Y
Yavanes ́vara (149/150 CE)
Anonymous author in 149/150 CE of a Sanskrit prose translation of an unidentified Greek
(probably Alexandrian) text on horoscopy, a translation known only from the surviving
Sanskrit verse version Yavanaja ̄taka composed by S in 269/270. The title
Yavanes ́vara then meant literally “lord of the Greeks,” evidently a high position among the
Greek residents of western India under the western Ks.atrapa rulers in the S ́aka or Skuthian
dominion of the area. This Yavanes ́vara worked in the reign of Rudrada ̄man I (and prob-
ably at his court in Ujjayinı ̄, modern Ujjain). His text as known through the Yavanaja ̄taka
became the chief inspiration for Indian horoscopic astrology.
CESS A.5.330; Pingree (1978).
Kim Plofker and Toke Lindegaard Knudsen