With apologies for cross-posting:

I should be interested to know if anyone is aware of Indian criticisms of astrology (particularly of the Hellenistic variety or horāśāstra, although earlier forms of divinatory nakṣatravidyā would also be relevant) and/or of divination generally, preferably criticisms formulated in the pre-Islamic era. I am familiar with the (relatively mild) censure of diviners found in the dharmaśāstra literature, signalling the low social status of their occupation, but what I have in mind is criticism of the fundamental truth-claims of astrology -- basically, authors who claim that astrology (or divination generally) does not or cannot work.

Such criticism is often found in, say, Muslim or Christian contexts, but I have not so far encountered it in Sanskrit literature. Halbfass says in his Karma und Wiedergeburt that 'it can hardly be doubted' that the early stages of astrology in India saw a belief in an independent power of the stars to determine one's fate, not related to karma theory, but given the apparent lack of textual evidence I find it very easy to doubt this proposition. If astrology had presented a model of theodicy (using the term broadly) rivalling that of karma, I should have expected to see attacks on that model from proponents of many different schools. As it is, I am not aware of any astrological Sanskrit text proposing such an independent model, and indeed, even the earliest works seem explicitly to uphold the karma theory. But perhaps there are sources I have missed?

Martin Gansten
Lund University