Varga Chakras in Jyotish
Varga Chakras in Jyotish
by
Rohiniranjan, Crystal Pages October 2005
though myself not that senior, have seen horoscopes that were drawn in the
century before last where the jyotishi had drawn the rashi chakra and navamsha
and dashamsha and so on and more importantly had commented on these charts in
his reading. So, at least some individuals had been utilizing varga-charts even a
couple of hundred years ago and conceivably perhaps even before those times.
Somewhere during the discussion, in one of the lists, one of the members
made available an article in which the author had expressed thoughts to the
contrary, i.e., vargas should not be used in a chart format. A discussion ensued
which sidestepped the more important and pertinent matter of the practical merits
of using of navamsha varga as a secondary chart. A few individuals asked for
proofs in classics that indicates that ancient jyotishis advocated of varga chakras.
The discussants emphasized that ONLY rashi chakra must be used and varga
placements should only be used for determining the strengths of planets etc. Now,
those who have studied BPHS would know, that 16 vargas had been defined by
the Sage starting with rashi or kshetra and so on. One of the members brought to
all astrologers attention that Parashara had described very clearly how to
determine bhavas in the rashi chart (ascendant, 10th house and then trisection of
the arcs, etc. in Chapter V or BPHS). This was indeed true and a positive step
forward in the discussion. There were parallel discussions going on which were
rehashing the point that BPHS was not original and was perhaps not even a classic
and written by one or a group of latter day saints [my term, not the original
posters!] in jyotish and therefore cannot be treated as a classic. Obviously, there
was some support for this as could be similarly expected if someone were to make
a comment that jyotish was nothing but a derivative of Babylonian astrology that
the army that came with Alexander brought to India. I believe a discussion on that
topic is in progress currently somewhere (October 2005).
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To those who were still interested and intrigued by this, there seemed to be
two streams of thought prevailing:
a) Only Rashi kundalis should be used. Other varga kundalis were the product of
corrupted understanding of the classics which themselves many concur might
not have survived in pure form [though some of them have thankfully survived in
reasonably good shape1]. Underlying this is the belief some may harbour that,
alike the iceberg, available Jyotish is only 1/10th of the total body while the
submerged 9/10th is mostly lost and partly hidden in the secret chambers of
paramparas and some of the secret documents that exist but jealously guarded by
the owner families. I do not know how much of this iceberg postulate is based
facts and how much is wishful fiction. According to the purists of this stream of
thought, vargas MUST only be used as measures of qualitative and quantitative
strength of planets and for the consideration of the deities and primal forces those
represent BUT not in the form of a horoscope and certainly no serious
consideration must be given to aspects and bhava considerations. Just for clarity,
they would maintain, for instance, that while the 2nd house lord in navamsha is an
important indicator, the fact that it is placed in the 2nd navamsha varga from the
navamsha lagna (essentially in 2nd house in navamsha chart) is not significant. Or,
for instance, if mars is in aries sign and libra navamsha, and saturn is in gemini
sign and libra navamsha, the two planets are not related (though they would be
depicted as being conjoined in the same navamsha varga in a navamsha chart).
example, would hold a significant sway over matters of marriage and spouse,
while saptamsha chart would be of similar import in the examination of children in
a given nativitys reading. These vargas should be examined in a chart format.
I do not recall anyone in the camp (b) saying that the first part of (a) is not
correct, namely, the varga positions must be considered, per se, for examination of
strength and quality of a planet as prescribed within the jyotish framework. In fact
most of them utilized concepts from both (a) and (b) streams. There seemed to be a
few other individuals who totally denied the veracity of thought stream (b) and a
few were a bit taciturn about it, perhaps to avoid acrimony and getting ensnared in
the controversy. Or perhaps there were some other reasons, known only to them.
WHAT DO THE CLASSICS SAY: While the purists and historians duke it out
as to what constitutes a Classic and what not, there seemed to be no significant
resistance to accepting Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, described by a very
accomplished and brilliant, jyotishi who is an excellent writer and teacher and a
very wise person beyond his years as ... a remarkably well-preserved and
reasonably intact, well-organized compendium of jyotish knowledge. So I spent a
few minutes going through it after Chapter 5 was brought to our attention as a
strong indication of bhavas only being considered in rashi and in none of the other
vargas since the Sage had not explicitly stated so. On the surface, this indeed
seemed to be the case! However a further stroll into the magnum opus brought me
to the chapter on Karakamshas In this Chapter 35 (Karakamshaphalaadhyaaya),
BPHS describes the effects of planets that are in 2nd or 5th from karakamsha
(sloka 30-31 for instance) and other houses also from karakamsha in subsequent
slokas. Additionally, in sloka 33 BPHS mentions about the aspects (drishti) of
moon and venus on the 4th from karakamsha and also in sloka 13.
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