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Jyotish - Vedic Astrology.

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Post time 24-3-2011 04:31 PM | Show all posts |Read mode
You all probably heard of Study of Astrology (Rasi palam) from India which many Hindus continue to believe today.

Here is a good sermon about the Astrology from member of ISCKON (Krishna Consciousness). Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFupSOdHo7U&feature=relmfu
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 Author| Post time 22-4-2011 11:30 AM | Show all posts
My commentary about Rasi palam

I have been going through some of these sermons and it is very interesting to listen. Instead of doing very deliberate long and boring speeches and explanation using unfamiliar terms, those guys from ISCKON seems to be doing rather well in explaining how everything is connected in the above sermons.

First question you may ask is, what is Raasi Palam? How did it start? Why did the Ancient Hindus start such a method which seems to based on superstitious characters?

As you all know, I do not think for once that Ancient Hindus have put superstitious beliefs as their core beliefs. Everything they had done so far had some logic and rational belief to it - such as Karma, Dharma, Ayurveda and such. So does this belief. So what is Raasi Palam? Simple answer could be - It is a TIME Measurement.

Those who have studied through this could probably see the similarities between Raasi System and pervious two known (astrological) systems - the I-Ching from China and the Mayan Calendar. Matter a fact, the similiarities between Raasi and I-Ching is so close, we could almost say that I-Ching have been influenced by Raasi System from China. Yes, we could say it is the other way around, but historical facts says otherwise. In Epics like Mahabratha, which based on events which occurred over 5,000 years ago, Astrology have already been used to find aspious days for battle and prayers. Therefore, the Raasi System of India came first and brought to China by merchants and Buddhist monks and become I-Ching that we knows today.

As for Mayan calendar, you could notice the way how building used to measure the movement of Stars, Planets, Sun and the Moon as described in the sermons to the Mayan pyramids. It shaped like a pyramid, and it has FOUR stairs leading to a central upper room. Perviously, European scholars believed that whoever build this pyramids could be originated or had some connection to Egypt because of the Pyramid buildings there. However, the Egyptian pyramids have no stairs on the outside, not did it used as a place to do astronomy. Whatever it's original purpose was, it became a tomb for the Pharoahs later and lost it's purpose. The purpose for the Mayan pyramids continued to remain as it originally meant - as a place to study astronomy till the coming of the Europeans in 15th Century.

So, in conclusion of the above statement, as surprisingly as you could see it, somehow Hindus have found a way to travel half across the World to South America and given the knowledge to the Mayans, who later devised the calendars which we know today as the Mayan Calendar. And another similarities between both calendars is the significant of the Great Alignment in 2012.
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 Author| Post time 22-4-2011 12:18 PM | Show all posts
How do we measure time if we have no watch? Simplest answer could be to watch the Sun's position (during the Daytime) and the Moon's position (during night). Our forefathers have done the same. They measured time by dividing a single day into two - Day and Night (12 hours each).

Then they further divided the 12 hours into half, six hours each. In Daytime, the first half starts from the Dawn to Mid-Day (when the Sun is at the top most position in the sky) and the second half starts from the Mid-Day to Dusk. Similarly, the Night time was divided in half as well; first half starts with the Dusk to the time the Moon is at the top most position in the night sky (Mid-Night) and the second half starts when the Moon continues from the Mid-Night to Dawn.

Therefore, Man have basic measurement of Time - 24 hours a day, 12 hours of Day and Night, and six hours Halves of the twelve hours. In most Ancient people, like the Egyptians, Greeks and so on, they stopped here because they cannot divide the time any further without advance astronomical calculations.

Ancient Hindus however did not stop. They continued by changing the observation of the Sun and the Moon to use other celestial bodies as base. They have noticed the North Star, the Planets such as Mars and Venus as well as the Constellations in the Night Sky.

By observing the movements of the Moon through out the night sky, they believed that the same could be for the Day time as well and therefore, created the system which we are familiar today as Raasi Palam. In this System, the day is divided into 24 hours, a single hour where the Moon (Night time) or the Sun (Day Time) will pass by a certain celestial house (Constellation).

I know many could be confused and unable to picture it. So I will make an easy way to imagine it. Take a look at your watch (assuming it has those metal arms which could move). Imagine the whole watch as a single day (from six o'clock, move clockwise up to 12 o'clock and back to six o'clock) for a 12 hour period and (from six o'clock, move upward in clockwise manner to 12 o'clock and back to six o'clock) for another 12 hour period. Each hour is a position of the celestial body such as a Constellations - there are 24 constellations in total - Hindus name them as Nakastras.

The movement of the Moon is equal to the movement of the second-arm and the movement of the minute-arm is equivalent to the movement of the Sun (or positions of the Earth relative to the Sun). Therefore, the second-arm will move for 60 seconds, and then, the minute arm will move once, showing the change in the position of the Sun from one Nakastras to another. Also, the condition of the Moon was taken into consideration as well, whether it is Full Moon, Half Moon or New Moon as each period could have different gravitation impacts on the Planet.

So, in this context, the Ancient Hindus have a 12-hour system, 24-hour system, 30-days system and a 365 days rotation system (based on the position of the Sun in relation to the Moon and the Planet). From here, we can see how complex and effective Hindus' time measurement system was.

But the Hindus did not stop there. They have notice that the Constellations change as well, and therefore measured the changes of the Constellations with the Sun as its pointer, very similar to the European Horoscope we have today. They continued to calculate the changes which the Sun will travel through these constellations. This is where the concept of the Great Alignment comes from. It is basically an alignment of the Sun to the Great Rift in the Middle of the Milky Way Galaxy. It is not a prophecy of Doom like many Europeans tried to make it to be (because of their own religious beliefs) but more like Dawn of a new Age (or Dawn of a New Morning when the Sun is rising at six
o'clock in the morning).
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 Author| Post time 22-4-2011 02:42 PM | Show all posts
Advantage and Disadvantage of Hindu Time Measurement

There is no system in the World which is perfect by itself. Ancient Hindu's Time measurement system has its own disadvantage as well as advantage as well.

Disadvantage :

In daily life, the maximum Time System which Ancient Hindus could use is the 30-days System and the 365 days system to know when celebrations is to be held, as well as to monitor the changing seasons. The System which uses the Sun relative to the constellations (for discussion sake, we call it Universal Time System) has little use for daily purposes. Regular people has no use for the Universal Time system which measures the Time in hundreds or even thousands of years and only scholars could take serious notions to it. Because of these, Ancient Hindus did not write down or memories events throughout the years. They did not have year-counts like 2001, 2002, 2003 and so on.

In their minds, their system was so complex, to name years according to this method could be ridiculous. And since they know that there will be a Great Alignment at the end of every 256,000 years, it could be like an alarm clock going off and they could create new time scale to replace the old ones (which is why the Mayan Calendar and I-Ching ends at 2012).

This means that, after 2012, in order to get a new Calendar, the Mayans and Chinese Philosophers going to have to sit down with the Hindu Philosophers and come out with a new Universal Time System for the next 256,000 years. Something to look forward to, I guess.

But when Europeans came to India in 15th and 16th Century, they did not see the complexity of the Universal Time System, and thought that Hindus were primitives who did not have time measurements. And Europeans have been priding themselves with their own historical time frame (which starts with the Cruixification and Resurrection of Jesus) as Year One so much, that they were unable to see or understand a system which measured time in thousands of years. The Europeans were blind due to Pride.

And because of their Blindness, they have managed to fool the Indian people into thinking that they were indeed backward and didn't have a simple thing as Time measurement and took on the Europeans' Time System as their own. And Raasi Palam System, which originally was a complex time system reduced to measuring a person's good or bad luck.

Question here could be - Does Hinduism promote Raasi Palam? Frankly speaking, I cannot say much about that. All I can say is, here are influence on the World by the celestial bodies in Space. In Mahabratha Epic, both Sri Krishna and the Kauravas had seeked the best astrologer at that time - the youngest brother in Pandavas, to know which is the best time to perform sacrifice before beginning the war. Therefore, it is not my place to say Hindus should not follow Raasi Palam. They were should remember that their actions too have influence in their future through Karma and Dharma.


Advantage :

Perhaps no where in the World could you find a measurement system which counts right up to 256,000 years (from the Last Alignment to the Next Alignment which will occur in 2012). It is truly an Universal Time System.

And because of this Time System measures such a long period of time, this is the ONLY System where the History of the World could be cut up and places within a gap of 256,000 years for each phase. Take human history for example. 250,000 years ago, out of nowhere, Modern Man (Homo Sapiens) appeared in Africa and by 200,000 years, they had ventured out and all over the Planet. In that context, we can say that Modern

Humans have came at the end of the last Alignment and about to venture into a new era with beginning of the next Alignment. Who knows where we could be in 256,000 years from now?

Some could argue with this, stating that it is not possible unless we name the years like 2001, 2002, 2003 etc. But the Hindus did not need for such naming system. They followed the events in Celestial bodies (like where the Sun was in which Constellations) which can be traced back accurately thousands of years later. Matter a fact, even if all the computers in the World were to vanish and human beings were reduced to a cave-man status, as long as we have verbal records of this great events (including their Constellation references), it is possible for us to pin-point exact date in the past (in years) by counting backwards and measuring the changes in the Sun's position in reference to the celestial bodies. In another word, as long as there are epics like Ramayana and Mahabratha, we cannot forget our history.
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