Astro
Vedica
There
are many " how to " books which have been recently produced for the
Vedic ( Hindu ) astrology market, and one may question the necessity for another
one. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it does not seem that
the modern astrological writers in India who have presented the science in
English anticipated exactly how it would be accepted. It is all right enough to
write in English for an Indian audience. Hindu readers are accustomed to
receiving information about their own culture without changing it all around or
grafting it on to something else; they are quite comfortable with their culture
and they are very traditional to begin with. But in the West a more challenging
and experimental approach is the norm. Thus, even though the Hindus writers, by
and large, have done a reasonable job of making a presentation of the science of
astrology to the English-reading public, they have presented it to a public
lacking perpective on it.
In
this sense, the present effort is truly unique. The beginning chapters
practically prepare one’s intellect for reading the rest of the book. Some
very unique philosophical perspectives and mindsets are presented.
The
initial chapters also acquaint the reader with the concept of the "
Parampara " system, a system of disciplic succession. Information received
from this disciplic succession is not empiric or experimental. It comes to us
from celestial beings who generated and fostered humanity on the earthly plane,
and through rishis and sages who were their earthly medium. Thus, this knowledge
is special as it was handed down, which precludes the need to add or subtract
from it- in contrast to the tendency to hodge podge systems of astrology, which
is so common in the West nowadays.
After presenting the reader with parampara concepts, the book then proceeds to
map out before the reader the main components of Vedic astrology, giving all
components their proportionate weight and consideration. In so doing, an attempt
is made to support the astrological principles and concepts with both logic as
well as appropriate statements from the ancient astrological writings. A
constant thread runs through the book in this sense, such that a harmonic
justification, peculiar to the author's style, is not lost sight of at any stage.
It may be questioned, then, why there have been so many quotes from modern
Indian ( Hindu ) writers in the book, given that many modern Hindu writers have
a tendency to mix up systems and depart from the standard of old. (Know that
this quoting of modern writers has mostly been done in the chapter which deals
with the signs of the zodiac.) The answer is twofold: first of all, the ancient
writers did not typically delineate at length on the nature of the zodiacal
signs themselves, although they did map out the rest of the science in great
detail. This may have been due to compositional constraints, such that the
information had to fit into a certain slot determined by Sanskrit meter and
rhyme. It seems that the ancient Sanskrit writers composed in more of a pleasing
and poetic way rather than in the modern, frank fashion.
A reason which is possibly closer to the truth would be that the ancient writers
didn't have to delineate in terms of the basics. A student would usually learn
sign characteristics, which was common knowledge among astrologer brahmins, from
any local village astrologer. The theme of sign characteristics was perhaps too
simple to warrant a display of learning, maybe as embarassing as discovering
onion soup. And some works had a fairly narrow focus rather than a complete
presentation of the science; they purported to preserve certain elements of the
science which, for some reason, they felt needed delineation.
At any rate, an expanded description of the signs is hard to come by in the
ancient writings, and there are modern writers who have done a good job of
expressing the characteristics of the signs. For this reason, proper recognition
of their comments has been given where due, though recognition is not necessary
in the case of the observations which are not original or which are obvious or
generally accepted.
This
in no way, however, elevates the modern scribes to an absolute pedestal
otherwise, or implies an automatic acceptance of any other comments which they
might have made. In spite of flashes of brillance, many modern Hindu writers
fall short or deviate in some fundamental way, and their writings have to be
read with a grain of salt. Thus the author has only quoted appropriate insights.
In addition to the " as it is " perspective, and the inclusion of all
the main component factors
-giving proper weight and allotment-
the book comes to a conclusion with a sample interpretation of the
horoscope of Mahatma Gandhi in which all of the lessons of the book are properly
applied.
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