Astrology: India, Mecca of seekers of Vedic Knowledge & Jytish sastra

From astronomical references in ancient Hindu literature, scholars have been able to ascertain the dates of authors.   The scientific knowledge of the Rishis was great; enormous; in the Kaushitaki Brahmana we find precise astronomical passages indicating that in 3100 BC, the Hindus were far advanced in astronomy which had practical value in determining the auspicious times for astrological ceremonies. An article by Tara Mata in East West Feb 1934 says of the Jyotish or body of Vedantic astronomical exploitations.   “It contains the scientific lore that kept India at the forefront of all ancient nations and made her the meeca of seekers of knowledge.’  Brahmagupta, one of the Jyotish works, is an astronomical treatise dealing with such matters as the heliocentric motion of the planetary bodies in our Solar system, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the earth’s spherical form, the reflected light of the Moon, the earth’s daily axial revolution, the presence of fixed stars in the Milky Way, the Law of Gravitation, and other scientific facts that did not dawn in the Western World until the time of Copernicus and Sir Issac Newton.

The so-called Arab numerals invaluable in the development of Western Mathematics came to Europe in the 9^th century A.D. via the Arabs, from India, where the system of notation had been anciently formulated. Further, light on India’s vast scientific heritage, will be found in Sir P C Roy’s History of Hindu Chemistry in B N Seal’s Positive Sciences of Ancient Hindus, in B K Sarkar’s Hindu Achievements in Exact Science and his Positive Background of Hindu Sociology and in UC Dutt’s Materia Medica of the Hindus. Astrology is too vast, both mathematically & philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding. If ignoramuses misread the heavens, and see there a scrawl instead of a script, that it is to be expected in this imperfect world. One should not dismiss the wisdom of the wise.

Astrology is too vast, both mathematically and philosophically, to be rightly grasped except by men of profound understanding.

The Hindu scriptures place the present world age occurring within the Kali Yuga of a much longer universal cycle than the simple 24,000 year equinoctial cycle with which Sri Yukteswar is concerned (Hold Science)(Yoganda Sastanga Society of India) .

The universal cycle of scriptures is 4,300,560,000 years in extent, and measures out a Day of Creation. This vast figure is based on relationship between the length of the Solar year and a multiple of Pi (3.1416.), the ratio of the circumference of the diameter of a Cycle.

The life span for a whole universe, according to ancient seers, is 3, 14,159,000,000,000 solar years or ‘one age of Brahma’.

The Hindu Scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for one or two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either completely good or evil. The world mind generates a power that releases the captive atoms held together as earth.

Dire pronouncements are occasionally published regarding an imminent end of the World. Planetary cycles, however, proceed, according to an orderly divine plan. No earthly dissolution is in sight; many ascending and descending equinoctial cycles are yet in store for our own planet in its present form.

One of the six systems of Hindu philosophy, Sankhya teaches final emancipation through knowledge of 25 principles, starting with prakriti or nature and ending with purusha or soul.

God, lives without breath; the soul made in His Image becomes conscious of itself, for the first time, only during the breathless state. When the breath-link between soul and body is severed by evolutionary karma, the abrupt transition called death ensures; the physical cells revert to their natural powerlessness.  God talks with Arjuna in the Bhagavt Gita which is known as ‘Royal Science of God Realization’.  The Bhagavt Gita is India’s most beloved scripture. It consist of a dialogue between Lord Krishna (symbolizing spirit) and his discipline Arjuna (symbolizing the should of the ideal devotee). Words of spiritual guidance that is timeless in their applicability by all truth seekers. The central message of the Gita is that man may win emancipation through love of God, wisdom and performance of right actions in a spirit of non attachment.

God (Lord Krishna) shows the Vishwaroopa to his fond discipline Arjuna on the battle field of Kurukshetra. The same Lord, as a young boy, opened his mouth and showed the entire earth whirling in his mouth to Yashoda, his foster mother. While, Arjuna was all gratitude to the Lord for showing him the Vishwaroopa, Yashoda, Krishna’s mother swooned on seeing the world turning on its own axis inside Krishna’s mouth. Yashoda knew that her son was divine incarnation, who showed his mother a glimpse of his all out strength.

If you search scriptures, Upanishads and other sacred tests, you are told repeatedly that God is formless. Who created the forms for Gods? Sarwaswathi with her veena, Lord Narayana on the sesha in a reclining pose, has any body seen Gods? Are they not perfections of human form with body and soul? Who has created the artistic forms of beauty? Raja Ravi varma, drew from a vast canvas, the pictures of many gods and goddess. When photography was unknown, how Ravi varma could visualized the figures of Gods and goddesses. Was it the sketch from imagination of the formless gods as pictured in many ancient texts recaptured through mind inducision? Michelangelo gave a figure to Jesus Christ.  Was it imagery or based on the feeling of creating a human form through imagination?

The ideal of a well rounded civilization is not a chimerical one. For millennium, India was a Land of both spiritual light and widespread material prosperity. The records of history present India, up until the 18^th century, as the world’s wealthiest nation. If the plunders of Somanath and Peacock thrones were in possession of some of the later grown empires which did not have consistent history, it meant, that some nations believed in the power of the might plundered the riches of the orient and became traders to create more wealth. Incidentally, nothing in the Hindu literature or tradition tends to substantiate the current western historical theory that the early Aryans ‘invaded’ India from some other part of Asia or from Europe. The scholars are unable to fix the starting point of this imaginary journey. The internal evidence in the Vedas, pointing to India as the immemorial home of the Hindus, has been presented in an unusual and very readable volume, Rig Vedic India by Abinas Chandra Das, published in 1921 (by Kolkata University). Prof Das claims the emigrants from India settled in various parts of Europe and Asia, spreading the Aryan speech and folklore. Even K M Munshi, of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan will faint dismiss Aryan supremacy over India. The Lithuanian tongue, for example, is in many ways strikingly similar to Sanskrit. The Philosopher Kant, who knew nothing of Sanskrit, was amazed at the scientific structure of the Lithuanian language. It possesses, he said, the key that will open all the engines, not only of Philosophy but also of History. The Bible refers to the riches of India, telling us (11 chronicles 9:21:10) that the ships of Tarshish brought to king Solomon gold, silver, ivory, apes, peacocks, algum (sandlewood), trees, precious stones from Ophir and Muziris (Sopara-Mumbai Coast). Magasthenes, the Greek ambassador (4^th century BC) has left detailed picture of India’s prosperity. Pliny ( 1 AD) tells us the Romans actually spent 50 million sesterces  ($ 5,000,000) on imports from India, which was then a vast maritime power.

Chinese travelers wrote vividly of the opulent Indian Civilization, its widespread education and excellent Government. The Chinese priest Fa Hsien (5 Century) tells us the Indian people were happy, honest and prosperous. Buddhist Records of the western world (Samuel Beal)(India was the western world to the Chinese), Tuber London; Thomas Watters on Yuan Chang’s Travels in India AD 629-45 (Royal Asiatic Society).

Columbus, discovering the new world in the 15^th century, was in reality seeking a shorter trade route to India. For centuries, Europe was eager to possess the Indian exports- silks, fine clothes-of such sheerness as to deserve the descriptions- woven air, invisible mist, cotton prints, brocades, embroideries, rugs, cutlery, armour, ivory, ivory works, perfumes, incense, sandalwood potteries, medical drugs, unguents, indigo, rice, spices, coral, gold, silver, pearls, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, etc. Portuguese and Italian merchants have recorded their awe at the fabulous magnificence throughout the Empire of Vijayanagara (1336-1565). The glory of its capital was described by the Arabian Ambassador Razzak as ‘such that the eye has never seen, nor has heard of, in any place equal to it on earth.

In the 16^th century, for the first time in her long History, India as a whole fell under Non-Hindu rule. The Turkish Babur invaded the country and founded the Moughal dynasty. By settling in the ancient land, the new monarchs did not drain it of its riches; weakened, however, by internal dissentions, wealthy India became the prey in the 17^th century of several European nations who came in the guise of traders to colonize India. Whether they be, Portuguese, Dutch, French, or the English, though England finally emerged as the super power who ruled India from 1757-1947. One of the greatest peculiarities of India was, whether, they be imperial dynasties like Mouryans, Kushans, Guptas, Satavahanas, Slave dynasty, Mughals, British rule, the actual periodicity of their reign lasted 200 years. This might have been a historicity of fact.

The sad division of the land on British parting from India into India and Pakistan has been one of the saddest incident rare in world history. The sad division of the land into India and Pakistan, and the short but bloody interlude that ensued in a few parts of the country, were caused by economic factor, and not necessarily by religious fanaticism though the latter cannot be 100% ruled out. It may not be, that a minor reason, often erroneously presented as a major one, need to subjectively be attributed to partition. Countless Hindus and Muslims, now as in the Past, have lived side by side, in amity. Men of both faiths, in immense numbers, became the disciples of the creedless master Kabir (1450-1518); and to the day, he has millions of followers. Under the Moslem rule of Akbar, the wildest possible freedom of belief prevailed throughout India. Nor today, is there any serious religious disharmony amongst 95% of its simple people. The real India, the India that could understand & follow a Mahatma Gandhi, is found not in the large restless cities but in the peaceful 700,000 villages, where single and just forms of self government by panchayts have been a feature from time immemorial. The problem that beset a newly freed India today will surely be solved in time by those great men whom India had never failed to produce.

Though India possess a civilization more ancient than any other, few historians have noted that her feat of survival is by no means an accident but a logical incident in the record of devotion to the eternal verities that India has offered through her best men in every generation. By sheer continuity of being, by intransivity before the Ages, India has given the wealthiest answer of any people to the challenge of time. The waters of Mother Ganges, Holy River of the Hindus, have their region in an icy cave in the Himalayas amidst the eternal snows and silence. Down the centuries, thousands of saints have delighted in remaining near the Ganges; they have left along its banks an aura of blessing. An extraordinary perhaps, unique, feature of the Ganges river is its unpollutability. No bacteria live in its changeless sterility. Millions of Hindus use its water for bathing, and drinking. Dr John Howard Nortop, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1946), “We know that the Ganges is highly contaminated, yet Indians drink out of it, swim in it, and are not affected. Perhaps, bacteriophage renders the river sterile. The Vedas inoculate reverence for all natural phenomena.

Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight. Truth is exact correspondence with reality. Truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature his self as ‘soul’. Lord is heard only in the immaculate silences. For him, no Himalayan heights are inaccessible.

Out of about 17,000 hyms in the Vedas, slightly less than half relate to metaphysics which Bhagavat Gita says is the ‘supreme science’. The remaining hymns pertain to mantras, in praise of Gods, scientific rituals/ceremonies and aryankas (simple rules for the old people). However, Vedic metaphysics is meant for all ages. It relates to social and physical sciences and divine nature, cosmic laws of necessity, soul, spirit, formless and ineffable supreme soul and many other subjects. No single book can comprehensively cover Vedic metaphysics; for glimpses of Vedic physics a seeker need to sublime into the vast sea of vedantic knowledge.

The atomic structure of matter was well known to the ancient Hindus. One of the six systems of Indian Philosophy is vaisesika from the Sanskrit root visesas ‘atomic individuality’.  One of the foremost Vaisseika expounders was Aulukya also called Kanada, the atom eater, born about 2,800 years ago!

In an article by Tara Mata in East West (April 1934), a summary of Vaiseika scientific knowledge was given as follows: Though the modern atomic theory is generally considered a new advance of Science, it was brilliantly expounded long ago by Kanada, the atom eater. The Sanskrit anus can be translated as ‘atom’ in the latter’s literal Greek sense of ‘uncut’ or indivisible. Other scientific expositions of Vaisesika treatises of BC era include

(1) the movement of needless towards magnets;

(2) the circuculation of water in plants

(3) akash or ether, inert structureless, as a basis for the transmitting subtle forces

(4) the solar fire as the cause of all other forms of heat

(5) heat as the cause of molecular change;

(6) the law of gravitation as caused by the quality that inheres in earth atom to give them their attractive power or downward pull.

(7) the kinetic nature of all energy; causation as always rooted in an expenditure of energy or a redistribution of motion

(8) universal dissolution through the disintegration of atoms

(9) the radiation of heat and light rays, infinitely small particles darting forth in all directions with inconceivable speed (the modern cosmic rays’ theory’)

(10) the realtivity of time and space.

Vaisseika assigned the origin of the world to atoms, eternal in their nature i.e. their ultimate peculiarities. These atoms were regarded as possessing an incessant vibratory motion.  The recent discovery that an atom in a miniature solar system would be no news to the old Vaisesika philosophers, who also reduced time to its furtherest mathematical concept by describing the smallest unit of time (kala) as the period taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of time. The law is mechanically operative: its workings may be scientifically manipulated by men of divine wisdom. The world is a bridge, pass over it, but no house on it.

Purana and itihasa is one and the same, though many of the ideams and ideas, thought content is unfortunately cannot be explained due to its abstractness.

That human brain is a computer has been proved by Shakutala Devi. She beat the present day computer in delivering the answer much faster than that took by the computer. Before an august audience consisting of mathematical profossentials and wizards, she was asked to multiply 41 integrals with 21 integrals, and her answer came out before computer gave its results. She also did impossible mathematical feats, to the astonishment and surprise of many.Srinivasa Ramanujam also did some complicated mathematical theories, which gave him the title of prodigal. India was not only the cradle of civilization it was, its men were far advanced to their age.

In a series of books published on Himalayan Masters, there are references to certain Swamis who are more than 400 years old. They could perform many siddis, through Yoga and tantric powers. Indians made Panchagas, and were able to predict Lunar eclipse, solar eclipse and other notable events in the future. The literature on some of these subjects is available, and they need to be taken up for exhaustive study. They throw light on the future, and stand for all the scientific inventions, discoveries, and unknown facts about many things for which we seek answer.