New paper by Parpola on Beginnings of Indian Astronomy

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The open-access journal History of Science in South Asia just published a new paper by professor Asko Parpola, entitled 'Beginnings of Indian Astronomy with Reference to a Parallel Development in China'. The abstract is given below; the article itself can be found here.
Hypotheses of a Mesopotamian origin for the Vedic and Chinese star calendars are unfounded. The Yangshao culture burials discovered at Puyang in 1987 suggest that the beginnings of Chinese astronomy go back to the late fourth millennium BCE. The instructive similarities between the Chinese and Indian luni-solar calendrical astronomy and cosmology therefore with great likelihood result from convergent parallel development and not from diffusion.
https://astrology.martingansten.com/

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I finally got a chance to take a look at this one. Back in the 1990's, it was Parpola who suggested that astronomy was a possible important key to the decipherment of the Indus script. He specifically referred to the nakshatras, which he took to be the calendar of the Indus civilization (not an uncommon opinion, by the way).

But Parpola crossed a dangerous line in academia in the sense that his premise -- i.e. that the nakshatras were important symbolic components in the Indus script -- came uncomfortably close to implying that astrology (!!!) lay at the roots of civilization and literacy on the subcontinent of India. His ideas were deeply criticized by his academic colleagues.

He also went so far as to suggest that certain ideas were traded between Sumer and the Indus (Meluhha in the Sumerian inscriptions), possibly including a link between Varuna pouring the water of life in central Aquarius and the Mesopotamian myth of Utnapishtim, keeper of the waters of life and perhaps another Aquarian cognate. His ideas re: cultural exchange between the Indus and Mesopotamia were developed in collaboration with his brother Simi Parpola, an Assyriologist.

In this new article, linked by Martin, Parpola carries his ideas on the origins of astronomy/astrology in India a step farther. I won't give you any "spoilers," but will suggest that you read it yourself. Whether or not you agree with him, it is an important contribution to the origins of our art.

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thank you ... great article ... I wonder if the 'alligator' speared by a pole star (Vega?) could possible be east/west aspect of the galactic disk ... the Mayans consider that to be a crocodile which morphs into the Sky Monster