the
bright stars, were identified before the planets. Indeed, in Vedic
literature there is no certain reference to a single planet, although
constellations are named. It seems highly probable that before the
Babylonian gods were associated with the astral bodies, the belief
obtained that the stars exercised an influence over human lives. In
one of the Indian "Forest Books", for instance, reference is made to a
man who was "born under the Nakshatra Rohini ".[341] "Nakshatras" are
stars in the _Rigveda_ and later, and "lunar mansions" in Brahmanical
compositions.[342] "Rohini, 'ruddy', is the name of a conspicuously
reddish star, [Greek: alpha] Tauri or Aldebaran, and denotes the group
of the Hyades."[343] This reference may be dated before 600 B.C.,
perhaps 800 B.C.

From Greece comes the evidence of Plutarch regarding the principles of
Babylonian astrology. "Respecting the planets, which they call _the
birth-ruling divinities_, the Chaldeans", he wrote, "lay down that two
(Venus and Jupiter) are propitious, and two (Mars and Saturn) malign,
and three (Sun, Moon, and Mercury) of a middle nature, and one
common." "That is," Mr. Brown comments, "an astrologer would say,
these three are propitious with the good, and may be malign with the
bad."[344]

Jastrow's views in this connection seem highly controversial. He holds
that Babylonian astrology dealt simply with national affairs, and had
no concern with "the conditions under which the individual was born";
it did not predict "the fate in store for him". He believes that the
Greeks transformed Babylonian astrology and infused it with the spirit
of individualism which is a characteristic of their religion, and that
they were the first to give astrology a personal significance.

Jastrow also perpetuates the idea that astronomy began with the
Greeks. "Several centuries before the days of Alexander the Great," he
says, "the Greeks had begun to cultivate the study of the heavens, not
for purposes of divination, but prompted by a scientific spirit as an
intellectual discipline that might help them to solve the mysteries of
the universe." It is possible, however, to overrate the "scientific
spirit" of the Greeks, who, like the Japanese in our own day, were
accomplished borrowers from other civilizations. That astronomy had
humble beginnings in Greece as elsewhere is highly probable. The late
Mr. Andrew Lang wrote in this connection: "The very oddest example of
the survival of