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2003. All Rights Reserved
India’s Living
Traditions –
Interesting Facts
First of
all, you must know that Vedic astrology is the astrology of India and
is some 4,000-5000 years old. This is no fly by night tradition! In
fact, the remarkable thing is that it’s a LIVING tradition. If
you’ve been studying western astrology it’s not like you
can just fly to Greece and find astrologers sitting in the streets
practicing in the manner of the great early Greek astrologers. But
in India you still can.
And if you’re really serious about learning Vedic astrology, one day
you should go. Alright, yes it’s over a billion people in a country not
a heck of a lot bigger than Texas most of whom are just trying to survive in
highly polluted, impoverished conditions. But what we see today is not what
India’s been. For instance, did you know:
India was once the richest empire on earth about 3000 BC with cities more technologically
advanced than most in Europe till the time of the Renaissance!
The early Vedic sages invented the number system, the decimal system, algebra,
trigonometry, calculus, and the value of pi.
Albert Einstein said “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how
to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been
made."
In recent history: the creator of the Pentium chip was Vinod Dham; the co-founder
of Sun Microsystems was Vinod Khosla; the creator of the hotmail email system
was Sabeer Bhatia; and the GM of Hewlett Packard is Rajiv Gupta – all
from India.
Our word “navigation” comes from the Sanskrit word “navgatih” meaning “nine
motions” referring to the 9 transiting planets (excluding the outer planets)
which were apparently used for navigation. This is just one clue as to how
tuned in the Vedic civilization was to astrology and astronomy.
Mark Twain said “India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace
of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great
grand mother of tradition”.
Sage Parashara –
Father of Vedic Astrology
So by knowing
some of these facts you realize that India is not just a country of
slouches. India definitely has an illustrious past which can be seen
by the living traditions that still exist in Vedic astrology, ayurvedic
medicine, vastu (architecture), Sanskrit, music, dance, yoga, systems
of worship etc.
You can find living masters today in each of these traditions who will give
you a curriculum that will keep you busy for the rest of your life. These traditions
can be traced to long lineages back to revered sages or rishis who formulated
their respective systems directly from intuitive knowledge gained from meditative
insight.
There are two main systems of Vedic astrology practiced today: Parashari and
Jaimini which were developed by the sages Parashara and Jaimini respectively.
The sage Parashara is said to be the “father of Vedic astrology” who
recorded the main principles of vedic astrology or “jyotish”, the
science of light, into the classic Sanskrit text known as the Brihat Parashara
Hora Shastra. This forms the basis for the entire Parashari system, which is
by far the most widely used in India and the world today.
Journey to India – R.
Santhanam
In 1992,
on my first trip to India, I studied with the late R. Santhanam in
New Delhi who translated the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra of Sage
Parashara into English.
Since you’ve probably heard horrifying tales of travelers abroad to India
I’ll spare you a lot of the unnecessary details of trying to get around
in India. However, I will say that even though I had made contact with R. Santhanam
from the states and was given detailed directions to his house it still took
me a hair raising 3 hour rickshaw ride fighting through unbelievably noisy
and chaotic traffic and getting lost repeatedly to find it! (I’ve included
the picture of the unmarked intersection to his house to give you a visual
idea!).
If I hadn’t called author James Braha who wrote about his experiences
studying with R. Santhanam in his fascinating book, Astro Logos, before leaving
I would not have been prepared. Fortunately the ordeal was worth it. Santhanam
had wiped his schedule clear for four whole days so that I could study with
him and I was thrilled! I brought blank tapes, notebooks and about 30 charts
of people I knew well and we spent about 8-10 hours a day together.
While pouring endless refills of chai, he easily described past events with
each chart and told me how he had come to those conclusions. He knew my brother
was in space engineering and a comedian, my sister was a school teacher, and
my parents divorced when I was 6. He knew my friends had difficulty trying
to conceive a child, and he knew my sister in law was just about to have a
child! When it came to predictions he said that I would later get a degree
in psychology, which I had no plans to do at the time, and integrate Vedic
astrology with psychology. Both of these predictions, and as well as others,
have come to pass.
The most astonishing prediction was the one he made regarding my best friend
who at that time had just become a monk in the Mata Amritanandamayi mission.
He said that he would be getting married by 2002, which was the farthest thing
from his mind! It wasn’t till he met his fiancée in 2000 that
I realized Santhanam could be right! They later got married just as he had
predicted almost 10 years in advance!
Discovering The
Sage Parashara Temple
Later, on
my most recent trip in 2000 I had an unexpected glimpse into the ancient
Vedic astrology tradition when I was on a pilgrimage in the Himalayas
en route to Gangotri, the source of India’s holiest river – the
Ganges. We were staying at a hot springs called Ganganani, which is
a popular resting stop along the way towards Gangotri. I decided to
have a look around and came across a very small temple just up the
hill from the hot springs pool. Since I could read the Hindi script
I was amazed to read “Parashara Ashram”.
I asked whoever spoke some English about the origins of the place and found
out that that very spot was where the great sage Parashara, the father of Vedic
astrology, had lived the last 30 years of his life, many thousands of years
ago! The little temple had a stone that was said to have been the one he sat
on during meditation and a small statue of the sage.
Sometimes when you read about these great sages who are said to have intuited
entire complex systems in meditation it’s easy to feel as though they’re
more like mythic characters than real people. But to have been able to sit
in that temple and pick up on the feeling of reverence that the priest and
local people had for the sage it somehow became real that India does have an
incredibly vast and vibrant living tradition.
Jai Sri Ram
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