One of the earliest preserved Sanskrit works on Perso-Arabic (Tājika) astrology, the thirteenth-century Karmaprakāśa of Samarasiṃha (also known as the Manuṣyajātaka, Tājikatantrasāra or Gaṇakabhūṣaṇa), is examined with particular attention to subgenre, distinctive content and likely Arabic-language sources. On the basis of a comparison of the extant text of the Karmaprakāśa with excerpts attributed to Samarasiṃha by later Tājika writers, conclusions are drawn with regard to other works, now lost or misattributed, by the same author.
The highly popular Praśnatantra attributed to Nīlakaṇṭha of Kāśī (fl. late 16th century) and sometimes regarded as the third volume of his Tājikanīlakaṇṭhī is shown to depend for its basic structure on an abridged Sanskrit version of the Kitāb fi l-masāʾil wa-l-aḥkām by Sahl ibn Bishr (early 9th century), apparently authored by Samarasiṃha in the 13th century, to which quotations primarily from Sanskrit astrological works in the classical Indian style have been added, resulting in a hybrid of Indian and Perso-Arabic interrogational astrology.
This paper supplements and corrects the information given in the works of David Pingree regarding four major authors on Tājika or Sanskritized Perso-Arabic astrology from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century: Tejaḥsiṃha, Yādavasūri, Bālakṛṣṇa and Balabhadra. It further contributes information on a fifth such author, Tuka, not discussed by Pingree.
The astrological doctrines of aspects and planetary dignities found in the authoritative texts of the Tājika (Sanskritized Perso-Arabic) school are examined with respect to their origins and historical development, with particular emphasis on Balabhadra’s encyclopaedic Hāyanaratna (1649) and its quotations from the perhaps earliest work of the school, Samarasiṃha’s Tājikaśāstra (thirteenth century). It is argued that a major source of these doctrines is Sahl ibn Bishr’s Arabic-language introduction to astrology (ninth century), possibly in abbreviated or paraphrased form. Several of the constituent ideas have been imperfectly understood by their Indian epitomists, resulting in reinterpretations and innovations.
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