![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In the context of India, the question is what was known, in what detail and when. Something of all of these was known to our ancients though not in the same form and detail as it is available now. ” It states that “the head is called the “ascending” and its tail the “descending” and the signs which those learned in the stars call “obscured” are from Leo to Capricorn …”Īstronomy in popular perception is about stars, planets, sun, moon, eclipses, comets, meteorites and associated observable phenomena. The great treatise on horoscopic astrology of the first-century Hellenistic astrologer Dorotheus of Sidon, which was first translated into Persian in the third century and into Arabic in the eighth century, contains a chapter (V, 43) entitled “on clarifying the phases of the moon and the head of the dragon and its tail. ![]() In Pahlavī Rāhu was referred to as Gōchihr, his head sar, and his tail dumb in Arabic, the latter were respectively called ra’s and dhanab. Sasanian astrologers received from India the notion of Rāhu, a celestial serpent whose head (siras) and tail (ketu) cause solar and lunar eclipses. The classical theory of the dragon myth seems to have been modified in accordance with developments in astrological doctrine at least from late Arsacid and Sasanian times onwards. The idea that these phenomena were caused by a body whose head and tail intercept the Sun’s and the Moon’s light was probably related to the emergence of definite ideas as to the nature of the orbits of the Sun and the Moon and their opposite points of intersection between the Moon’s orbit and the ecliptic. Its function was thus seen to be that of threatening and “devouring,” as well as “delivering” and protecting the great luminaries at certain irregular intervals. The fearful monster, who quenched the light of the supreme luminaries by seizing them in its jaws, was generally conceived as a giant serpent or dragon, an iconography thought to be of oriental origin. The idea that eclipses of the Sun and the Moon were caused by the interference of an eclipse monster was widely held throughout the Eurasian continent and can be traced back to remote antiquity. ![]()
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