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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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