Recent collaborations among archaeoastronomers and cultural historians have made clear the extent to which knowledge based on the observation and interpretation of celestial phenomena was shared across the Afro-Eurasian continent from antiquity through the middle period. On the one hand such knowledge was mathematical, astrometric, and calendrical in shape; on the other it was horoscopic and divinatory. Its circulation transected diverse communities and to some degree brought into conjunction cultural systems otherwise considerably different in configuration and organization.
Cross-cultural transmission in the astral sciences has long been of interest to students of Asian philosophical, religious, and artistic traditions. Of late the topic has attracted renewed attention specifically within the field of Buddhist studies as relating to cultural interactions within and around the Sinosphere in its broadest sense. What this work brings into view is the pivotal importance of the astral sciences as an aggregate of knowledge, with deep roots in Babylonian, Indian, and Iranian antiquity, shared across interlocking Asian cultures in an ongoing integration of science, religion, and the arts on the local and global scales.
It is the goal of this international conference to promote a wide-ranging discussion of the astral sciences in the premodern era with a focus on the ramifications of cross-regional knowledge transfer and its cultural manifestations.