Jyotisha is classified in Indian tradition as one of the six Vedangas, the limbs of the Veda, the auxiliary sciences needed to perform the ritual correctly, and its original function was calendrical: fixing the times of sacrifice. The Vedanga Jyotisha, the oldest surviving text of the tradition, is concerned with that and contains no horoscopy at all.
Personal horoscopy appears later, and the Hellenistic contribution to it is documented and acknowledged by scholars though disputed by some practitioners. The Yavanajataka, a Sanskrit text whose title means the horoscopy of the Greeks, transmits Hellenistic material into Sanskrit in the early centuries CE, and a number of Sanskrit technical terms in the discipline are Greek loanwords. What Indian astrologers then did with that material, the Nakshatras, the nodes, the dasha systems, the divisional charts, is largely their own and has no Greek parallel. The classical synthesis is the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, ascribed to the sage Parashara, alongside the works of Varahamihira in the sixth century.
Jyotisha remains a working profession in South Asia on a scale that has no Western equivalent. Charts are routinely cast at birth; horoscope matching is a standard part of arranged marriage negotiation, with named doshas such as Mangal Dosha treated as serious obstacles; auspicious times are selected for weddings, business openings and surgery. Practitioners prescribe remedies, gemstones for particular planets, mantras, fasts, charitable acts, temple ritual, which is a whole dimension the Western tradition largely lacks.
The discipline's status in India has been publicly contested. A decision in 2001 to permit universities to offer degrees in Jyotisha drew objections from Indian scientists and litigation that reached the Supreme Court, which declined to strike it down. That argument, between the discipline's cultural standing and its scientific standing, continues.