The Last Chapter of Life

Chapter 25 · Part of our series on the Brihat Jataka of Varahamihira

Every life ends, and the old astrologers did not look away from this. This chapter is about death: how the end of a life is shown in the chart, where it takes place, what becomes of the body, and, most importantly for the tradition, where the soul came from and where it goes.

It is presented here faithfully, as part of the text, and with care. The specific combinations the text gives for different kinds of death are summarised rather than listed. Nothing in this chapter is meant, or should be used, to predict anyone's death; Varahamihira himself says that the full reading of these matters requires many other works. The chapter is best understood for what it reveals about how an ancient science saw life: as one passage in a longer journey of the soul.

The eighth house

The eighth house is the house of nidhana, "the end". The chapter's first verse reads it in two ways (25.1).

When the eighth house is empty, the strongest planet looking at it shows the nature of the final illness, through the bodily humour that planet governs, which we met in Article 3. The part of the body affected matches the sign of the eighth house in the body of the Kalapurusha, the cosmic person of the first article.

When a planet stands in the eighth, its nature colours the end: the Sun with fire, the Moon with water, Mars with weapons, Mercury with fever, Jupiter with an illness hard to name, Venus with thirst, Saturn with hunger. The kind of sign tells where: a movable sign points to a death far from home, a fixed sign to one at home, and a dual sign to one on a journey.

Particular combinations

The next verses list particular arrangements of the harsh planets that point to particular kinds of death, through accident, illness, violence or confinement (25.2 to 25.10). Most of them involve the Sun, Mars, Saturn and the waning Moon pressing on the angles, the eighth house, or each other, with no gentle planet in support. These verses are not reproduced here.

When none of these arrangements is present, the text gives a general rule (25.11). The twenty-second drekkana counted from the rising one, which falls in the eighth house, shows the cause of death through the nature of its lord. Each of the thirty-six drekkanas has its own image, which Article 25 describes.

Place, and the passing

The place of death is shown by the lord of the rising navamsha and the planets connected to it, each pointing to the kind of place its sign stands for (25.12). The same verse adds a striking detail: the length of time a person is without consciousness before death is measured by the part of the rising sign still below the horizon at birth. It is twice as long if the sign's own lord looks at it, and three times if gentle planets do.

The next verse describes what becomes of the body after death, whether given to fire, to water, or left to the elements, according to the nature of the twenty-second drekkana (25.13). The verse ends by saying that for the soul's coming and going, one should turn to the longer works on the subject.

Where the soul came from

The last two verses look beyond this life. The first looks back, to where the soul came from (25.14). Take the stronger of the Sun and the Moon, and the lord of the drekkana it stands in. That planet shows the world the soul came from:

If that planet is exalted, the past life was a high one; if it is between exaltation and fall, a middling one; if it is in its fall, a low one.

Where the soul goes, and liberation

The final verse looks forward (25.15):

गतिरपि रिपुरन्ध्रत्र्यंशपोऽस्तस्थितो वा गुरुरथ रिपुकेन्द्रच्छिद्रगः स्वोच्चसंस्थः । उदयति भवनेऽन्त्ये सौम्यभागे च मोक्षो भवति यदि बलेन प्रोज्झितास्तत्र शेषाः ॥

gatir api ripurandhratryaṃśapo 'stasthito vā gurur atha ripukendracchidragaḥ svoccasaṃsthaḥ | udayati bhavane 'ntye saumyabhāge ca mokṣo bhavati yadi balena projjhitās tatra śeṣāḥ ||

The soul's destination is shown by the lord of the drekkana of the sixth or the eighth, or by the planet in the seventh. But when Jupiter stands exalted in the sixth, in an angle or in the eighth; or when the last sign rises in a gentle navamsha with Jupiter in it, and all the other planets are without strength, there is liberation.

Usually, the soul goes on to the world of the planet that rules the drekkana of the sixth or eighth house, or of the planet in the seventh, and so continues its journey. But the chapter ends with the possibility of mokṣa, liberation: release from the round of birth and death altogether.

The sign of liberation is Jupiter, the teacher of the gods. Exalted, or rising in Pisces, its own sign and the last of the zodiac, with every other planet quiet and without strength, Jupiter alone shines. It is a fitting image. When the many pulls of the other planets fall silent, and only wisdom remains strong, the soul is free.

Reading this chapter

The chapter begins with the end of the body and ends with the freedom of the soul. In between, it treats death not as a final stop but as a passage: from a world before birth, through this life, to a world after it, or, rarely, beyond all worlds. Read this way, it is less a chapter about dying than one about the larger journey of which a single life is part.

Verses are from Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka, chapter 25. English renderings are our own, made from the Sanskrit and checked against the public-domain translation by N. Chidambaram Aiyar (1885; second edition 1905) and against the word-by-word analysis in Michael D. Neely's edition.