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Apart from the generic name Jyotisa astrology receives the title ‘Hor stra’
(=Science of Time) in the ancient lore. As has been discussed elsewhere Jyotisa
had its origin and evolution in a paradigm of thinking obsessed with time and
existential questions – its an attempt to answer the mystery of time. In terms of
modern terminology astrology involves a modeling of Time, the apparently
incessant flow of time abstracted mathematically as a phenomenal wheel
manifesting over the heavens. The most fundamental question involved in the
examination of the truth of astrology is the validity of this modeling of the
apparent path of the Sun into the Zodiac:1
1
Astrologer Prudence Jones (1996, p.282) says, [The zodiac signs] rest on shaky
foundations from the modern point of view. How in heaven do twelve 30-degree sectors
of the ecliptic, measured from the vernal equinox but named after now-far-distant
constellations, impart any qualities at all to the planets, houses, parts and nodes, which
we view against their backgrounds? Do they do so in fact, or is this wishful thinking?
Some astrologers justify the signs (taking, usually without explanation, the sun in the
signs as their exemplar) as shorthand for seasonal characteristics. But this implies that
their order should be reversed in the southern hemisphere, which seldom happens. And
what, in any case of horoscopes for equatorial latitudes, where seasonal change is
minimal, but where, of course, astrology was invented? [Foundations of Astrology.
Astrological Journal, 38,5, 281-285]
In Da dhy yee, in the commentary to the 4th verse of Var hamihira’s
Brhatjj taka, Bhattatiri had raised the question:
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It is well evident that almost thousand years before an astrologer and astronomer
of Kerala had spoken of a physical model of Time!
• But what was the physical basis of this modeling? How could the formless Time
be credited with a form or shape as K lapurusha?
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• If at all Time has got a form, a manifesting structure, who could have and
how could have experienced it?
K. Chandra Hari