(I.) HISTORY - Distant Beginnings

But what of astrology outside the Middle East? Its development in India is if anything more difficult to trace than in Babylon, for the early history of astronomy and astrology in India is not only obscure but often falsified: at least we can assume that this is so when we read the still commonly asserted statement that the first Indian astronomical textbook, the Surya Siddhanta, was published in the year 2,163,I02 BC.

If the origins of astrology are obscure, the influences on Indian astrologers are clearer. Alexandria, for instance, had a great influence during the 6th century AD, when many Greek terms found their way into Indian astrological terminology during the lifetimes of the most famous ancient Indian astronomers, Aryabhata, Varaha Mihira and Brahmagupta. And it seems likely that the concept of the zodiac reached India via Alexandria, for Indian astrologers for some time used two sets of names for the constellations - one a straight transliteration of the Greek, the other a translation into Sanskrit; so the Greek Tauros became Taurusi, and then in Sanskrit Vrisha (the Bull), while the Greek Leon became Leya and was then translated as Simha (the Lion).

It is strange that astrology did not make its way to India via Persia, just east of Babylonia - the gateway to Samarkand and China. But the Persian interest in the planets was quite different, in early centuries, from that of the Babylonians; its only contribution to the history of the zodiac seems to be the 'invention' of the four elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water, later brought into the astrological scheme by Ptolemy. It was in Persia, however, that Mithraism arose - a religion that flourished between 100 BC and AD 400, and was to be responsible in large measure for the spread of astrology through the Roman empire, when as a military faith it carried belief in the influence of the planets to the furthest outposts, including Londinium. The signs of the zodiac were found in every mithraeum, often surrounding a carved representation of Bull sacrifice.