Hindu astrology, also called Indian astrology, jyotisha (; ) and, more recently, Vedic astrology, is the traditional Hindu system of astrology. It is one of the six auxiliary disciplines in Hinduism that is connected with the study of the Vedas.
The Vedanga Jyotisha is one of the earliest texts about astronomy within the Vedas. Some scholars believe that the horoscopic astrology practiced in the Indian subcontinent came from Hellenistic influences. However, this is a point of intense debate, and other scholars believe that Jyotisha developed independently, although it may have interacted with Greek astrology.
The scientific consensus is that astrology is a pseudoscience.
Jyotisha, states Monier-Williams, is rooted in the word Jyotish, which means light, such as that of the sun or the moon or a heavenly body. The term Jyotisha includes the study of astronomy, astrology, and the science of timekeeping using the movements of astronomical bodies. It aimed to keep time, maintain calendars, and predict auspicious times for Vedic rituals.
Jyotiá¹£a is one of the VedÃÂá¹ ga, the six auxiliary disciplines used to support Vedic rituals. Early jyotiá¹£a is concerned with the preparation of a calendar to determine dates for sacrificial rituals, with nothing written regarding planets. There are mentions of eclipse-causing "demons" in the Atharvaveda and ChÃÂndogya Upaniá¹£ad, the latter mentioning RÃÂhu (a shadow entity believed responsible for eclipses and meteors). The á¹Âigveda also mentions an eclipse-causing demon, SvarbhÃÂnu. However, the specific term graha was not applied to SvarbhÃÂnu until the later MahÃÂbhÃÂrata and RÃÂmÃÂyaá¹Âa.
The foundation of Hindu astrology is the notion of bandhu of the Vedas (scriptures), which is the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The practice relies primarily on the sidereal zodiac, which differs from the tropical zodiac used in Western (Hellenistic) astrology in that an ayanÃÂá¹Âà Âa adjustment is made for the gradual precession of the vernal equinox. Hindu astrology includes several nuanced sub-systems of interpretation and prediction with elements not found in Hellenistic astrology, such as its system of lunar mansions (Naká¹£atra). It was only after the transmission of Hellenistic astrology that the order of planets in India was fixed in that of the seven-day week. Hellenistic astrology and astronomy also transmitted the twelve zodiacal signs beginning with Aries and the twelve astrological places beginning with the ascendant. The first evidence of the introduction of Greek astrology to India is the YavanajÃÂtaka which dates to the early centuries CE. The YavanajÃÂtaka ( "Sayings of the Greeks") was translated from Greek to Sanskrit by Yavaneà Âvara during the 2nd century CE, and is considered the first Indian astrological treatise in the Sanskrit language. However the only version that survives is the verse version of Sphujidhvaja which dates to AD 270. The first Indian astronomical text to define the weekday was the ÃÂryabhaá¹Âëya of ÃÂryabhaá¹Âa (born AD 476).
In the 300 years between the first Yavanajataka and the ÃÂryabhaá¹Âëya, Indian astronomers likely focused on Indianizing and Sanskritizing Greek astronomy, according to Michio Yano We no longer have the astronomical texts from these 300 years. The later PañcasiddhÃÂntikàof VarÃÂhamihira summarizes the five known Indian astronomical schools of the sixth century. Indian astronomy preserved some of the older pre-Ptolemaic elements of Greek astronomy.
The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the , and SÃÂrÃÂvalë by . The HorÃÂshastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part (chapters 1âÂÂ51) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapters 52âÂÂ71) to the late 8th century. The SÃÂrÃÂvalë likewise dates to around 800 CE. N. N. Krishna Rau and V. B. Choudhari published English translations of these texts in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Astrology remains an important facet of folk belief in the contemporary lives of many Hindus. In Hindu culture, newborns are traditionally named based on their jyotiá¹£a charts (kundali), and astrological concepts are pervasive in the organization of the Hindu calendar and holidays and in making major decisions such as those about marriage, opening a new business, or moving into a new home. Many Hindus believe that heavenly bodies, including the planets, have an influence throughout the life of a human being, and these planetary influences are the "fruit of karma". The Navagraha, planetary deities, are considered subordinate to Ishvara (the Hindu concept of a supreme being) in the administration of justice. Thus, it is believed that these planets can influence earthly life.
The scientific community has rejected astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe. Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted, and no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions. There is no mechanism proposed by astrologers through which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth. In spite of its status as a pseudoscience, in certain religious, political, and legal contexts, astrology retains a position among the sciences in modern India.
India's University Grants Commission and Ministry of Human Resource Development decided to introduce "Jyotir Vigyan" (i.e. ') or "Vedic astrology" as a discipline of study in Indian universities, stating that "vedic astrology is not only one of the main subjects of our traditional and classical knowledge but this is the discipline, which lets us know the events happening in human life and in universe on time scale" in spite of the complete lack of evidence that astrology actually does allow for such accurate predictions. The decision was backed by a 2001 judgment of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, and some Indian universities offer advanced degrees in astrology. This was met with widespread protests from the scientific community in India and Indian scientists working abroad. A petition sent to the Supreme Court of India stated that the introduction of astrology to university curricula is "a giant leap backwards, undermining whatever scientific credibility the country has achieved so far".
In 2004, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition, concluding that the teaching of astrology did not qualify as the promotion of religion. In February 2011, the Bombay High Court referred to the 2004 Supreme Court ruling when it dismissed a case which had challenged astrology's status as a science. despite continuing complaints by scientists, astrology continues to be taught at various universities in India, and there is a movement in progress to establish a national Vedic University to teach astrology together with the study of tantra, mantra, and yoga.
Skeptics have thoroughly debunked the claims made by Indian astrologers.. For example, although the planet Saturn is in the constellation Aries roughly every 30 years (e.g. 1909, 1939, 1968), the astrologer Bangalore Venkata Raman claimed that "when Saturn was in Aries in 1939 England had to declare war against Germany", ignoring all the other dates. Astrologers regularly fail in attempts to predict election results in India, and fail to predict major events such as the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Predictions by the head of the Indian Astrologers Federation about war between India and Pakistan in 1982 also failed.
In 2000, when several planets happened to be close to one another, astrologers predicted that there would be catastrophes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. This caused an entire sea-side village in the Indian state of Gujarat to panic and abandon their houses. The predicted events did not occur and the vacant houses were burgled.
The ancient extant text on Jyotisha is the Vedanga-Jyotisha, which exists in two editions, one linked to the Rigveda and other to Yajurveda. The Rigveda version consists of 36 verses, while the Yajurveda recension has 43 verses of which 29 verses are borrowed from the Rigveda. The Rigveda version is variously attributed to sage Lagadha and sometimes to sage Shuci. The Yajurveda version does not attribute credit to any specific sage, has endured into the modern era with a commentary by Somakara, and is considered the more studied version.
The Jyotisha text Brahma-siddhanta, probably composed in the 5th century CE, discusses how to use the movement of planets, sun and moon to keep time and calendar. This text also lists trigonometry and mathematical formulae to support its theory of orbits, predict planetary positions and calculate relative mean positions of celestial nodes and apsides. The text is notable for presenting very large integers, such as the lifetime of the current universe being 4.32 billion years.
The ancient Hindu texts on Jyotisha only discuss timekeeping and never mention astrology or prophecy. These ancient texts predominantly cover astronomy, but at a rudimentary level. Technical horoscopes and astrology ideas in India came from Greece and developed in the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE. Later medieval era texts such as the Yavana-jataka and the Siddhanta texts are more astrology-related.
The field of Jyotisha deals with ascertaining time, particularly forecasting auspicious days and times for Vedic rituals. The field of Vedanga structured time into Yuga, which was a 5-year interval, divided into multiple lunisolar intervals such as 60 solar months, 61 savana months, 62 synodic months and 67 sidereal months. A Vedic Yuga had 1,860 tithis (, dates), and it defined a savana-day (civil day) from one sunrise to another.
The Rigvedic version of Jyotisha may be a later insertion into the Veda, states David Pingree, possibly between 513 and 326 BCE, when the Indus Valley was occupied by the Achaemenid from Mesopotamia. The mathematics and devices for timekeeping mentioned in these ancient Sanskrit texts, proposes Pingree, such as the water clock, may also have arrived in India from Mesopotamia. However, Yukio Ohashi considers this proposal as incorrect, suggesting instead that the Vedic timekeeping efforts, for forecasting appropriate time for rituals, must have begun much earlier and the influence may have flowed from India to Mesopotamia. Ohashi states that it is incorrect to assume that the number of civil days in a year equals 365 in both the Hindu and EgyptianâÂÂPersian years. Further, adds Ohashi, the Mesopotamian formula is different from the Indian formula for calculating time, each can only work for their respective latitude, and either would make major errors in predicting time and calendar in the other region. According to Asko Parpola, the Jyotisha and luni-solar calendar discoveries in ancient India, and similar discoveries in China in "great likelihood result from convergent parallel development", and not from diffusion from Mesopotamia.
Kim Plofker states that while a flow of timekeeping ideas from either side is plausible, each may have instead developed independently, because the loan-words typically seen when ideas migrate are missing on both sides as far as words for various time intervals and techniques. Further, adds Plofker, and other scholars, that the discussion of timekeeping concepts is found in the Sanskrit verses of the Shatapatha Brahmana, a 2nd millennium BCE text. Water clocks and sun dials are mentioned in many ancient Hindu texts such as the Arthashastra. Plofker suggests that the arrival of Greek astrology ideas in India may have led to a roundabout integration of Mesopotamian and Indian Jyotisha-based systems.
The Jyotisha texts present mathematical formulae to predict the length of daytime, sunrise and moon cycles. For example,
<blockquote style="background-color:none;margin-right:5em;margin-left:0em;border-left:solid 6px #FFE0BB;padding:1.0em"> Water clock<br />A prastha of water [is] the increase in day, [and] decrease in night in the [sun's] northern motion; vice versa in the southern. [There is] a six-muhurta [difference] in a half year.
â Yajurveda Jyotisha-vedanga 8, Translator: Kim Plofker </blockquote>
There are sixteen Varga (, 'part, division'), or divisional, charts used in Hindu astrology:
The Nirayana, or sidereal zodiac, is an imaginary belt of 360 degrees, which, like the SÃÂyana, or tropical zodiac, is divided into 12 equal parts. Each part (of 30 degrees) is called a sign or rÃÂà Âi (Sanskrit: 'part'). Vedic (Jyotiá¹£a) and Western zodiacs differ in the method of measurement. While synchronically, the two systems are identical, Jyotiá¹£a primarily uses the sidereal zodiac (in which stars are considered to be the fixed background against which the motion of the planets is measured), whereas most Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac (the motion of the planets is measured against the position of the Sun on the spring equinox). After two millennia, as a result of the precession of the equinoxes, the origin of the ecliptic longitude has shifted by about 30 degrees. As a result, the placement of planets in the Jyotiá¹£a system is roughly aligned with the constellations, while tropical astrology is based on the solstices and equinoxes. <div style="overflow:auto">
Unlike Western astrology, Hindu astrology usually disregards Uranus (which rules Aquarius), Neptune (which rules Pisces), and Pluto (which rules Scorpio). </div>
The nakshatras or lunar mansions are 27 equal divisions of the night sky used in Hindu astrology, each identified by its prominent star(s).
Historical (medieval) Hindu astrology enumerated either 27 or 28 naká¹£atras. In modern astrology, a rigid system of 27 naká¹£atras is generally used, each covering 13ð 20′ of the ecliptic. The missing 28th nakshatra is Abhijeeta. Each naká¹£atra is divided into equal quarters or padas of 3ð 20′.
The junction of two Râshis as well as Nakshatras is known as Gandanta.
The word dasha (DevanÃÂgarë: à ¤¦à ¤¶à ¤¾, Sanskrit, ', 'planetary period') means 'state of being' and it is believed that the daà Âàlargely governs the state of being of a person. The Daà Âàsystem shows which planets may be said to have become particularly active during the period of the Daà ÂÃÂ. The ruling planet (the Daà ÂÃÂnÃÂtha or 'lord of the Daà ÂÃÂ') eclipses the mind of the person, compelling him or her to act per the nature of the planet.
There are several dasha systems, each with its own utility and area of application. There are Daà ÂÃÂs of grahas (planets) as well as Daà ÂÃÂs of the RÃÂà Âis (zodiac signs). The primary system used by astrologers is the Viá¹Âà Âottarë Daà Âàsystem, which has been considered universally applicable in the Kali Yuga to all horoscopes.
The first MahÃÂ-Daà Âàis determined by the position of the natal Moon in a given Naká¹£atra. The lord of the Naká¹£atra governs the Daà ÂÃÂ. Each MahÃÂ-DÃÂà Âàis divided into sub-periods called bhuktis, or antar-daà ÂÃÂs, which are proportional divisions of the maha-dasa. Further proportional sub-divisions can be made, but error margins based on accuracy of the birth time grow exponentially. The next sub-division is called pratyantar-daà ÂÃÂ, which can in turn be divided into sookshma-antardasa, which can in turn be divided into praana-antardaà ÂÃÂ, which can be sub-divided into deha-antardaà ÂÃÂ. Such sub-divisions also exist in all other Daà Âàsystems.
The navagraha () are the nine celestial bodies used in Hindu astrology:
The navagraha are said to be forces that capture or eclipse the mind and the decision making of human beings. When the grahas are active in their daà ÂÃÂs, or periodicities they are said to be particularly empowered to direct the affairs of people and events.
Planets are held to signify major details, such as profession, marriage and longevity.
Of these indicators, known as Karakas, Parashara considers Atmakaraka most important, signifying broad contours of a person's life.
Rahu and Ketu correspond to the points where the moon crosses the ecliptic plane (known as the ascending and descending nodes of the moon). Classically known in Indian and Western astrology as the "head and tail of the dragon", these planets are represented as a serpent-bodied demon beheaded by the Sudarshan Chakra of Vishnu after attempting to swallow the sun. They are primarily used to calculate the dates of eclipses. They are described as "shadow planets" because they are not visible in the night sky. Rahu and Ketu have an orbital cycle of 18 years and they are always retrograde in motion and 180 degrees from each other.
A natal chart shows the position of the grahas at the moment of birth. Since that moment, the grahas have continued to move around the zodiac, interacting with the natal chart grahas. This period of interaction is called gochara (Sanskrit: ', 'transit').
The study of transits is based on the transit of the Moon (Chandra), which spans roughly two days, and also on the movement of Mercury (Budha) and Venus (à Âukra) across the celestial sphere, which is relatively fast as viewed from Earth. The movement of the slower planets â Jupiter (Guru), Saturn (à Âani) and RÃÂhuâÂÂKetu â is always of considerable importance. Astrologers study the transit of the Daà Âàlord from various reference points in the horoscope.
In Hindu astronomy, yoga (Sanskrit: ', 'union') is a combination of planets placed in a specific relationship to each other.
RÃÂja yogas are perceived as givers of fame, status and authority, and are typically formed by the association of the Lord of Keá¹ dras ('quadrants'), when reckoned from the Lagna ('ascendant'), and the Lords of the Trikona ('trines', 120 degreesâÂÂfirst, fifth and ninth houses). The RÃÂja yogas are culminations of the blessings of Viá¹£á¹Âu and Laká¹£më. Some planets, such as Mars for Leo Lagna, do not need another graha (or Navagraha, 'planet') to create RÃÂjayoga, but are capable of giving RÃÂjayoga by themselves due to their own lordship of the 4th BhÃÂva ('astrological house') and the 9th BhÃÂva from the Lagna, the two being a Keá¹ dra ('angular house'âÂÂfirst, fourth, seventh and tenth houses) and Trikona BhÃÂva respectively.
Dhana Yogas are formed by the association of wealth-giving planets such as the Dhaneà Âa or the 2nd Lord and the LÃÂbheà Âa or the 11th Lord from the Lagna. Dhana Yogas are also formed due to the auspicious placement of the DÃÂrÃÂpada (from dara, 'spouse' and pada, 'foot'âÂÂone of the four divisionsâÂÂ3 degrees and 20 minutesâÂÂof a Nakshatra in the 7th house), when reckoned from the ÃÂrà «á¸Âha Lagna (AL). The combination of the Lagneà Âa and the BhÃÂgyeà Âa also leads to wealth through the Laká¹£më Yoga.
SanyÃÂsa Yogas are formed due to the placement of four or more grahas, excluding the Sun, in a Keá¹ dra BhÃÂva from the Lagna.
There are some overarching yogas in Jyotiá¹£a such as AmÃÂvasyàDoá¹£a, KÃÂla Sarpa Yoga-KÃÂla Amá¹Âta Yoga and Graha MÃÂlika Yoga that can take precedence over Yamaha yogar planetary placements in the horoscope.
The Hindu JÃÂtaka or Janam Kundali or birth chart, is the bhÃÂva chakra (Sanskrit: 'division' 'wheel'), the complete 360ð circle of life, divided into houses, and represents a way of enacting the influences in the wheel. Each house has associated kÃÂraka (Sanskrit: 'significator'), planets that can alter the interpretation of a particular house. Each bhÃÂva spans an arc of 30ð with twelve bhÃÂvas in any chart of the horoscope. These are a crucial part of any horoscopic study since the bhÃÂvas, understood as 'state of being', personalize the astrological signs to the native and each sign apart from indicating its true nature reveals its impact on the person based on the bhÃÂva occupied. The best way to study the various facets of Jyotiá¹£a is to see their role in chart evaluation of actual persons and how these are construed.
The meanings of the bhÃÂvas are very similar to the triplicities in Western astrology. The houses are divided into four purusharthas (Sanskrit: 'aims in life') which point to mood or meaning of the house. These four purusharthas are Dharma (duty), Artha (resources), Kama (pleasure) and Moksha (liberation). They correspond to the 12 bhavas as follows:
These 4 aims of life are repeated in above sequence 3 times through the 12 bhavas:
Drishti (Sanskrit: ', 'sight') is an aspect to an entire house. Grahas cast only forward aspects, with the furthest aspect being considered the strongest. For example, Jupiter aspects the 5th, 7th and 9th house from its position, Mars aspects the 4th, 7th, and 8th houses from its position, and its 8th house.
The principle of Drishti (aspect) was devised on the basis of the aspect of an army of planets as deity and demon in a war field. Thus the Sun, a deity king with only one full aspect, is more powerful than the demon king Saturn, which has three full aspects.
Aspects can be cast both by the planets (Graha Dá¹Âá¹£á¹Âi) and by the signs (RÃÂà Âi Dá¹Âá¹£á¹Âi). Planetary aspects are a function of desire, while sign aspects are a function of awareness and cognizance.
There are some higher aspects of Graha Dá¹Âá¹£á¹Âi (planetary aspects) that are not limited to the Vià Âeá¹£a Dá¹Âá¹£á¹Âi or the special aspects. RÃÂà Âi Dá¹Âá¹£á¹Âi works based on the following formulaic structure: all movable signs aspect fixed signs except the one adjacent, and all dual and mutable signs aspect each other without exception.
Each planet has a specific way of casting aspects (Drishti) on other houses from its position:
These aspects are fixed and not based on degree differences like in Western astrology. The aspect strength depends on the planet and its position.