Kleśas and Pathos

Iamblichus and Śubhakarasiṃha











Horoscopy in East Asia: Some Thoughts

Fortune Teller
"Along the River During the Qingming Festival" 清明上河圖 (1085–1145)
The last twelve months or so I've been working on various projects related to astrology in East Asia and/or Buddhism in East Asia. After finishing my doctorate in the Netherlands in September of last year, I had the privilege to spend six months in Erlangen, Germany, just outside Nuremberg in Bavaria, at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität. The six months of work were quite gainful. I also had the opportunity to communicate with scholars of various fields on topics related to divination in history.

The primary study that resulted from my stay there was "The Sinicization of Indo-Iranian Astrology in Medieval China" published as volume #282 in Sino-Platonic Papers (see here). I remember as an undergraduate student reading a number of papers in this journal, so I was enthusiastic about submitting a paper. This somewhat lengthy study documents in detail how horoscopy was not only introduced into China, but moreover the processes through which it became a naturalized system of divination that could be easily employed within the framework of Chinese observational astronomy.

The basic history runs as follows.

Buddhists had translated some Indian astrological material between the fourth to sixth centuries, but none of it could be practically implemented in a Chinese context, given that the Indian astronomical parameters cited in texts were vague and ill-defined for use in China. There was also no need for the Buddhist community to practice any of this astrology until the eighth century, when "esoteric" teachings or Mantrayāna was introduced starting in the early eighth century.

The Indian monk Śubhakarasiṃha 善無畏 (637–735) and his colleague Yixing 一行 (673–727) in the 720s translated a manual of Mantra practice titled Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi-sūtra, otherwise known as the Mahāvairocana-sūtra 大日經, in which it is expressly stated that rituals must be astrologically timed.

The commentary these two men produced further elaborated upon the meaning of this point from a mostly Indian perspective, but this would have left Chinese readers unable to determine dates and times on their own without reference to an Indian specialist, since authoritative texts in Chinese describing the seven-day week and other features of the Indian calendar did not yet exist. I wrote about this in “Early Tantric Hemerology in Chinese Buddhism: Timing of Rituals According to Śubhakarasiṃha and Yixing” in the Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies (available here).

The task of producing an authoritative manual on astrology for Buddhist use ultimately was left to a later generation. The monk Amoghavajra 不空 (705–774) produced such a text, its titled abbreviated as Xiuyao jing 宿曜經 (Scripture of Constellations and Planets), in 759 with a subsequent revision in 764. This text primarily explains nakṣatra (lunar station) astrology, but it also defines the seven-day week and its hemerological features.

One of the interesting things I discovered about this text is that the technique described therein called “Three Sets of Nine” (三九之法) corresponds to a widely practiced Indian technique called tārā-bala (“Star Force”), tārā-cakra (“Star Wheel”), or nava-tārā (“Nine Stars”). The twenty-seven nakṣatras are each assigned a category from which predictions are made. This is easily understood looking at the following diagram:

"Three Sets of Nine" in Xiuyao jing

The nakṣatra hosting the Moon at the time of a person's birth is assigned the function or theme of life, and thereafter in a counter-clockwise fashion the other nakṣatras are assigned specific themes. If the Moon was present in Kṛttikā, then for the rest of one's life Kṛttikā would be defined as the life sign, and any planets transiting through there would be carefully evaluated and monitored.

There are actually allusions to this system in the Agnipurāṇa (121.21–23 & 132.14–18), a major ancient Hindu work. I don't believe Amoghavajra consulted this work, but rather he was drawing upon material common to Indian astrology in general.

This particular technique ought to bring to mind the system of twelve places or houses that ultimately stems from Hellenistic astrology, in which the twelve zodiac signs are assigned twelve specific themes based upon the positions of the zodiac signs in relation to the ascendant. The twelve houses as they are generally understood in East Asia are displayed in the following figure:

Twelve Houses in East Asia

As with the nakṣatra technique, the first house is of chief importance, and planets transiting through it would be closely monitored, since unfavorable configurations would be cause for alarm.

The extant literature, and even the art record, show that astrologers throughout the medieval period prescribed apotropaic rituals and prayers with which a client could mitigate negative effects brought on by unfavorable planets transiting through critical points in their natal chart.

Buddhists utilized an array of mantras. Daoists seem to have preferred ritualized petitions that incorporated prayers, but we see both Buddhists and Daoists using the same source material that had been translated from what appears to have been Sogdian (an Iranian language). The primary example of this phenomenon that I've documented is the ninth-century ritual directed to Saturn, found in very similar forms in Buddhist and Daoist sources. The Daoist Scripture of the Secret Essentials of the Compass Spiritual Terrace (Chengxing lingtai biyao jing 秤星靈臺袐要經) gives the following information about petitioning Saturn:

Furthermore, the *Navagraha-sūtra states that one is to cast, using plow iron, one true image of Saturn, seven inches tall. Take a black porcelain jar and fill it. Place it [the image] at the head of one’s bed. On every day of Kēwān [Saturday] at dawn, drip black oil and sesame broth on its head. After [three?] year[s] remove it. If painting [the image of the deity] and making offerings, one must also offer it fruits throughout the year. It is especially excellent to wear the color black. The incantation: “Kēwān is my lord; I [stating your name], your retainer, beg your protection and liberation from distress.” Afterward, having paid respects and provided the offerings, personally consume them. [Offer] good foods, sour and bitter in flavor. One should read the Eight Yang Sūtra. Carry realgar and cinnabar. Burn Persian incense. Wear black garments. Do not enter the temples of evil gods. It is taboo to eat beef. It is taboo [to use] vessels made of horn. 

Kuyō hiryaku 九曜秘曆法
Those familiar with Arabic and Latin traditions of astral magic, namely the Ghāyat al-ḥakīm or Picatrix, will detect the parallels between this and other traditions from the west of China. Magical practices from Iranian sources were translated into Chinese starting around the year 800. These were quickly naturalized and integrated into local religious systems (Buddhists carried them over to Japan starting in the mid-ninth century). The above ritual calls for Persian incense, which corresponds to styrax, which elsewhere in Eurasia is the primary incense associated with Saturn (the Orphic Hymns of Hellenistic times also prescribes styrax when praying to Kronos). The color black is universally a Saturnine color. Sesame oil is still used in rituals directed to Śani (Saturn) in India today. The association between Saturn and the bull is unique to this East Asian tradition. Similarly, the donkey is a Martian animal in East Asian astrology, but this association is not attested elsewhere in the world, although the Greco-Egyptian tradition associated the donkey with the god Seth-Typhon, who conceivably could have been equated to Mars/Ares.

The level of complexity of the above ritual in relation to what we see in more developed magical traditions in western Eurasia and Africa, however, is relatively simple. The text mentions Saturday, but does not explicitly describe planetary hours, however "every day of Kēwān [Saturday] at dawn" would, in fact, refer to the hour of Saturn, since the first hour at dawn on a Saturday is always ruled by Saturn. The planetary hours, however, are never mentioned in East Asian sources, whereas the rituals of the Picatrix are often timed with these hours in mind. The system of keeping time in East Asia developed independent of Mesopotamian and later Greco-Egyptian conventions, so it would not have been practical to implement the system of twenty-four seasonal hours.

Foreign astrology and the associated iconography were evidently familiar to some artists as well, including the creator of the in the “Painting of the Divine Forms of the Five Planets and Twenty-Eight Lunar Stations” (五星二十八宿神形圖), which has been constantly misdated to the sixth or eighth centuries, when in reality it is a product of the tenth or eleventh centuries. In this painting we see the planetary deities alongside inscriptions that allude to astrological lore which would have been immediately recognizable to a contemporary astrologer on the other side of the world. For instance, Saturn and his icon are presented as follows:

The god Saturn has a palace of black smoke. Sacrifice to him black sesame oil, vegetables, and drinking water. For the coins, use old black ones, and for the vessels use those made of iron. Restrain yourself from excessive intercourse. Saturn is an Imperial Censor. One should do activities related to water and earth. Build up ancestral temples, farmlands and levees.

We again see reference to the color black and sesame oil. Agriculture and waterways are governed by Saturn. Saturn in astrology indicates barrenness and the quelling of passions, hence the admonishment here to refrain from intercourse. Those trying to court influence with the god would maintain celibacy, a Saturnine characteristic. This appears to have been done in China primarily to ease the passage of the planet Saturn when he transited through a critical house within one's natal chart (such as the first or eighth house, which relate to life and death respectively).

I've not observed in Chinese sources any magic of the sort we see in the Picatrix that attempts to capture and manipulate planetary influences through the production of talismans. We might characterize this Chinese astral magic as simply "apotropaic" rather than as a type of sorcery or theurgy, although the aforementioned Daoist text prescribes on a New Moon offering porridge made with sesame oil to destitute people and Daoist clerics, since Saturn governs those who cultivate austere spiritual practices. The text goes on to prohibit harming filial sons and the elderly, and to avoid most merriment, since Saturn relishes sorrow and dislikes music. These sort of practices could be characterized as active cults and moreover supplementary to other endeavors, such as longevity exercises. Saturn governs old age, which is one reason why he was generally disliked in the Hellenistic world, although Daoists in China who sought immortality would have regarded him quite favorably, and indeed this seems to have been the case during the ninth and tenth centuries.

Horoscopy only increased in popularity at common and elite levels of Chinese society from the tenth century, judging from various records and later literature. We possess a single Chinese horoscope from this century. It was rediscovered at the town of Dunhuang in northwest China, along with many other texts and paintings. This document (P. 4071) consists of handwritten notes for a natal horoscope of 3 October 930 CE. The document itself was produced on 25 January 975 by Kang Zun 康遵 (d.u.). It is a handwritten manuscript and predictably full of scribal errors (the document itself appears to have been used as scrap paper later on, judging from the doodles on it).

The birth chart itself was not preserved among the extant notes, although the planetary positions relative to the zodiac signs and lunar stations are provided in addition to the hour of birth. These details allow us to reconstruct the birth chart. Scholars to date misread parts of the document, leading to an erroneously positioned ascendant sign. My reconstruction of the natal chart looks like this:

The planetary positions are not always given with degrees, which suggests that the astrologer was merely using tables, rather than always working out the calculations necessary for exact positions.

The chief concern of the client, it seems, was their annual profections (indicated in the figure above alongside the zodiac signs), the details of which comprise the bulk of the notes.

Annual profections or the revolution of years (行年) are attested in Hellenistic sources, and were evidently popular in the Arabic speaking world, and very likely in the earlier Sassanian Persian tradition too. This is a relatively basic astrological technique in which each zodiac sign represents a year of life. As seen in the above figure, the first year of life (age 0 in modern Western reckoning) was governed by Mars (Scorpio's planetary ruler). On the forty-ninth birthday of the client, Scorpio would again be evaluated with particular attention paid to any planets transiting through this sign. The Japanese horoscope of 1113 also deals at length with annual profections (see page 69 in my paper on Japanese Buddhist astrology here), which highlights the widespread use of this technique across East Asia throughout the medieval period.

The other significant transmission of horoscopy into China occurred during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), a time when Marco Polo noted the presence of many astrologers living in the Chinese capital. Some astrological texts in Arabic were brought to China, although state-sponsored translations of these Arabic works only occurred during the following Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Emperor Hongwu 洪武 (r. 1368–1398) ordered translations of some of these into Chinese, one of which was an introduction to astrology titled al-Madkhal by Kūšyār ibn Labbān 闊識牙耳 (971–1029). The title in Chinese is now simply Mingyi tianwen shu 明譯天文書 (Book of Astronomy Translated in the Ming).

According to the text's preface, the Emperor was quite impressed with the accuracy of astronomy from the Western Regions (anywhere west of China was called the "Western Regions"). His staff at the national observatory translated the al-Madkhal in 1383. We have the original Arabic of this text along with the Chinese. The al-Madkhal draws heavily from Claudius Ptolemy’s Tetrábiblos, which is why I call this the "Ptolemaic transmission" of astrology into China, in contrast to the earlier Indian, Indo-Iranian, and Dorothean transmissions during the eighth and ninth centuries. Judging from citations of the al-Madkhal in one sixteenth century manual of horoscopy, we can infer that local astrologers were using this work and incorporating it into their practices.

One research project I would like to undertake at some point is a reading of the Arabic text alongside the Chinese translation. The problem is that I am illiterate in Classical Arabic, so I would have to gain literacy in this language in order to do this. As a Sinologist who primarily reads Classical Chinese, I would be fascinated to learn how Emperor Hongwu's staff translated Arabic astrological terms into Chinese. Yano Michio translated the Arabic into English, and from this I was able to tell that some components were dropped in the Chinese translation, such as reference to the Western humors, elements, and even the Canary Islands (the farthest known landmass to the west until Europeans landed in the Americas). At some point perhaps I will have the opportunity to do an intensive Classical Arabic course, and then be in a position to read the Arabic text in relation to the Chinese translation.

Horoscopy was still widely studied in the sixteenth century. One of the great Chinese manuals on this topic to be produced in thirty fascicles (equivalent to thirty "chapters") is the Xingxue dacheng 星學大成 (Great Compendium of Stellar Studies) by Wan Minying 萬民英 (1521–1603). I've paid particular attention to the sections dealing with the planets in zodiac signs and lunar stations, but he covers a great deal of other topics, some of which are native Chinese concepts (such as the five elements). At times his vocabulary usage is inconsistent, since he compiled his work from a large array of primary sources, leading to rather obscure explanations. Nevertheless, a lot of the material he cites stems from much earlier texts from the ninth or tenth centuries that are not extant, which I why, I argue, we can utilize this body of lore to better understand how early Chinese horoscopy worked (we also can refer to the two Japanese horoscopes that faithfully employ methods inherited from China).

Longshan-si in Taipei, Taiwan
Chinese interest in horoscopy persisted after the collapse of the Ming dynasty in the year 1644. Chinese understanding was considerably developed and refined through interaction with Europeans, especially Jesuit missionaries, such as Nikolaus Smogulecki (1611–1656). At the same time, China was gradually exposed to European astronomy and heliocentric models of the solar system.

I have yet to figure out the fate of horoscopy in China after this point. I know that "astrology" is still practiced in China and Taiwan (and I've seen translations of modern Western works in Taiwan), but I am uncertain as to whether it is strictly speaking connected to the earlier tradition of horoscopy. This might be worth investigating next time I visit Taipei, where one can find many fortune tellers of various schools plying their trade around the area of Longshan-si 龍山寺 (especially in the underground shopping area).

As to future research, I plan to produce an academic monograph within the next few years, but at the same time I will publish a few new studies, one of which deals with the iconography of medieval Japanese star maṇḍalas (星曼荼羅). I would also like to explore some of the Japanese Mikkyō (Esoteric Buddhist) manuals that explain rituals dealing with astral deities. There are also texts presently unavailable to me hidden away in Japanese libraries and private collections (such as in old monasteries) that I would like acquire (or at least get copies of them!).

If you would like to read my studies, please feel free to download the pdfs from Archive.org.

Sidereal and Tropical Zodiacs in Medieval East Asia

Japanese Sukuyōshi 宿曜師 (astrologer-monk)















Arab and Indian Lunar Stations

The Arab tradition of astrology utilizes a system of twenty-eight lunar stations  (otherwise called “lunar mansions”) called al-manāzil or manāzil al-ḳamar. There is no such parallel system to be found in Mesopotamian or Hellenistic Greek sources, but there exists an ancient Indian system of twenty-eight lunar stations, called nakṣatras.

What is a lunar station? The Moon revolves around the earth over the course of 27.32 days and it therefore appears from a standpoint on Earth to “lodge” in twenty-seven or twenty-eight positions throughout its circuit. The Chinese devised their own unique system of lunar stations (二十八宿) independent of any foreign influences, although during the twentieth century there was much scholarly debate on this matter, even in Japan, with some arguing for a Babylonian origin. The present evidence, however, indicates that Indian and Chinese civilizations created their systems separate from one another. This point is easily demonstrated by the fact that the system established by the Chinese court in Antiquity does not correspond to any documented system of nakṣatras.

It is important to note that the original systems of Indian nakṣatras and Chinese lunar stations divided the ecliptic or celestial equator into uneven zones. The former, however, was redeveloped following the introduction of Hellenistic astrology and astronomy during the fourth to fifth centuries CE. The zodiac signs are each uniformly comprised of 30°, thus dividing a 360° ecliptic into twelve even zones. At some point in the history of Indian astronomy someone devised a method of bringing together the nakṣatras and the zodiac signs into a coherent and workable model. 

This revised system was the navāṃsas or ninths of a zodiac sign, in which 27 sidereal nakṣatras are employed (the nakṣatra of Abhijit is dropped). The ecliptic is comprised of 108 pādas (quarters), with each zodiac sign comprised of 9 pādas. 108/28 = 3.85, but 27 divides into integers (108/27 = 4). 360°/27 moreover gives a manageable 13°20. In short, lunar stations of uneven dimensions were reformatted to fit into a sidereal zodiacal system of 360°.

The Sassanian Persians, perhaps during the third century CE, adopted the nakṣatras into their system of astrology (called xwurdag in Pahlavī or Middle Persian). These are listed in the Zoroastrian Bundahish, a late Pahlavī work on Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology (see chapter II.2 here).

Did the Arab tradition acquire the concept of lunar stations from the Persians after the conquest of the Sassanian empire during the early-seventh century, or perhaps earlier from the Indians? This is a question that nobody has been able to satisfactorily answer, but here we might consider some aspects of the Arab manāzil.

As Kunitzsch in the Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill) notes, the Arabs named the lunar stations after their anwāʾ . The full list is reported by ʿAbd al-Mālik b. Ḥabīb (d. 852). The anwāʾ collectively refer to the evening setting and heliacal rising of specific stars or constellations for the purposes of estimating the passage of time.

Unlike the navāṃsas, the manāzil are tropical (i.e., they are defined according to the vernal equinox, rather than fixed stars). There are also twenty-eight, each comprised of approximately 12°51. Why would they be tropical rather than sidereal? Unlike Indian astronomy, the Arabs adopted the tropical zodiac, most likely based on the work of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century CE). If the manāzil were based on the navāṃsas, it would have made sense to define the lunar stations using tropical rather than sidereal parameters.

Another interesting point to note is that the sequences of the manāzil and nakṣatras follow a very similar order:

1. al-s̲h̲araṭān
2. al-buṭayn
3. al-t̲h̲urayyā (the Pleiades)
4. al-dabarān

1. Aśvinī
2. Bharaṇī
3. Kṛttikā (the Pleiades)
4. Rohiṇī

The oldest model of nakṣatras commenced from Kṛttikā, but later the sequence was revised with Aśvinī at the start. The reason behind this was likely to ensure that the starting nakṣatra would line up with the vernal equinox (the nakṣatras were still sidereal by definition however). The fact that the manāzil and nakṣatras both count their third lunar station as the Pleiades is either a remarkable coincidence or an indication that the former borrowed from the latter.

Why isn’t it possible at present to come to a definitive conclusion regarding the history of the lunar stations? There is simply a paucity of evidence. I suspect we could easily solve the problem at hand if we had access to astrological and astronomical materials from Sassanian Iran, but unfortunately the extant material is quite scarce and moreover not from works written by professional astronomers. 

We know that the Sassanian Persians had a deep interest in astrology, in light of the testimonies of later Arab sources. One key work in this regard is the Kitāb al-Fihrist (especially chapter 7.1 & 7.2), a catalog of texts by Ibn al-Nadim (c. 987–988). He records that the Sasanian king Šāpur I (r. 239–270) translated into Persian the books of Dorotheus and Ptolemy as well as an Indian named “Farmāsib”. These works in Persian are now lost to us, but they show that early Sassanian Iran brought together Hellenistic and Indian works (hence their concurrent use of zodiac signs and lunar stations). Early Arab astrologers utilized Persian works to a great extant, but as far as I know, we cannot identify the source of the manāzil from their writings.

Dorotheus in East Asia

Dorotheus of Sidon (c. 75 CE) was arguably one of the most influential authors on astrology in Antiquity, standing alongside Claudius Ptolemy (2nd cent. CE), author of the Almagest and Tetrabiblos, as a sort of canonized figure in classical horoscopy. Dorothean astrology is predicated on a theoretical framework of fate in which planetary configurations and movements signal predestined developments. Ptolemaic astrology, in contrast, is based on a materialist cosmology in which planetary influences are conceived of as impersonal physical forces affecting the Earth and its inhabitants. The approach of Ptolemy it seems was rather unusual among Hellenistic astrologers, but nevertheless his work became standard among later Arab and European astrologers.

Dorotheus’ work, unfortunately, is only partially extant in Arabic translation. We do, however, possess Latin, Greek and Chinese fragments. Dorotheus’ work was first translated into Pahlavī (Middle Persian) from Greek during the early years of the Sassanian dynasty in Iran between 222–267. This version was later expanded between 531–578, and then around the year 800, this recension was translated into Arabic by ‘Umar al-Tabarī. It was curiously around the same time that a certain figure named Li Miqian 李彌乾 (d.u.), said to hail from Western India (Xi Tianzhu 西天竺), brought an astrological text to China, which was subsequently translated between 785–805 with the title in Chinese Duli yusi jing 都利聿斯經.

Some modern scholars in Japan in recent decades identified fragments of this text. Yano Michio suggested that it might have been a transcription of “Ptolemy”, but Bill M. Mak in 2014 argued on the basis of the fragments and a very short versified version of the original text that this work was most likely that of Dorotheus. My recent dissertation in 2017 (see here, pages 124–139) examined a number of additional fragments of Dorotheus in a Daoist astrological work of the ninth or early tenth century, especially those concerning lots.[1] 

Lots or κλῆροι refer to a technique in which the distance between two planets or otherwise two points in a chart are measured and then that same distance is applied from the ascendant in the same direction. The degree or more generally the zodiac sign upon which the end of that distance falls is designated as a lot. The lot in question will deal with some concern, such as parents or marriage.

Being illiterate in Arabic, I was forced to depend upon David Pingree’s translation from 1976. In some cases the Chinese matched up with Pingree’s translation so well that it was very clear that the Chinese text in question was derived from Dorotheus. For example, the following remark is given concerning the lot of the mother in the Daoist text:

If the Sun and the Moon are in tropical signs, and also [a tropical sign] is resident in the East [at the ascendant], then this person’s parents will be of different types.

Pingree’s translation (1976: 174) of the section in Dorotheus concerning the lot of the mother reads, “If you find the Sun and the Moon in tropical signs, and the ascendant is a tropical sign, then the parents of this native are not from one race … .”

The term fanfu gong 翻復宮, literally “tropical palace” (“palace” means “sign”), in the Chinese refers to tropical or solstitial signs, i.e., Cancer and Capricorn. These are the positions in which the Sun seems to “turns” in its apparent motion during the solstices. The Chinese rendering of fanfu 翻復, literally “turning” or “reversing”, actually semantically reflects the original Greek term τροπικός quite well. Similarly, in English we have the term “tropical”, which is etymologically derived from the same Greek word.

I consulted Pingree’s translation, but last year Benjamin N. Dykes published his translation of the Arabic translation of Dorotheus. He renders the aforementioned line as follows (Dykes 2017: 84):

Now if you found the Sun and Moon in convertible signs, and the Ascendant in a convertible sign, then the parents of that native will not be of one [and the same] nationality …

Dykes’ translation is far more readable than Pingree’s. Dykes also provides numerous footnotes, comments and a solid introduction to the work with many references to other relevant texts of Antiquity and the Medieval period. Although I cannot evaluate the quality of the translation, Dykes has a PhD from the University of Illinois and has published numerous translations of Latin and Arabic texts, so I have no reason to doubt his ability to translate the material.

Returning to the Chinese, we might wonder from which language was the Chinese version of Dorotheus produced? Although it is vaguely conceivable that the Arabic translation of ‘Umar al-Tabarī could have been brought to China shortly after its production, this is highly unlikely for the simple reason that there were no documented translators who were bilingual in Arabic and Chinese and moreover familiar with astrology at this point in history. At the time, however, there were plenty of ethnically Persian men who had been born and raised in China. Some of them even worked at court directly under the Emperor. It is therefore most likely that a Pahlavī translation of Dorotheus was used as the source text for the Chinese. Whether it was the same text that ‘Umar al-Tabarī used is an interesting question, but I have no good answer for this. What I can say is that the translator(s) of the original Chinese text, judging from its fragments in Chinese and also Japanese sources, were quite capable and systematic in their work. The readability of the translation would have facilitated its popularity in China.

At the moment I am carrying out a research project concerning the sinicization of Indo-Iranian astrology in Medieval China (eighth to sixteenth centuries). I am examining Dorothean and Ptolemaic sources of astrology in Chinese translation, in addition to considering the types of nakṣatra astrology (originally Indian, but Iranians also adopted it) studied by Chinese astrologers throughout the centuries. 

With respect to horoscopy specifically, I’ve settled on calling it “Indo-Iranian”, since Chinese astrologers built their traditions upon Indian and Iranian sources, in addition to adding their own uniquely Chinese concepts and interpretations. Although Dorothean horoscopy is originally Hellenistic, it is simply more accurate to call it “Iranian” once it reached China, and moreover it was integrated into a system that simultaneously utilized nakṣatra lore. This is why I think we best just call this type of horoscopy “Indo-Iranian”. Chinese writers by the fourteenth century interestingly forgot about the originally foreign origin of their horoscopy, so by that point it had become sufficiently sinicized that we could securely call their horoscopy simply as “Chinese horoscopy”.

In some forthcoming publications I will demonstrate the depth of Dorothean astrology in East Asia. One of the points I want to make is that East Asia was as much heir to Dorotheus’ work as was the Arabic world. More than that, East Asia was also as much heir to Persian astrology as was the Arabic tradition. 

The study of horoscopy in East Asia is really in its infancy when we consider that there are extant manuals that comprise hundreds of pages. Few of them have been read by modern scholars. In order to make sense of them, you need to read Classical Chinese in addition to understanding classical horoscopy. There are also numerous social dynamics that we ought to consider. There were plenty of poets and literati in the Tang and Song dynasties (particularly between the ninth and eleventh centuries) who wrote about horoscopy. This art was clearly a part of aristocratic society until at least the seventeenth century when some Jesuit influences begin to appear. The deeper I dig into this topic, the more I realize the scale of what needs to be done.

Dykes, Benjamin N. 2017. Dorotheus of Sidon: Carmen Astrologicum, The ‘Umar al-Tabarī Translation. Minneapolis: The Cazimi Press.

Kotyk, Jeffrey. 2017. “Buddhist Astrology and Astral Magic in the Tang Dynasty.” PhD dissertation, Leiden University.

Mak, Bill M. 2014. “Yusi Jing – A treatise of ‘Western’ Astral Science in Chinese and its versified version Xitian yusi jing.” SCIAMVS 15: 105–169.

Pingree, David. 1976. Dorothei Sidonii Carmen astrologicum: interpretationem arabicam in linguam anglicam versam una cum Dorothei fragmentis et graecis et latinis. Leipzig: Teubner.

[1] Lingtai jing 靈臺經 (DZ 288) or Scripture of the Spiritual Terrace.