Abstract

Since time immemorial, the most varied divinatory practices have flourished in India. Their prognostications were supplied by the interpretation of quite diverse omina and portenta: Thus “meteors” (lightning, rain or comets) earthquakes, the flight and cries of crows and other birds, the degree of clarity of a subject's image reflected in melted butter (gharta), lines and marks on a body, the direction taken by smoke rising from the altar once the rite had condensed a certain magic power from it (prabhāva), dreams, all were thought to furnish the diviner with presages. As the abundant lists of the Garga samhitā and the Brhat Sarnmitā testify, for a conscience attentive to the intersigns there is no reality, even the most insignificant, that does not lend itself directly or by contiguity to systematic interpretation.