The Study of Jyotisha · Chapter 1 of 54 · Part One · Beginnings

#What Jyotisha is

#Welcome

This course teaches Jyotisha, the astrology of India, from the beginning. You do not need to know any Sanskrit, any astronomy or any mathematics beyond simple arithmetic. Every word that comes from Sanskrit is explained the first time it appears. Every rule is shown with the book and verse it comes from, so that you can see that the rule is old and is not something we made up. And every chapter is complete in itself: nothing in this course sends you to another website to finish learning.

The course is long because the subject is long. The classical authors themselves said so. Varahamihira, the great astronomer and astrologer of sixth-century Ujjain, opened his book on horoscopes by calling the subject a "vast ocean". He said he was writing his book as a small boat for students who had tried to cross that ocean and had given up (Brihat Jataka I.2). This course is meant to be a boat of the same kind. Go slowly. Read a chapter, try the examples, and come back to it. Nobody learns Jyotisha in a week.

This first chapter answers five questions before we touch the sky:

1. What does the word Jyotisha mean, and what does the subject cover?
2. What are its three branches?
3. Which books does it rest on, and how will this course cite them?
4. What attitude did the old teachers expect from a student?
5. How should the course be read?

#The word itself

Jyotisha comes from jyotis, which means "light" — and, by extension, the lights of the sky: the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the stars. Jyotisha is therefore "the knowledge of the lights". In the old Vedic schools it was one of the six Vedangas, the "limbs of the Veda", the supporting subjects a student learned so that the Vedic rituals could be done correctly. Its first job was practical. A ritual had to be performed on the right day of the month, at the right season and at the right moment, and only a person who could read the sky could tell when that was. For this reason Jyotisha has often been called the "eye of the Veda": it was the faculty that saw time.

The oldest surviving text of the subject, the Vedanga Jyotisha attributed to a teacher named Lagadha, is a short manual for keeping a calendar. It contains no horoscopes at all. Horoscopes — reading a person's life from the sky at their birth — came into Indian learning later, over the first centuries of the common era, and grew into the large literature this course is mostly about. Chapter 47 tells that history in detail. For now, keep in mind that Jyotisha began as timekeeping, and that timekeeping is still the foundation of everything else. A chart that is computed for the wrong time is a chart of someone else.

#A note on the name "astrology"

In English, astrology and astronomy are now two separate things: astronomy is the science of the sky, and astrology is the practice of reading meaning into it. In classical India they were one subject with several branches, and the same person was expected to master both. When this course says "Jyotisha" it means the whole subject. When it needs to separate the parts, it uses the old Indian names for the branches, which are explained next.

#The three branches

Varahamihira divides Jyotisha into three sections (skandhas). He says the sages call the whole subject by one general name, but that it consists of three parts (Brihat Samhita I.9):

1. Tantra, also called Ganita or Siddhanta: the mathematical astronomy. This branch computes where the Sun, the Moon and the planets are at any moment. It deals with the length of the year, the motions of the planets (including their apparent backward motion, called retrogression), eclipses, the rising times of the zodiac signs, and the calendar. The great books of this branch are called siddhantas, "established conclusions" — the Surya Siddhanta, the Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata and others.

2. Hora: the reading of individual charts. This is the branch most people mean today when they say "astrology". It takes the positions computed by the first branch for a particular moment and place — usually a person's birth — and interprets them. The word hora has its own history. Varahamihira records the view that it is the word ahoratra, "a day and a night", with its first and last syllables dropped (Brihat Jataka I.3). The same word later also means an hour, and a half of a zodiac sign; you will meet both of those meanings in later chapters.

3. Samhita: the "collection", or natural and mundane astrology. This branch covers everything that is not a personal horoscope: omens in the sky, comets, eclipses and what they were believed to mean for countries and rulers, weather prediction, the signs of a good season for crops, the choice of building sites, the qualities of animals and gems, and much more. Varahamihira's Brihat Samhita is the great encyclopaedia of this branch.

Two further subjects grew out of these three and are often treated as branches of their own:

• Muhurta, the choice of an auspicious moment to begin something — a marriage, a journey, the building of a house. It uses the calendar of the first branch and the rules of the second.
• Prashna, "the question": casting a chart for the moment a question is asked and reading the answer from it. It is practised especially in Kerala.

This course covers all of these. It follows the order in which a student actually needs them: first the sky and the calendar (because without them nothing can be computed), then the building blocks of a chart, then the methods of judging and timing, then the applied branches, and finally the history.

#What a classical astrologer was expected to know

The second chapter of the Brihat Samhita is a portrait of the ideal jyotishaka, the person who practises Jyotisha. It is worth reading slowly, because it shows how wide the subject was and how high the standard was set. Varahamihira lists, among many other things (Brihat Samhita, chapter II):

• Character. The astrologer must be truthful, free from jealousy, clean in habits, eloquent and original, able to explain things clearly, and free from vices.
• Astronomy. He must know all the units of time, from the great age (yuga) down to tiny fractions of a second; the different kinds of month and day; how to account for the extra months the calendar needs; how planets speed up and slow down; how to compute eclipses — their beginning, middle, end and size; the shape and rotation of the Earth; the latitude of his place; and the rising times of the signs. If the different astronomical textbooks give different answers, he must be able to find the truth by observing the sky with a shadow-stick, a water level and instruments.
• Horoscopy. He must know the divisions of a sign, the strengths of the planets, the planetary periods that time a life, the method of Ashtakavarga, and the planetary combinations called yogas.
• Muhurta and Samhita. He must know the right times for marriages and journeys, and the whole range of natural omens.
• Teaching. He must be able to answer any question clearly, and to explain the science in its purity "like pure gold" that stands the test of the touchstone, the fire and the hammer.

Varahamihira is also sharp about bad astrologers. He compares a teacher whose explanation contradicts the text he claims to explain to someone who praises a goddess by listing the vices of a prostitute (Brihat Samhita, chapter II). In the same chapter he says that the predictions of a person who can compute the exact rising sign (lagna) by observation and instruments, and who has mastered horoscopy, will not fail. The emphasis is on accuracy first.

Two lessons for a modern student come out of this chapter:

1. Computation comes first. The classical standard was that an astrologer should be able to compute positions himself and check them against the sky. Today a computer does the computing, but you should still understand what it computes and why, so that you can catch a wrong date, a wrong time zone or a wrong convention. Chapters 2 to 6 of this course give you that understanding.
2. Honesty is part of the craft, not an extra. The classical portrait puts truthfulness and freedom from greed beside technical skill. This course keeps that standard, and says plainly where the tradition disagrees with itself or with the evidence.

#Destiny and effort

Every student of Jyotisha soon meets the central question: if a chart shows a life, is that life fixed?

The classical tradition never answered "yes, everything is fixed". Varahamihira states that the science "treats of the effects of the good and bad deeds (karma) done in previous births" (Brihat Jataka I.3). In the Indian view, karma means action and its consequences. A chart, on this view, is a picture of the consequences one has brought into this life — a set of tendencies and seeds — not a sentence passed by the planets. The planets show; they do not cause.

The wider literature of India returns to this point again and again, always with the same balance:

• The Mahabharata (Anushasana Parva, chapter 6) compares destiny to a seed and human effort to the field. A seed sown in an untilled field yields nothing; effort is what lets destiny bear fruit at all.
• The Yoga Vasishtha (book 2, chapters 4 to 9) says that what people call fate is only the name for their own past actions, and that present action can overcome it, as a strong man overcomes a weak one.
• The Tirukkural (couplet 619) says that even when fate is against you, effort still earns its wage.
• Even the Arthashastra of Kautilya, a hard-headed manual of statecraft, warns a king against relying on the stars. At the end of its book IX, chapter 4, it lists "faith in the auspiciousness of lunar days and stars" among the things that cost a king his gains, and asks: wealth is the star for wealth — what will the stars do?

This course follows the same balance. A chart describes tendencies: strengths to use, difficulties to work with, and times when certain matters come forward. It does not decide a life. When the classical texts make frightening predictions — about the length of life, or about misfortune in marriage — this course explains what the text says and why, as history, but it never presents such a rule as a prediction about any real person. That is not softness. It is accuracy: no such rule has ever been shown to predict anything, and the old teachers themselves did not agree on them.

#The books this course rests on

Jyotisha is a textual tradition. Almost everything an astrologer knows comes from a small number of classical books and the commentaries written on them. You will meet these titles in every chapter, so here is a short guide.

#The great books of horoscopy

• Brihat Jataka (Varahamihira, 6th century CE). "The great book of births." Twenty-eight short chapters in compact verse that define the signs, planets and houses and then cover strength, longevity, planetary periods, yogas, the effects of each planet in each sign, and much more. It is the oldest complete Indian textbook of horoscopes that survives, and it is our most-cited source. Its verse numbers in this course follow the English translation of N. Chidambaram Aiyar (Madras, 2nd edition 1905), which is out of copyright.
• Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (attributed to the sage Parashara; the text as we have it was put together over several centuries, probably from around 600–800 CE onward). The most widely used reference book of modern Indian astrology. It is very large, and it is the main source for the sixteen divisional charts, the Vimshottari planetary periods and many yogas. Different printed editions number its chapters differently, so this course cites it by chapter subject (for example, "BPHS, chapter on the effects of the house lords") and gives the chapter number only where the common editions agree.
• Saravali (Kalyanavarma, about the 9th–10th century). A large and clear expansion of the older teaching, especially on the effects of planets in signs and houses. Cited from the Sanskrit edition of V. Subrahmanya Sastri (Bombay, 1907).
• Jataka Parijata (Vaidyanatha Dikshita, about the 15th century). A comprehensive later textbook, especially full on yogas.
• Phaladeepika (Mantreswara, about the 13th–16th century, from South India). Concise, practical and much used in South India.
• Jaimini Sutras (attributed to the sage Jaimini). A separate system of horoscopy written in short, coded sentences, with its own planetary indicators and its own sign-based periods. Chapter 38 is devoted to it.

#Books of the other branches

• Surya Siddhanta (the classic astronomical textbook; the version that survives took its present form over several centuries up to about the 10th century CE). Cited from the English translation of Ebenezer Burgess (1860).
• Aryabhatiya (Aryabhata, 499 CE). A brief, brilliant work of mathematics and astronomy. Cited from the translation of W. E. Clark (1930).
• Panchasiddhantika (Varahamihira). A summary of five older astronomical systems. Cited from Thibaut and Dvivedi (1889).
• Brihat Samhita (Varahamihira). The encyclopaedia of natural and mundane astrology. Cited from the English translation of N. Chidambaram Iyer (1884). Note that this translation numbers chapters of its second half from one again; this course always uses the standard continuous chapter number.
• Kalaprakasika and Muhurta Chintamani: standard books of muhurta, the choice of times.
• Prasna Marga (Kerala, 17th century): the great book of the question chart.

#How citations look in this course

Citations are written in brackets after the rule they support, like this: (Brihat Jataka I.13). The Roman numeral is the chapter and the number after the point is the verse. For long books such as the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, where verse numbers differ between editions, the chapter is named in words. When the books disagree with each other, the course says so and shows both readings. When a rule is a later addition — something a translator or a modern author added, not something in the classical text — the course labels it as such.

You do not have to look anything up to use this course. The citations are there so that you can trust what you read, and so that if one day you study the Sanskrit texts themselves, you know exactly where to look.

#Three cautions before you start

#1. There is more than one tradition

Jyotisha is not a single fixed system. Different authors, regions and families of astrologers have used different rules, and the classical books themselves argue with one another. Varahamihira often reports two or three older opinions and then gives his own. He even calls some older rules impossible. A good student learns to say "according to Varahamihira" or "according to Parashara" rather than "Jyotisha says". This course always tells you whose rule you are reading.

#2. Conventions matter more than you expect

Two astrologers can compute two different charts for the same birth, not because one has made an arithmetic mistake, but because they have chosen different conventions — for example, a different value for the gap between the two zodiacs (the ayanamsa, explained in Chapter 2), or a different way of dividing the houses. A large part of learning Jyotisha is learning which choices exist and stating which one you have made. The calculators on this website print their conventions beside their results for this reason.

#3. Learn to hold the subject honestly

This course takes Jyotisha seriously as one of the great intellectual traditions of India: a record of two thousand years of careful observation of the sky, of brilliant mathematics, and of a rich language for talking about human life. It also tells you, plainly, that controlled scientific tests have not found that astrological predictions work better than chance. Both things are true at once. You can study Jyotisha deeply, use it as a language for reflection, and value its history and its mathematics, without claiming certainty that no one has. The old teachers would recognise that attitude: they too asked for truthfulness above all.

#How to read this course

The course is arranged in parts:

• Part One · Beginnings — the sky, the calendar and how a chart is cast. Read these first even if you are impatient to start reading charts; everything later depends on them.
• Part Two · The building blocks — signs, planets, houses, dignities, aspects, divisional charts and nakshatras.
• Part Three · Strength — the classical ways of measuring how strong a planet is.
• Part Four · Yogas — the combinations of planets that the texts single out.
• Part Five · Timing — planetary periods (dashas), transits and annual charts.
• Part Six · Judging the houses — the twelve areas of life, one chapter each.
• Part Seven · Jaimini — the second system of horoscopy.
• Part Eight · The applied branches — muhurta, prashna, marriage matching and the Samhita.
• Part Nine · The craft — doshas and remedies as the texts describe them, the method of reading a whole chart, and the ethics of the reader.
• Part Ten · History — where all of this came from.

Each chapter ends with a short summary and a few exercises. Do the exercises. They are short, and they are the difference between having read about Jyotisha and knowing it.

#Summary

• Jyotisha means "knowledge of the lights". It began as timekeeping for Vedic ritual and grew into a full science of the sky and its meaning.
• It has three classical branches: mathematical astronomy (Ganita or Siddhanta), the reading of individual charts (Hora), and natural and mundane astrology (Samhita) (Brihat Samhita I.9). Muhurta and Prashna grew out of these.
• The classical astrologer was expected to compute accurately, to know the sky by observation, and to be truthful (Brihat Samhita II).
• The tradition sees a chart as a picture of tendencies that come from past action, which present effort can work with (Brihat Jataka I.3; Mahabharata, Anushasana Parva 6; Yoga Vasishtha 2; Tirukkural 619).
• This course cites the classical books by chapter and verse, says whose rule each rule is, and never presents a frightening classical rule as a prediction about a real person.

#Exercises

1. In your own words, name the three branches of Jyotisha and give one question each branch would answer.
2. Varahamihira says Hora comes from ahoratra. Write out what ahoratra means and which syllables are dropped to make hora.
3. Read the list of the ideal astrologer's qualities again. Which three do you think matter most today, when computers do the arithmetic? Why?
4. Write two sentences explaining the difference between saying "the chart shows" and "the planets cause". Which does the Brihat Jataka's own definition (I.3) support?