[INDOLOGY] Yamanaka Jyotiṣa Siddhānta?

[David and Nancy Reigle]

Dear Matthew,

Thank you very much for following out *drang srong rgyal ba dam pa* with a
search at BDRC. I did not think of doing this. As you say, it clearly shows
that this phrase was understood as referring to the founder of Jainism. You
have suggested how yamanaka could have been understood as one who
restrains, and then paraphrased as a naked ascetic. There is now no doubt
that the Yamanaka jyotiṣa siddhānta was understood as a Jaina jyotiṣa
siddhānta.

The only question that now remains is whether Yamanaka jyotiṣa siddhānta,
despite being taken as a Jaina text, refers to the *Yavana-jātaka* or to
some actual Jaina jyotiṣa text. There is one fact that may have some
bearing on determining this. The studies by Edward Henning (*Kālacakra and
the Tibetan Calendar*, 2007), and especially by Yukio Ohashi ("Remarks on
the Origin of Indo-Tibetan Astronomy," published in *Astronomy across
Cultures*, 2000, pp. 341-369), show that the Kālacakra astronomy closely
follows that of the "old" *Sūrya-siddhānta*; i.e., the one summarized in
the *Pañcasiddhāntika*. The Kālacakra texts purport to correct the jyotiṣa
siddhāntas of their time. The author of the *Vimalaprabhā* was clearly
widely read in the subjects he wrote about.

Since the *Vimalaprabhā* appeared in India between 1025 and circa 1040 CE,
this was probably in the period when the old *Sūrya-siddhānta* was being
replaced by the new *Sūrya-siddhānta*, as is now available. The
*Vimalaprabhā*, then, would have been restoring the old *Sūrya-siddh**ā**nta
*values for the astronomical constants. As indicated by Bill Mak, the last
chapter of the *Yavana-jātaka* includes information on planetary motions
(see verses 35 ff.). It could be relevant to know if there is any
indication as to whether these agree with the old or new *Sūrya-siddhānta*.
To determine this would require someone more knowledgeable about astronomy
than me.

Best regards,

David Reigle
Colorado, U.S.A.

On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 2:24 PM Matthew Kapstein <mattkapstein at proton.me>
wrote:

> Dear David,
>
> Drang srong rgyal ba dam pa is a very common way of referring to the Jina
> in Tibetan as a very quick etext search shows:
>
> https://library.bdrc.io/osearch/search?q=drang%20srong%20rgyal%20ba%20dam%20pa&etext_search%5B0%5D=true&page=2
>
> dam pa can represent sat-, as well as -uttama and -agra. In any case, I
> don't see any reason to take it as anything besides a reference to the
> founder of Jainism. And as I suggested earlier, the Tibetans may have
> picked up an explanation of yamanaka from yamana, a restraint, thus meaning
> an ascetic, one who practices restraint. Rather than coining a new term to
> accommodate this, gcer bu pa, "gymnosophist," may have been adopted as a
> paraphrase. There are other examples of this sort of preference for a
> well-known term over a less favored or obscure synonym. Thus we sometimes
> see brgya byin for Indra, even though the lexically exact translation would
> be dbang po and brgya byin should be reserved for Śakra.
>
> So, all in all, I would guess that in some milieux yavana as "GreeK" was
> no longer understood and so was rationalized as yamana and this was
> explained to the Tibetans in such a way that they associated it with naked
> Jain anchorites .... A nice game of Chinese whispers...
>
> best,
> Matthew
>
> Matthew T. Kapstein
> Professor emeritus
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris
>
> Associate
> The University of Chicago Divinity School
>
> Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
>
> https://ephe.academia.edu/MatthewKapstein
>
> https://vajrabookshop.com/product/the-life-and-work-of-auleshi/
>
>
> https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501716218/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-i/#bookTabs=1
>
>
> https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501771255/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-ii/#bookTabs=1
>
> https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/60949
>
> Sent with Proton Mail <https://proton.me/mail/home> secure email.
>
> On Friday, December 12th, 2025 at 9:18 PM, David and Nancy Reigle via
> INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Thank you, Bill, for your very helpful reply. The fact that no Yamana is
> found in the traditional list of the names of the eighteen jyotiṣa sages,
> occurring in the *Nāradasaṃhitā*, is significant. The fact that the last
> chapter of the *Yavanajātaka* could count as a *siddhānta* because of its
> astronomical content is equally significant. Thank you also to Matthew
> Kapstein for replying off-list, agreeing that Yamanaka is most likely just
> a variant for Yavanaka. This does make the most sense. Even so, before
> concluding that this is most likely the case, I would like to exhaust all
> other possibilities.
>
> The oldest available dated manuscript of the *Vimalaprabhā*, from 1112
> CE, was scribed less than a hundred years after the *Vimalaprabhā*
> appeared in India. All known manuscripts have yamanaka, and in two
> different places (1.26 and 1.86). The Tibetan translations go back even
> further. The first one to be made was by Gyi jo, working with the Indian
> teacher Bhadrabodhi. From what we can gather from the lineage lists,
> Bhadrabodhi was one of the very first disciples of the person who wrote the
> *Vimalaprabhā*. The Shong ston and Jonang Tibetan translations are
> revisions of the initial one made by 'Bro lotsawa, working with the Indian
> teacher Somanātha. Somanātha, too, was in the first generation of disciples
> of the originator of the *Vimalaprabhā* in India. The Sanskrit
> manuscripts, then, would indicate that if Yamanaka is a corruption of
> Yavanaka, the variant form Yamanaka was in vogue in eleventh century India;
> and the Tibetan translations would indicate that Yamanaka was understood to
> mean a "naked one" rather than a Greek or foreigner.
>
> There is one more possible piece of evidence, which I did not cite
> earlier, because later Tibetan sources are indeed suspect. While Tibetan
> gcer bu pa for yamanaka likely derives from the very early Indian teachers
> Bhadrabodhi and Somanātha, we do not know the source for annotations by
> Jonang Phyogs las rNam rgyal, written in Tibet about three centuries after
> the *Vimalaprabhā* appeared in India. The Tibetan teacher Bu ston does
> not have any annotations on these names, but Phyogs las rNam rgyal does.
> The Sanskrit at 1.26 from the Sarnath edition of the *Vimalaprabhāṭīkā*,
> vol. 1, 1986, p. 77, is:
>
> siddhāntānāṃ vināśa iti | siddhāntaṃ(nto) brahma2 sauraṃ yama(va)nakaṃ
> romakamiti3, . . .
>
> The footnote thereon is:
>
> 2-3. atra bhoṭānuvāde catvāraḥ siddhāntāḥ 'brahmadevavādinaḥ,
> sūryadevavādinaḥ, acelakāḥ (śaivāḥ), rāhudevavādinaḥ' iti likhitam—gCer
> Bu Pa Daṅ sGra Can |
>
> We note that, although the Sarnath editors suggested yavanaka for yamanaka
> by the "(va)" they added for "ma" in the name, yet in their footnote they
> suggested śaivāḥ for the naked ones, which they retranslated from Tibetan
> as acelakāḥ. As with the Jaina, I do not know of a Śaiva jyotiṣa
> siddhānta.
>
> The Jonang translation of this line from *Vimalaprabhā* 1.26, with the
> annotations in parentheses by Phyogs las rNam rgyal (Jonang Publication
> Series, vol. 18, p. 199), is:
>
> grub pa'i mtha' rnams rnam par nyams pa zhes pa ni (tshangs pa la ltar
> 'dzin pa'i) tshangs pa ba dang (nyi ma la ltar 'dzin pa'i) nyi ma pa dang
> (drang srong rgyal ba dam pa la ltar 'dzin pa'i) gcer bu pa dang (dbang
> phyug la ltar 'dzin pa'i) skra can gyi (byed rtsis kyi) grub pa'i mtha' ste
> . . .
>
>
> We see that for *brahma* and *saura*, he annotates *tshangs pa* and *nyi
> ma*, respectively, the same as the Tibetan translations in the text of
> the *Vimalaprabh**ā*. For *yamanaka*, *gcer bu pa*, he annotates *drang
> srong rgyal ba dam pa*. Of these words, *drang srong* normally translates
> *ṛṣ**i*, *rgyal ba* normally translates *jina*, and *dam pa* can
> translate *vara* or *parama*, etc. I cite this annotation in case
> something like *ṛṣi-jina-vara* may ring a bell as the epithet of any jyotiṣa
> teacher.
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> David Reigle
>
> Colorado, U.S.A.
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 4:15 AM Bill Mak <bill.m.mak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> There are various lists of authors of *jyotiḥśāstra* in the jyotiṣa
>> literature. Pingree in his *Jyotiḥśāstra *(1981) mentioned in his
>> intoduction names of the eighteen sages according to “medieval muhūrta
>> treatises,” which he did not identify. Among them are Brahm(ācarya), Romaśa
>> [sic], Yavana, Sūrya, etc. Weber was among the first to identify these
>> eighteen sages in the *Nāradasaṃhitā* in his *Verzeichniss der
>> Sanskrit-Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin* (1853), and
>> noticed the different kinds of authors in possibly two layers, earlier ones
>> like Garga and Parāśara, and later ones Yavana, Romaka, etc with
>> Hellenistic elements.
>>
>> Since the larger subsets usually include the smaller ones, an unattested *Yamanaka-siddhānta
>> *in a small set of four siddhānta-s does sound suspicious. The Tibetan
>> translation doesn’t mean much unless one could identify a text with such
>> name, or find an explanation of the name, which does look a corruption of
>> *Yavana(jāta)ka*. Although no *yavana siddhānta *survived, the last
>> chapter of the *Yavanajātaka *would count as one because of its
>> astronomical content, which is indeed comprable to *Romakasiddhānta*,
>> and to some extent, *Brahmasiddhānta *and *Sūryasiddhānta *in
>> Varāhamihira’s *Pañcasiddhānta *in terms of astronomical concepts. All
>> these four texts were in circulation in India.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> --
>> Bill M. Mak, PhD
>>
>> Professor of History of Science
>>
>> University of Science and Technology of China
>> Room A304, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, East Campus,
>> University of Science and Technology of China,
>> 96 Jinzhai Road, Baohe District, Hefei, Anhui,
>> China CN-230026
>>
>> Tel.: +86 183 5614 9163 / +852 9466 6472
>> E-Mail: bmpmak at gmail.com
>>
>> Research Associate
>> Needham Research Institute
>> 8 Sylvester Road
>> Cambridge, CB3 9AF
>> United Kingdom
>>
>> Tel:+44-1223768229
>> Email: bm574 at cam.ac.uk
>>
>> Copies of my publications may be found at:
>> http://www.billmak.com
>> https://needham.academia.edu/BillMak
>>
>> On 12 Dec 2025, at 04:01, David and Nancy Reigle via INDOLOGY <
>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>
>> When the *Kālacakra-tantra* introduces its own astronomical calculations
>> in chapter 1, verse 26, the *Vimalaprabhā* commentary thereon refers to
>> four existing siddhāntas:1. Brahma; 2. Saura; 3. Yamanaka; and 4.
>> Romaka. The *Vimalaprabh**ā* again names these same four at 1.86, only
>> saying Sūrya instead of Saura. Three of these siddhāntas are of course
>> well known: Brahma, Saura/Sūrya, and Romaka. I have not been able to
>> determine what the Yamanaka siddhānta is.
>>
>> The editors of the *Vimalaprabh**ā* suggest emending Yamanaka to
>> Yavanaka, a reasonable assumption. However, the two very old palm-leaf
>> manuscripts of the *Vimalaprabhā* confirm the spelling yamanaka.
>> Moreover, the Tibetan translations of yamanaka do not support yavanaka.
>> The Shong ston and Jonang Tibetan translations take yamanaka as gcer bu pa,
>> "naked ones." Elsewhere in the *Kālacakra-tantra*, at 3.169 and 4.217,
>> Tibetan gcer bu translates Sanskrit nagna, confirming the meaning, "naked."
>> The early Gyi jo Tibetan translation also takes yamanaka as gcer bu. This
>> may suggest a Jaina jyotiṣa siddhānta.
>>
>> However, I do not know of a Jaina jyotiṣa siddhānta, in the full sense
>> of a jyotiṣa siddhānta; meaning giving the movements of the planets, and
>> not just the movements of the sun and moon, as does the *S*ūryapraj
>> *ñapti* and works following it such as the *Jyotiṣkaraṇḍakam*. I have
>> considered the *Bhadrabāhu-saṃhitā*, but at least in the form we have
>> it, this text seems to be ruled out.
>>
>> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> David Reigle
>> Colorado, U.S.A.
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
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