As part of my ongoing PhD research here in Japan I picked up a copy
of Mikkyō
Senseijutsu – Sukuyō-dō
to Indo Senseijutsu 密教占星術ｰ宿曜道とインド占星術
[Esoteric Buddhist Astrology – Sukuyō-dō and Indian
Astrology] by scholar Yano Michio 矢野道雄
(1944-). It is essentially an introduction and analysis
of the history behind Indian astrology in the East Asian cultural
sphere, specifically with respect to the Xiuyao-jing 宿曜經
(in Japanese Sukuyō-kyō), which was used in esoteric Buddhism in China and Japan.
As I introduced in an earlier post (see here), the text was
translated by the eminent Vajra Master Amoghavajra 不空
in 759 and then later revised in 764 by his lay
disciple Yang Jingfeng 楊景風
under his master's guidance. This laid the groundwork
for the later astrological tradition of Sukuyō-dō 宿曜道
in Japan, which emerged around the middle of the
eleventh century and flourished for a few centuries, perhaps until
the Muromachi period (1337-1573). The tradition never died out,
though it appears it was often kept secret, at least judging from one twentieth century Japanese account I've surveyed. The Kōyasan
scholar Morita Ryūsen 森田龍僊
inherited such a
living tradition and wrote, from his emic perspective, a work
entitled Mikkyō Sensei
Hō 密教占星法
[Esoteric
Buddhist Astrology Methods]
in 1941.1
While such a work is useful in many respects, it was not
written from a scientific perspective. Aside from his work there was
not a great deal of concentrated academic work done on the subject until Yano's
research, which is objective and critical (there are many modern popular works on Sukuyō-dō).
One very interesting theory put
forth by Yano is that, quite possibly, the Sukuyō-dō tradition was early on in possession of a Classical Chinese translation of the Tetrabiblos
by Greco-Egyptian astrologer Ptolemy (90-168).2
To begin with, he points out that in 865 the Japanese monk Shū'ei
宗叡
(809-884) brought
back with him, among other texts, the following title:
都利聿斯經一部五巻
Tori-isshi-kyō, One Part, Five Scrolls
The
title here is provided in the Sino-Japanese (on-yomi)
reading. In modern Mandarin it would be Duli-yusi-jing.
The
Sino-Japanese
readings, originally preserved from Chinese pronunciations from the
Tang period (618-907), better reflect the original title name than
Mandarin, so I will use the former here.
Yano
proposes that the title here actually stands for Ptolemy's name and
presumably would be his work the Tetrabiblos
(the Four
Books).
It is not impossible to imagine that the work
could have been translated into Chinese, especially considering the
flow of Hellenic sciences eastward through the efforts of Nestorianism.
It was translated into Syrian in the seventh century and Persian in
the late eighth century.
Ptolemy
in Greek is Ptolemaios.
In languages like Syrian, however, the vowels are not represented, hence it would be
rendered something like this if it were in Roman:
P-T-L-M-Y-V-S
The
P
could easily be dropped, likewise for some reason the M.
The result would be:
T-L-YV-S
Compare
this with the Chinese:
都利聿斯
To-Ri-Itsu-Shi (Sino-Japanese)
Du-Li-Yu-Si (Mandarin)
This
argument is further advanced by texts listed in later catalogs
The New Book of
Tang
新唐書
(a
revised history of the Tang, compiled in 1060) lists this work with
the following remark:
貞元中，都利術士李彌乾傳自西天竺，有璩公者譯其文。
In the Zhenyuan period (785-805) transmitted from western India by To-ri adept Li Miqian and translated by Qu Gong.
Following
this another work is listed:
陳輔《聿斯四門經》一卷
Chen Fu, Isshi Shi-mon Kyō, One Scroll
Chen
Fu here appears to be a personal name, either the compiler or translator. The
title literally reads Isshi
Four Gates Classic.
One will note the Isshi
here is the same as the Tori-isshi-kyō
above. The “four gates” here could possibly be a predictable
Chinese rendering of Tetrabiblos
(Four
Books). If Yano is
correct, then the Chinese is supposed to say the Tetrabiblos
of Ptolemaios.
However, Yano is only cautiously stating this as a tentative theory.
This
text or some version of it was in fact brought to Japan in 865 and
readily utilized by astrologers of the later Sukuyō tradition. We
know this because in extant horoscopes (Jpn. Sukuyō
Kanmon 宿曜勘文)
there are citations of the text. The text itself, however, is no
longer extant. However, the fragments that do exist clearly
demonstrate a Hellenic model of horoscopes. For instance, consider
the following citations from a horoscope from the year 1152:
土在木宮
Saturn is in Jupiter's palace [Pisces]
木在月宮
Jupiter is in the Moon's palace [Cancer]
土木三合
Saturn and Jupiter are 120 degrees apart [trine].
火日三合
Mars and the Sun are 120 degrees apart [trine].
金水同宮
Venus and Mercury are in the same zodiac mansion [Aquarius].
These
are concepts stemming from Hellenic astrology (Ptolemy's or otherwise), especially the
concept of aspect (here trine
or in Chinese san he
三合).
However, they are not mentioned in the horoscope methods provided by
Amoghavajra, who was versed in Indian models of astrology. It is
unclear whether he was aware of such concepts, but nevertheless the
main text in question was evidently Hellenic in origin and did have
an impact in both China and Japan, though it is almost entirely
forgotten aside from a few scholars today.
The
aforementioned New Book
of Tang does state it
came from western India, though it has been long known that there was
a great deal of Hellenic influence in Indian astral sciences from
early on. The scholar David Edwin Pingree (1933-2005) after a
lifetime of study divided Indian astrology into four categories based
on the origins of the material:
I. Vedic (c.1000-400 BCE). II. Babylonian (400 BCE-200 CE): Vedāṅgajyotiṣa. III. Greco-Babylonian (c200-400): Yavanajātaka. IV. Greek (c400-1600): Āryabhaṭīya. V. Islamic (c1600-1800).
The
third text on the list the Yavanajātaka
is literally the Jātaka
of the Greeks. Modern
scholarship has furthermore traced Hellenic influences in
chronologically dated Indian materials related to astral science.
Hence, while the Chinese might have understood the text in question
above as having come from western India, in reality it might have
been just as well an import there from further west originally.
It
should come as no surprise that such a Hellenic model was introduced
in the Tang dynasty, which has been understood as a “cosmopolitan
empire”.3
Buddhists especially
made great efforts to adapt imported Indian models to native Chinese
models, though as Pankenier remarks it did not have a lasting effect
in China:
On the whole, however, these syncretic efforts had almost no influence on long-established Chinese astrological theory, especially given the drastic decline of Buddhism following the Tang Dynasty suppression in the mid ninth century and the subsequent resurgence of Neo-Confucianism. Assimilation was also hindered by the difficulty of rendering foreign concepts and terminology into Chinese, which was often accomplished by means of bizarre or idiosyncratic transliterations.4
Still,
in conclusion we might say that it is remarkable should Yano be
correct and Ptolemy's
Tetrabiblos
was in fact translated into Chinese around the year 800, later
influencing the development of Sukuyō astrology in Japan starting
from the Heian period in the eleventh century. If anything, it just
demonstrates how much hybridization occurred in this period: Vedic,
Buddhist, Hellenic and Chinese models were brought together and even
in the furthest frontier of East Asia – Japan – one can see
elements of Hellenic astrology active in the same aristocratic world
which gave birth to literature like the Tale of Genji.5
It is always interesting uncovering these subtle strands of history which span great time and space.
------
Footnotes:
1 Morita
Ryūsen 森田龍僊. Mikkyō
Sensei Hō 密教占星法.
Kōyasan: Kōyasan Daigaku Shuppan-bu, 1941.
2 See Yano Michio 矢野道雄, Mikkyō Senseijutsu – Sukuyō-dō to Indo Senseijutsu 密教占星術ｰ宿曜道とインド占星術 (Tokyo, Japan: Tōyō Shoin, 2013), 160-164.
3 For example, Mark Edward Lewis, China's Cosmopolitan Empire The Tang Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009).
4 David Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China Conforming Earth to Heaven (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 9-10.
5 There
are also a lot of Buddhist elements in the work. See the following
by me: Buddhism
and the Tale of Genji.
