Volume 7, 2019

EN:

In this article, I suggest that looking at the entangled issues of the creation of a new field of knowledge and the interaction with Others’ learning allows for a more accurate understanding of how Persian medical studies have developed and adapted to different natural and cultural settings during late medieval and early modern periods. This article studies the translation and reception of materials drawn from alchemy (rasaśāstra) and rejuvenating therapy (rasāyana) in the Persianate medical culture of South Asia. Chapters dealing with processed mercury and metals become a standard subject of Persian medical works written by Muslim and Hindu physicians in South Asia. Many of these works are in fact composite writings which combine Ayurvedic and Greco-Arabic materials. However, rasāyana is a branch of knowledge for which there is not a precise equivalent domain in the target culture. How does translation deal and negotiate with this asymmetry? In this study, I assume that cross-cultural translation implies a cognitive shift in the way different groups of readers may understand and classify a certain form of knowledge. I look at the Persian translation of materials drawn from rasāyana chiefly from the reader perspective which focuses on the hermeneutical and accommodation process through which translated materials are integrated into the target culture.

EN:

Trigonometry is an indispensable tool of Indian mathematical astronomy. The concept of trigonometry originated in Greece and it was transmitted to India together with astronomy.

EN:

Among the sixty-four aṅgas of the large recension of the Gārgīyajyotiṣa (also known as the Gargasaṃhitā), celestial omens and planetary science (including astrology and narrative) occupy the greatest portion of the text. Some of these materials are widely cited later on in works such as Varāhamihira's Bṛhatsaṃhitā as well as Buddhist works such as the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna and Amoghavajra's Xiuyao jing, and are considered some of the oldest sources of early, pre-siddhāntic Indian astral science. In this paper, I shall highlight some of the unique characteristics of the unedited chapters of the work where such materials are found, with focus on the planetary science and the methods of time-reckoning.

EN:

In this paper, I study the three chapters devoted to human physiognomy in the Garuḍapurāṇa. Two of the three come directly from Varāhamihira’s sixth-century Bṛhatsaṃhitā with the commentary (vivṛti) of the Kaśmirian Bhaṭṭotpala (fl. ca. 966 or 969 CE). I hope to make two research contributions. First, I hope to show that the date of this section of the Purāṇa, if not indeed the entire Purāṇa, cannot be before the sixth century and probably after the tenth century. Second, I will illustrate how a text in different metres was normalised into anuṣṭubh metre for ease of memory and recitation. I shall conclude with a discussion of the lessons we can learn from this kind of ancient Indian redaction process

EN:

This article gives a preliminary survey of Gārgīyajyotiṣa 45, a ritual description of the festival of Indra's Banner (indradhvaja), based on manuscript evidence. The testimony of Garga is compared to the description of the same rite in Varāhamihira's Bṛhatsaṃhitā (chapter 42), with reference to later Puranic versions. Since Varāhamihira has explicitly referenced Garga's text on multiple occasions, this comparison brings to light Varāhamihira's own innovations with respect to his source material. While Varāhamihira did not produce the ritual ex nihilo, he seems to have added greater specificity to the ritual's mantric content and overnight structure, and to the broader connectivity between the Indradhvaja festival and other events in the nascent royal calendar.