Sphujidhvaja was apparently of Greek descent, and flourished in Western India under the patronage of the Kṣatrapa ruler Rudradāman II. He wrote the extensive genethlialogical manual entitled Yavanajātaka (Horoscopy of the Greeks) in AD 270, which shows the position and influence of the stars at one's birth. Towards the close of his work, Sphujidhvaja says that, before him, in AD 150, the great Greek genethlialogist Yavaneśvara redacted into Sanskrit prose a Greek astrological work, so that it could be studied by those who did not know Greek, and that he, Sphujidhvaja is composing a versified redaction of the work of Yavaneśvara. The work reveals Sphujidhvaja as a competent scholar, a master of Sanskrit versification, and an expert genethlialogist.
Sphujidhvaja states that he composed the work in 4,000 verses. But the only manuscript of the work available today contains only 2,300 verses. In this imperfect manuscript, the first few sections are numbered, but not so the subsequent ones,...
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References
Bṛhajjātaka of Varāhamihira with the commentary of Bhaoṭṭotpala. Bombay: Jnanadarpana Press, 1874.
Bṛhatsaṃhitā by Varāhamihirācārya, with the commentary of Bhaoṭṭotpala. 2 pts. Ed. Avadha Vihari Tripathi. Varanasi: Varanaseya Sanskrit University, 1968.
Pingree, David. The Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja. Journal of Oriental Research (Madras) 31.1–4 (1961–1962): 26–32.
Sārāvalī of Kalyāṇavarman. Ed. V. Subrahmanya Sastri. Bombay: Nirṇayasāgar Press, 1928.
The Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja. Ed. and trans. David Pingree. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.
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Sarma, K.V. (2008). Sphujidhvaja. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9598
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