths'. Most people, and to be honest I include
> myself in this group, seem unable to clearly articulate what this type of
> maths is meant to be, and how it is any different from 'maths'.
>
> Do you have and take to your interlocutors the speed math techniques book
> called 'Vedic Maths" the 'Vedic' of which is already dead horse or the
> maths in books like s'ulba sutras, Chandas  etc. ? If you have the latter
> in mind , maths in s'ulba sutras , for example, is called Vedic because it
> is Maths related to Vedic rituals of yajna; maths in Chandas is called
> 'Vedic' because it is related to the science of metres (meters) in the
> Vedas.
>
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 6:51 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > The irony of modernization and popularization of “Vedic astrology”
>> means that *most *practitioners these days would rely on their PC or
>> mobile applications to generate horoscopes without truly understanding the
>> science behind them as their predecessors, *at least some*, did.
>> (Highlighting mine)
>>
>> ----- In the place of 'most' a more diligent student of culture would
>> have used 'many' and such a student would have avoided unnecessary
>> quantifiers like 'at least some'. There are several different levels of
>> 'users' of astrology. Some would only 'read' a ready horoscope, some would
>> know how to make one. Among those who make, some would know why they have
>> to do what they do, some others mechanically follow the procedure of making
>> learnt from a human teacher or a book. Among those who know why they do
>> what they do, some might know the depths of the siddhaanta to be able to
>> make their own new theories within it , some may not be able to do that.
>> Some may be able to explain to a curious Indologist in English (without
>> knowing or bothering about what that Indologist might use that knowledge
>> for), some may not be able to converse with an outsider in his language.
>> The situation is similar in all fields of knowledge world over. People with
>> higher and higher levels of knowledge are smaller and smaller in number. A
>> mature observer takes such a situation for granted without being hasty or
>> judgemental about the observed.
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 4:17 AM, Bill Mak <bill.m.mak at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In connection to contemporary "field works” on “Indian astrology,” the
>>> works by Yano and Guenzi are helpful. There must be scholarly works on the
>>> subject in English which I am not aware of. Yano’s work is particularly
>>> interesting as it documented the transition from traditional Indian
>>> astrology to modern Indian astrology where some astrologers were still
>>> capable of preparing the Pañcāṅga in the traditional ways instead of
>>> relying on the data from government observatory. The irony of modernization
>>> and popularization of “Vedic astrology” means that most practitioners these
>>> days would rely on their PC or mobile applications to generate horoscopes
>>> without truly understanding the science behind them as their predecessors,
>>> at least some, did.
>>>
>>> Yano Michio. 1992. *Senseijutsu-tachi-no Indo* 占星術師たちのインド. 東京: 中央公論社.
>>> Guenzi, Caterina. 2013. *Le Discours Du Destin*. Paris: CNRS éditions.
>>>
>>> On Nov 16, 2016, at 3:13 PM, patrick mccartney <psdmccartney at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Bill, I agree with you completely about the fascinating role of
>>> things like the planetarium in negotiations over identity and history. My
>>> frustration is specific, and likely a result of the precarious nature of my
>>> current method. In my humble experience, cyber-ethnography does not really
>>> generate the type of rapport required to effectively conduct 'field work'.
>>> There doesn't seem to be a critical mass of 'vedic astrologers' in my city,
>>> so I feel forced in some way to reach out through the Internet and 'cold
>>> call'.  If funds were made available I would certainly aim to include trips
>>> to the planetarium with the intention of conducting interviews with
>>> visitors. This would certainly yield less bland results.
>>>
>>> On 17 Nov 2016 12:04 AM, "Bill Mak" <bill.m.mak at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Patrick,
>>>>
>>>> I believe rather than simply bland, "uncritical absorption of the/a
>>>> Vedic narrative,” the examples of ISKCON “Vedic Planetarium” and ‘Vedic
>>>> model of universe” I mentioned earlier illustrates quite tellingly, at
>>>> least in this particular instance, what the intention was. To me, it seems
>>>> to be part of an ongoing negotiation of the role of Indian culture in the
>>>> modern world and an alternative narrative to the one created in the Western
>>>> culture, one that Indians today both love and hate. In doing so, some
>>>> sought to reclaim their identities as defined by themselves and not others.
>>>>
>>>> In this particular case, if Vedic is defined historically as the
>>>> Western historians and philologists do, there is no question that “Vedic
>>>> Planetarium” is a pure misnomer. There was not even any planet beside Sun
>>>> and Moon mentioned explicitly in the early Vedic corpus and the
>>>> Vedāṅgajyotiṣa had no discussion of planets. The Purāṇic cosmology is a
>>>> hodgepodge of ideas from various sources, both foreign and indigenous and
>>>> across a long stretch of time. But this model of the universe was created
>>>> in reaction to the Western model, to the one created by the Greeks, e.g.
>>>> Ptolemy’s geocentric model, and eventually the development of the model of
>>>> universe in Western astronomy up to the present day — a powerful image to
>>>> represent science and progress, which many today sought to align their
>>>> values and belief-system to .
>>>>
>>>> What ISKCON tried to achieve was to say to the readers that just like
>>>> in the West one has the history of science, so does India. The proponents
>>>> of the so-called “Vedic science” suggest that not only India has science,
>>>> it is a different science based on a possibly superior authority, i.e., a
>>>> spiritual, all-encompassing revelation beyond human reasoning based on the
>>>> “Vedas," rather than philology and history based on fragments of the
>>>> reality interpreted by humans. Of course, the arguments they constructed
>>>> were practically entirely in Western terms, and the evidences they use are
>>>> so methodologically and philologically unsound that most scholars do not
>>>> consider them worthy of even consideration and decry them as
>>>> pseudo-science. This seems to applies from more ludicrous claims such as
>>>> “Vedic astrophysics” or “Vedic aeronautical science”, to the seemingly more
>>>> benign “Vedic mathematics” and “Vedic astronomy”.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Bill M. Mak
>>>>
>>>> Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW)
>>>> New York University
>>>> 15 East 84th Street
>>>> New York, NY 10028
>>>> US
>>>>
>>>> Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
>>>> Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501
>>>> Japan
>>>> 〒606-8501 京都市左京区吉田本町
>>>> 京都大学人文科学研究所
>>>>
>>>> Tel:+81-75-753-6961
>>>> Fax:+81-75-753-6903
>>>>
>>>> copies of my publications may be found at:
>>>> http://www.billmak.com
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 16, 2016, at 4:29 AM, patrick mccartney <psdmccartney at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Some cyber-ethnography I am conducting tentatively supports the claim
>>>> that "Vedic Astrology" is usually interpreted to mean precisely,
>>>> "traditional Indian astrology". One interesting thing is that, even though
>>>> my interlocutors (westerners for the most part)  almost all assert it means
>>>> the above; when pressed to define what they consider the 'Vedic' part of
>>>> the phrase to more specifically mean, the typical answer is overwhelmingly:
>>>> "I don't really know". If asked to discuss the difference between the
>>>> astrological, ie predictive systems, or the historical, parallel
>>>> development of these systems, even some people who claim to be
>>>> 'professional Vedic astrologers' seem unable to clearly differentiate them.
>>>>
>>>> The same can be said for my tentative investigations into people's
>>>> attitudes toward 'vedic maths'. Most people, and to be honest I include
>>>> myself in this group, seem unable to clearly articulate what this type of
>>>> maths is meant to be, and how it is any different from 'maths'.
>>>>
>>>> These anecdotes would at least point towards support of an analysis
>>>> that 'vedic', for the most part, does simply refer to a vague,
>>>> 'historico-mythical' past that is 'pure' and not influenced by premodern,
>>>> transcultural flows of ideas.
>>>>
>>>> But, it still does not help me, nor my interlocutors, to really pin
>>>> down what a 'Vedic-X' is . Apart from "it's really old", which = 'better'.
>>>> However,  I find this conclusion of sorts frustratingly bland.
>>>>
>>>> Regardless, it is this seemingly uncritical absorption of the/a Vedic
>>>> narrative, and its narritival power to infuse the past, present and future
>>>> with meaning and potential that intrigues me most. This is at both micro
>>>> and macro scales of analysis.
>>>>
>>>> On 16 Nov 2016 7:17 PM, "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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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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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 )
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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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