The Peoples of the Hills, Ancient Ararat and Caucasus

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)ONLY in recent years have the interrelationships of Babylonian, Greek, and Indian astronomy and astrology become a subject which can be studied meaningfully. This development is due to several factors: our greatly increased understanding of cuneiform material made possible by the scholarship of Professor O. Neugebauer; 1 the discovery of Babylonian parameters and techniques not only in the standard Greek astronomical texts,2 but in papyri and astrological treatises as well; and the finding of Mesopotamian material in Sanskrit works and in the traditions of South India. Unfortunately, a lack of familiarity with the Sanskrit sources and a failure to consider the transmission of scientific ideas in the context of a broad historical perspective have recently led one scholar to the erroneous conclusion that Sasanian Iran played a crucial role in the introduction of Greek and Babylonian astronomy and astrology to India and in the development of Indian planetary theory.4 It is my purpose in this paper to survey briefly the influence of foreign ideas on Indian gayakas so as to make clear the creative use they made of their borrowings in devising the yuga-system of astronomy; and then to examine the character of Sasanian astronomy and astrology, pointing out their almost complete lack of originality.The earliest Indian texts which are known - the Vedas, the Brâhmaijas, and the Upanicads - are seldom concerned with any but the most obvious of astronomical phenomena; and when they are so concerned, they speak with an obscurity of language and thought that renders impossible an adequate exposition of the notions regarding celestial matters to which their authors subscribed. One may point to the statement that the year consists of 360 days as a possible trace of Babylonian influence in the Kgveda,4 but there is little else which lends itself to a similar interpretation. It has often been proposed, of course, that the list of the twenty-eight naksatras which is given for the first time at the beginning of the last millennium before Christ in the Atharvaveda and in various Brâhmanas is borrowed from Mesopotamia.8 But no cuneiform tablet yet deciphered presents a parallel; the hypothesis cannot be accepted in the total absence of corroborative evidence.However, the naksatras are useful in the tracing of Indian influence on other cultures. The oldest lists0 associate each constellation with a presiding deity who is to be suitably propitiated at the appointed times. It became important to perform certain sacrifices only under the benign influence of particularly auspicious naksatras.7 The roster of activities for which each was considered auspicious or not was rapidly expanded,6 and, in particular, the naksatras came to be closely connected with the twelve or sixteen samskâras or purificatory rites. Thereby they gave rise to the most substantial part of muhurtasâstra, or Indian catarrhic astrology,® traces of which are to be found in Arabic, Byzantine, and medieval Latin texts.10 The Indians also combined the twenty-eight naksatras with the Babylonian arts of brontology and seismology 11 in a form which, for some unknown reason, became immensely popular among the followers of Buddha.'2 Their works spread these superstitions throughout Central Asia and the Far East.18The relative seclusion from the West which the Aryans had enjoyed in northern India for centuries alter their invasions was broken shortly before 51.3 b. c., when Darius the Great conquered the Indus Valley. In the ensuing six centuries, save for a century and a half of security under the Mauryan emperors, North India was subjected to the successive incursions of the Greeks, the eakas, the Pah lavas, and the Kuyânas. An important aspect of this turbulent period was the opportunity it afforded of contact between the intellectuals of the West and India. This opportunity was not missed. …

Astronomy and Astrology in India and Iran

From the later third century, Germans whom the literary sources called Franks had joined with other barbarians to challenge Roman rule in Gaul. This chapter acknowledges the importance of the Bishop Gregory's extensive writings in the discussions of the formation of Frankish kingdoms, the working of kingship, the roles of aristocrats and bishops, and the limits of Merovingian rule. The kingdom in north-eastern Gaul was sometimes known simply as 'Francia'. It also came to be known as Austria or Austrasia. Although by the fifth century Orthodox Christianity provided a dominant world-view among the Roman population in Gaul, as the Franks expanded into Gaul they nevertheless retained their pagan cults, and even into the sixth century they continued to worship at pagan shrines, especially in northern Gaul. In the kingdom of Austrasia various combinations of Frankish aristocrats, Roman aristocrats and bishops competed for influence at the royal court.

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests

The biggest player in the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean economy was obviously the Byzantine Empire, which alone maintained the means and the motive routinely to encourage the bulk transportation of staple items between regions. Part of the agricultural surplus from the wealthiest of all the lands around the Mediterranean, Egypt, had long been diverted to assure supplies of grain for the imperial capital at Constantinople. The Mediterranean afforded wider opportunities for coastal producers to market their surplus, whether in dealings with the state or independently of it. The annona system may have tied shippers into the regular transport of Egyptian grain to the imperial capital, but not so tightly as to preclude them from the simultaneous pursuit of private profit. At privileged western sites like Rome and Marseilles, or Carthage and Naples, the archaeological evidence suggests that the late antique exchange-network persisted in an etiolated form through to the close of the seventh century.

The Mediterranean economy

The fifty years following the death of Severus Alexander were among the most disruptive ever experienced by the Roman Empire. Historians conventionally refer to them as a period of 'crisis', which began in 235, reached its peak around 260, and then gradually yielded to the ministrations of a series of reforming emperors, ending with Diocletian. The outstanding characteristic of this crisis was war, both civil and foreign. C. Iulius Verus Maximinus was a man of late middle age. Though of relatively humble stock, he had exploited the opportunities for promotion in the reformed army of Septimius Severus, winning high rank and equestrian status. Between 235 and 285 the Roman Empire experienced great dislocation and distress. The principal causes of these disturbances have now been generally agreed by historians and may indeed be inferred from what Diocletian eventually did to bring them to an end.

Maximinus to Diocletian and the ‘crisis’

In the Seleucid period, Mesopotamia served as a base for the Seleucid kings' attempts to extend their political and commercial power into the Persian Gulf region and along the eastern coastlands of Arabia. The Parthians and then the Sasanians made Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris in central Mesopotamia, their capital and the centre from which Iranian power radiated over Aramaic, and then increasingly Arab, Iraq. The 6th century was a propitious time for Persian intervention in South Arabia. In the sphere of architecture, Persian influence on the buildings of the Lakhmids, such as the palace of Khawarnaq, must have been decisive, and Persian models must have dominated the architecture of early Islamic Iraq. Persian artistic influences also penetrated across the Syrian desert to the structures of the Umayyad caliphs on the fringes of modern Syria and Jordan, where there was a symbiosis with the local hellenistic and Byzantine artistic and architectural traditions.

C. E. Bosworth

Papers

Iran and the Arabs before Islam