Pancha Pakshi · the five birds
The five birds, through the day
A Tamil timing tradition: each day and each night has five periods, and in each period every bird is ruling, eating, walking, sleeping or dying. Find your bird, pick a day and a place, and see what the old tables say — read straight from the Tamil prints of 1863 and 1867.
What this is, and what it is not
Pancha Pakshi Shastra is attributed by tradition to Agastya. The oldest printings are Tamil books of 1863 and 1867, which hold the tables used here. We read every cell of their bright-half and dark-half tables from the page images: 486 of the 500 printed cells follow the tables' own fixed rotations. The other 14 fall in four periods where the prints contradict themselves (a bird repeating an activity in one day); for those periods this page shows no activities, only what the print says.
The tables are a tradition. No study has tested whether they work, and stories of famous events "predicted" by them are fitted after the fact. Use them, if you like, as a rhythm to reflect on — never as a reason for fear, and never instead of a doctor, a lawyer or your own judgement.
The prints also divide each period into five smaller parts and give further tables by the first vowel of a name; those finer rules are not shown here. More in the book The Tamil Siddhars.
Pancapatci castiram, attributed to Agastya (Chennai 1863; reprint 1867, Roja Muthiah Research Library): the bright-half and dark-half tables, their death-bird column, the vowel tables and verse 22. Sunrise and sunset are computed by our own engine for the place.