Divine Anomalies: Nakṣatra Daivata in Mahāsalilam’s Cosmos - Part 2

The ideal normal or base level event is the unalloyed combination of Agni and Soma, represented by the visible nakṣatra and the visible moon. But this invariably gets perturbed due to motion of moon and incursion by other planets. The text further introduces the influence of sun, the five planets, rāhu and ketu to delineate how conjunction, occultation, grazing, veiling and other observational features of nakṣatras and planets indicate good and bad effects (bhāvābhāva-nidarśanam).

The few suggestions made about the effects of different types of assemblies in the sky are of a general form, that could affect a country or a community, rather than a specific individual. These are theoretical precursors for abnormal events such as earthquakes, eclipses, meteors, atmospheric explosions due to some anomaly over a previously established or presumed normal flow of events.

What could not be properly observed, had to be estimated giving impetus to counting and interpolation methods or gaṇita. Quite appropriately, in discussing the transit of the fast moving moon in eight chapters VGJ (aṅga-2) says, for understanding the conjunction of moon with nakṣatras, both observation and computation are needed .

2.7 Natal Astrology

In (MS. 99) there is a cryptic reference to afflictions related with karma and janma (karma-janma-saṁśritānām karmaṇām). From the context, this is a reference to the asterism under which an individual is born, and to the 10th from there, called the karma-nakṣatra of the native. There is no further reference to this either here in MS or in the bona fide VGJ Karmaguṇāṅga with four chapters. However, many of the VGS manuscripts have two extra chapters attributed to Bhṛgu that describe the theory and practice of Nakṣatra-jātaka.

This system of astrology is anchored to the janma-nakṣatra (natal asterism) that is the position of moon among the twenty-seven nakṣatra at the birth of an individual. Five more nakṣatras the 10th (karma), the 16th (sāṅghātika), the 18th (sāmudāya), the 23rd (vaināśikā), and the 25th (mānasā) counted from the janma-nakṣatra become the celestial coordinates for characterizing an individual at birth . The worldly situation of the native over years is said to be correlated with the conditions of the above six nāḍī nakṣatras.

The prognosis at any time would be based on the properties of the specific nakṣatras and the good and bad associations they may have with other celestials as per direct observation of the sky. This is a generalization of the vikaraṇa viśeṣa concept of Soma and nakṣatra daivata propounded in (MS. 90) to (MS.99).

The VGJ text in the first section called Karmaguṇāṅga, has four chapters. The first one on nakṣatra, includes prescribed activities and the character of a person born under each of the twenty-seven asterisms. The devatā names subsuming the vikaraṇa-viśeṣa and also the number of stars forming the nakṣatras are available in this Nakṣatra-karma-guṇa chapter.

The other three chapters elaborate the quality of the activities corresponding to the three other time parameters tithi, karaṇa and muhūrta which are extensions of the nakṣatra-daivata theory of MS. However, no past examples or even legends of vikaraṇa happenings associated with these three parameters are available. It can be conjectured that the auspicious time for an action (śubha-muhūrta) got decided taking into consideration all the four parameters with high weightage given to the nakṣatra. The karmaguṇa section of VGJ is included in this book as appendix A-2 for easy reference and as an aid to follow the historical growth of astrology as cultivated by the School of Vṛddhagarga starting from the Mahāsalilam. (concluded)