Nilakantha: the Tajika Nilakanthi · Chapter 1 of 2

#The book and its author

#The author and the date

The Tajika Nilakanthi is the standard book on Tajika, the Indian system of the chart for each year of life. Its colophon, at the end of the book of the year, names the author and the date:

• the author is Nilakantha, a daivajna (astrologer), son of Ananta, born in the family of Garga;
• the book was finished in Shaka 1509, in the month of Ashvina — that is, 1587 CE.

(Bombay printing of 1893, the closing verses and colophon of the Varsha-tantra.)

#Two parts

The book has two parts, the Samjna-tantra ("book of terms") and the Varsha-tantra ("book of the year"); the printings and the colophon name them. Between them they give the aspects and their strength, friendship between planets, the orbs (deeptamsha), the sixteen yogas of planets applying to and separating from each other, the five divisions and the strength drawn from them, the lord of the year, the Muntha and its results in each house, and the sahams (sensitive points).

#The editions read

This book and the site's tools were checked against two printed editions of the Sanskrit, both with a commentary and worked examples:

• Bombay, 1888 (Shri Venkateshvara Steam Press): Tajika Nilakanthi, with commentary and examples (satika sodaharana);
• Bombay, 1893 (Prabodh Ratnakar Press): the Samjna-tantra with commentary.

The tables (the terms, the three-sign lords) were read from the page images, not only from the scans' machine-read text. Where the 1888 scan skips a page (verses 17–20 of the Samjna-tantra), the 1893 printing supplies it. Verse numbers in this book are those of the 1888 printing.

No public-domain English translation exists. Every rule in chapter 2 is given from the Sanskrit; anything that could not be checked there has been left out.

#Later writers

B. V. Raman's English Varshaphal (1941) taught the method to English readers. Raman records that some pandits held that Tajika applies only after the age of thirty; he says he tested the claim and was never convinced of it, and he insists that the annual chart be read together with the birth chart.

#Summary

• The Tajika Nilakanthi was finished by Nilakantha, son of Ananta, of the Garga family, in Shaka 1509 (1587 CE), by its own colophon.
• It has two parts: the Samjna-tantra (terms) and the Varsha-tantra (the year).
• This book follows the Sanskrit, in the Bombay printings of 1888 and 1893.

#Exercises

1. When was the Tajika Nilakanthi finished, by its own colophon?
2. Name its two parts.

Answers: 1. Shaka 1509, in Ashvina: 1587 CE. 2. The Samjna-tantra (book of terms) and the Varsha-tantra (book of the year).