Varahamihira's Farewell

Chapter 28 · Part of our series on the Brihat Jataka of Varahamihira

The book ends with a short chapter in which Varahamihira looks back over what he has written, places it among his other works, asks his readers' indulgence, and tells us who he is. It is the voice of the author speaking directly, and it is a fitting place to end.

What the book contains

Varahamihira first lists the subjects of his book (28.1 to 28.3): the signs and the planets, other kinds of birth, conception, the moment of birth, the dangers of childhood, the length of life, the periods of life, the ashtakavarga, livelihood, the royal yogas, the nabhasa yogas, the Moon's yogas, the planets together, renunciation, the planets in the signs, aspects, houses, the divisions, the helping planets, the difficult yogas, women's charts, death, the lost birth chart, and the drekkanas.

He counts these as twenty-five chapters. The book as it has come down to us has twenty-eight. One reason is that the chapters on the Moon in the nakshatras and the Moon in the signs are not in his list; commentators have long thought they were added later from his other writings. Another is that the commentator Bhattotpala's division of the text produced extra chapters. The book we read is Varahamihira's work, shaped a little by the hands that carried it down.

Three branches of one science

Varahamihira then places this book among his other works (28.4 to 28.6). He describes another work, on journeys and the right times for undertakings, and mentions his writing on the timing of marriage. The movements of the planets themselves he says he set out separately in his astronomical work, the Pañcasiddhāntikā.

In this way, he says, he has covered all three branches of jyotiṣa: astronomy, the reading of births, and the reading of the world. We met these three branches in the Introduction. The Brihat Jataka is the middle one, the science of the individual life.

A humble author

The next two verses are among the most human in the book (28.7 to 28.8). Varahamihira says that his short works were written after a full study of the long works of the ancient authors. If anything important has been left out, he asks the learned to forgive him. And if a copyist or a teacher has dropped part of the text, or if errors and gaps are found, he asks the learned to supply what is missing and correct what is wrong, "setting aside all jealousy".

These are the words of a scholar who knew that knowledge is passed from hand to hand, and that every hand can slip. He does not claim to be perfect. He invites correction.

Who he was

The book's last autobiographical verse is the one we met at the very start of this series, in the Introduction. It is worth reading again at the end (28.9):

आदित्यदासतनयस्तदवाप्तबोधः कापित्थके सवितृलब्धवरप्रसादः । आवन्तिको मुनिमतान्यवलोक्य सम्यग्घोरां वराहमिहिरो रुचिरां चकार ॥

ādityadāsatanayas tadavāptabodhaḥ kāpitthake savitṛlabdhavaraprasādaḥ | āvantiko munimatāny avalokya samyag ghorāṃ varāhamihiro rucirāṃ cakāra ||

Son of Adityadasa, from whom he received his learning; blessed with a boon by the Sun at Kapitthaka; of Avanti: Varahamihira, having studied the views of the sages well, composed this graceful hora.

The name of his father, Adityadasa, means "servant of the Sun". His own blessing came from the Sun. And the book itself opened, many chapters ago, with a prayer to the Sun as the light of the self. The Sun is present at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of his life and work.

The final verse closes with gratitude (28.10). Varahamihira says he was able to write this work through the grace of the Sun, of the sage Vasishtha, and of his father and teacher Adityadasa, and he bows to the ancient authors of the science.

Looking back over the whole book

We began with the twelve signs, mapped onto the body of Time. We met the seven planets, their natures and friendships, their strength and their aspects. We learned to divide the sky into finer and finer parts. We followed a life from conception through birth, the fragile early years, the chapters of the dashas, the work of the hands, the rise to power or the turn to renunciation, and finally the passage of death, and the hope of liberation beyond it.

Three qualities of the author have stood out along the way.

He is faithful to his sources. Again and again, he records the views of earlier teachers, the Greek Yavanas, Satya, Jivasharma, Maya and others, even when he disagrees with them, so that the reader can see the whole conversation.

He is a critic. He points out where the inherited teaching fails: methods that give impossible results, combinations the sky cannot produce, rules that prove too much. He asks his students to test his methods, and to keep what proves true.

He is humble. He calls his great work a small boat for crossing a wide ocean, and ends by asking the learned to correct his mistakes.

Whatever one believes about astrology itself, the Brihat Jataka is a monument of the human effort to find order and meaning in the sky above and the life within. Fifteen centuries after it was written, it still speaks clearly, in the voice of a careful, curious and deeply honest mind.

This completes our series on the Brihat Jataka. Verses are from Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka, chapter 28. English renderings are our own, made from the Sanskrit where available and checked against the public-domain translation by N. Chidambaram Aiyar (1885; second edition 1905).