FutureIQ Knowledgebase

Is Jyotish Shastra Indian? - Origin & Evolution of Astrology

26,285 views Wait, is this logic right? • Sep 20, 2024
Open in YouTube
Slog Reference: The Origins of Astrology

Description

Does astrology really work? Have you ever wondered where the study of horoscopes came from? What exactly is Jyotish Shastra, and when or why did we start reading Kundali charts? In this episode, we dive deep into the origins of Astrology. Is it a scientific branch of study or is it plain placebo? Listen to us elaborate on the tenets of Astrology and discuss its impact on everyday life in the ancient as well as modern world.

Here are more FutureIQ videos that may interest you -
Why Superstition is Smarter Than Science: https://youtu.be/LYdXruXmlng
How Astrologers Predict Future / Fool You: https://youtu.be/FcSuHP113NI
How can even a saint become a murderer?: https://youtu.be/AdCXjrkK3hw

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Chapters:
00:00 Is it Astrology or Horoscope?
02:34 The Logic of Jyotish Shastra
08:05 The Birth of Kundli
11:26 The (Il)logic of Predictions - Self-fulfilling Prophecy
14:12 Rahu, Ketu And Shani
18:46 How does Astrology help?

#futureiq

Related Slog Matches

The Origins of Astrology

Manual

100.00

Transcript

astrology jotish shastra horoscope kundali these things where have they come from wait I thought astrology was jsh shastra and horoscope was Kali and all of these are from our ancient texts like V puran whatever well they're not necessarily the same thing although we pretend like it is the same so let's find out okay so let's start with astrology and horoscope okay okay a natal chart of a person is a card containing the positions of the Sun Moon and all the planets at the time of the birth of that person and based on that people make predictions about that person's life and what's going to happen in the near future correct that is called a horoscope true and the study of
natal charts and horoscopes and how to make these predictions is called astrology correct so you use the kundali to make predictions using J shastra that is what has always been the case I'm talking about astrology and horoscope right now we haven't come to kundali and Jo shastra those are different we'll come to that later so there are two primary ideas associated with this okay first is when you look up at the sky there are 12 important constellations right yes this is like Taurus the Bull Capricorn the goat and so on okay now each of these constellations is associated with certain personality Styles okay Libra will always be balanced and stuff like that okay okay yeah now when you were born exactly one
of those constellations would be at the Horizon correct that's your first house okay and the personality of that constellation decides what will be your personality what your self is like okay the second constellation up there is the second house and that personality will decide how much wealth you will have what your positions will be like and so on Okay the third one is associated with communic ation siblings short Journeys Early Education so the personality of that constellation decides all these things in your life right and they give 12 houses 12 different personalities okay okay we are getting a primary to astrology here please do not use it as a way to learn astrology we are trying to
debunk astrology so this is astrology and horoscope okay okay it they started with the Babylonians moved to the Jews in Egypt and then to the Greeks okay in parallel in India joti shastra was developing okay okay so around, 1400 BC or 1200 BC somewhere around that time uhhuh we used jotish shastra was the science of figuring out dates and times and the calendar like how right just by looking at the phases of the moon and the position of the sun in the different constellations right okay now notice these are not not the same constellations as the Zodiac okay we use nakshatras which are like 27 of them or 28 depending on which text you read
let's assume 27 for now yeah so our astronomers I'm going to call them astronomers used came up with rules of how to figure out the time of the year uh based on the positions of the sun moon and the nakshatras correct but essentially the same concept as the constellations of the zodiac except we were using it to figure out things like agriculture right when to se seeds when to harvest right that's fairly important to be able to predict when we have rainy season for us we are a monsoon country unlike the others so for us it was fairly important correct correct so jotis shastra in those days was basically our calendar we even had things like you know if a month is just
based on the moon then you have to add an extra month every 3 or four years went to do that I think it's so called the concept of adik mass yes uh plus every once in a while tiis which are the days right you have to skip one day so that you are in sync with the moon right all of this they did so calendaring was joti shastra okay okay and the Ries gave us rules on how to use all of this to decide various things related to agriculture right soon people started asking for more right like what like what as oh I'm going on a journey when should I start and the Rishi comes and
says avoid Amia right why do you want to avoid Amasia because there is no moon in the sky it is going to be dark and if you are out in the darkness it is much more dangerous predators and hostile people correct correct in the darkness of the night we got some more fine gra rules right but more so people clamored for even more rules and then they started making up rules rul like what rules so they divided the day into 30 parts okay there were no concept of hour back then HH makes sense they divided the day into 30 parts each part is one M 48 minutes okay okay and then they said two M Before Sunrise is the Brahma M and
that's a great M to do your meditation spiritual practice studying probably because there is nobody else awake at that time so you have peace and quiet exactly right okay continues to make sense so don't do things on anasia yeah uh do your meditation and studies during Brahma M makes sense but this is a slippery slope right then they came up with the idea of Abhijit M midday it is auspicious for starting an important task okay why midday though W you want to start it earlier in the morning like 910 a.m. current time now the connection with logic becomes a little tenuous right the way I imagine it is that if you want to start some task you need
some time in the morning to analyze it carefully talk to people get opinions and so on and prep probably prep and then you make the decision around midday so that you still have rest of the day to actually execute on that task so abijit M midday is to start tasks all right Vijay Mur is afternoon for victory in battle or competitions right afternoon basic idea is that you know throughout the day you are fighting now around the afternoon you are close to winning right okay now at this point if you let the enemy go in this is from the time when battles used to stop at night yeah I remember they used to blow a conch and
the battle used to stop at that point so next morning the enemy is going to be all breasted and rejuvenated so if you want to pressform your advantage and go in for the kill then then the Vijay m is a good time to do that right yeah just before the sun sets give it your final push win the battle and come home Victorious VI by the way this is just kind of speculative I'm just trying to guess the logic right as you will see as we go further the logic reduces until a point where it just disappears right slippery slope remember SL because other thing they used to do in those days they started coming up with uh rules like you
know based on natural events like eclipses and meteors and Comet and bird calls and you can imagine that sometime in the past there was some logic that if a bird starts making this kind of a noise that means there is a predator so don't do XY Z if a bird makes that kind of a noise it means something else so you can do XYZ right see I know all of this that you're saying is speculative but it makes so much sense right but all of this right so womens based on nature yeah started to IM and M and all of that right so this was shastra until around the 1 Century ad all right okay but now
I'm wondering where does the kund come into the picture kundali did not exist what do you mean around the first century ad somebody brought in the concept of Greek astrology to India the one that you explained just before where you had 12 houses right so in fact there is a Sanskrit text called the yam jataka which explains all of this in detail hold on yavana jataka if I remember some of my Sanskrit correctly yavana was refers used to refer to Greeks correct and jataka is related to birth right that's where we get jataka Tales they Tales related to birth of buha okay so yam jataka is the natal charts the birth charts and horoscopes and birth related
predictions coming from the Greeks okay okay and as soon as that came the people here saw the potential okay and they immediately merged it with jotish shastra so now suddenly jotis shastra from being astronomy and calendar has become a full-blown pseudo science of prediction based on your birth dude I'm sure it would have trended on product hunt back in the day product hunt was a thing because think of the difference between the old jotis shastra and astrology right jotis shastra it was not based on any planets just Sun Moon and nakshatra yeah it was basically a clock and a calendar correct it was not the 12 constellations of the zodiac it was 27 nakshatra and it was
not person specific right if osia is a bad time then it's a bad time for everybody okay yeah um what astrology did was make it person specific depending on at the time of your birth where something was so basically when you use the word astrology here you're referring to Modern astrology which is essentially a merger of Greek astrology and what we knew as jotis shastra which was clock and calendar yes okay right now that one is has become person specific because of the Greek influence okay and that uses 12 constellations which are the Rashi yeah okay right so nakshatra is our old con 27 constellations Rashi is the 12 constellations that we got from the
Greeks that is why Rashi has exactly the same meanings in Greek and Indian right so Mina is fish it is Pices in Greek yeah I was just thinking that Mesa is the ram which is Aries right and so on so it's basically a translation which happened around the first century ad oh historically if you look closely you will find that before that point we really didn't use the planets for doing much of our calendaring or our predictions or our Omens planets have come in after the Greeks okay so we use the concept of the night sky the firmament to do clock and calendaring the Greeks use the same night sky firmament to do Omens and predictions
speculations of sort but why would the Greeks look at the night sky and think predictions where did all of this come in so the comes from the Babylonians okay at that time Kings used to have these susers who are like which doctors but with better status okay and the susers were expected to predict the future and is this a good time to do this is this a good time to go to war yeah and they started using the positions of the zodiac yeah to make predictions right yeah because they were literally the heavens and what the heavens said mattered so you basically started in general humans are excellent at finding random patterns right and making sense out of them okay uh so
that's why some people read tea leaves and come up with uh predictions other people look at cards in Tarot and come up with predictions right so this is in the same category okay later the Greeks took this idea they loved it and they completely expanded on it right so instead of just applying to Kings and countries they started applying it to individuals based on the birth of that individual and that's how each part of the night sky became a house of certain specificity a certain aspect of life and then the Sun the moon the planets in those houses would affect oh wow okay exactly right and this is such a lovely system right yeah so this particular
zodiac is your third house right which means it relates to your siblings and how you communicate so now if sat is in there and Saturn is the king of obstacles and delays it means that there are going to be obstacles in your relationship and communication with your siblings such a lovely systematic logical structure I I I object to the word systematic and logic in there because a lot of it is just out of nothing see but yeah once you accept the aums at the bottom the rest of it is very logical right but the axioms at the bottom are floating in thin air they don't have any foundation so this is in the days when there was no concept of R
cities and trying to do a study of whether this really works or not and as long as there is a logic which is delivered with confidence humans will twist themselves to make it true right that's what the placebo effect is that's what wishful thinking is if someone tells you that you know tomorrow you are going to have success in your romantic life that makes you more confident that that makes you go out and ask more girls out right and then you end up succeeding self-fulfilling prophecies that's why astrology works all right perfect let's come back to our basic topic of question which is the Greeks gave us this concept which we then merg with our jsh shastra which was clock and
calendaring and then created the kund kundali means coil or a circle right okay yeah so the 12 zodiacs which are in a circle around the sky those are the kundali okay so you form your kundali with the 12 zodiacs and now you have the 12 houses and then you figure out the planets and put them into those houses exactly wow so the condal that we have is actually Greek in origin so we started using this to do further illogical predictions of our own I already said that Saturn is associated with delays and obstacles you know why uh no Saturn shy is the planet which moves the slowest in the sky ah okay so that's why it got associated with slow
yeah shant and Shani have the same root okay and that this actually blew my mind yeah yeah and that is why slowness then became obstacles and that's why Shani Landing up anywhere is going to cause problems okay okay the other cool thing is rahu which is chaos and ketu which is spirituality and Detachment okay okay I have heard of rahu and ketu I didn't know they were chaos and spirituality and Detachment where did they come from I was always very confused about why did our ancients come up with these two non-existent planets yeah right only when doing research for this episode I found out and it's a brilliant concept okay okay we already talked about the
ecliptic the line draws across the over the of a year correct similarly Moon also has an orbit so Moon also draws a line across the sky over the course of the Year okay except that it's not identical to the sun okay the two circles are at 5° to each other so they will intersect in two points correct not just that but the moon's circle is also rotating like this so the points of intersection shift oh and that shifting isn't happening over a period of a year it's happening over the period of 18 years right okay so the two points where the moon's orbit intersects the sun's ecliptic are called rahu and ketu okay because when the moon is actually at the
North intersection point rahu that is the only time that you get eclipses oh right obviously because if the moon and sun are a little off then you're not going to get an eclipse only when they coincide you are going to get an eclipse correct right correct like a total solar eclipse just think about it right a solar eclipse is associated with chaos right people would get wild people would go nuts and all kinds of horrible things were associated with eclipses so obviously if chaos eclipse happens when moon reaches rahu so obviously rahu is the planet or God of chaos yeah okay now the other intersection point the southern end right when the moon reaches there you get a lunar eclipse a lunar
eclipse happens at night and you can still kind of see a reddish moon right so it doesn't cause people to go nuts right in fact you feel calm and relaxed right but you know to watch and things are different so that is why ketu is associated with spirituality and Detachment right so you can see how Shani Saturn is associated with obstacles rahu with chaos and ketu with spirituality that's where you get this logic from that also explains how our ancestors had nine planets because they didn't know about Uranus Neptune and Pluto but they knew about Buddha shukra Mangal Guru and Shani which are the five planets that they knew and then there was a because the sun moon rahu and ketu
so that made nine exactly naaga is those including the two intersection points interesting okay so all of this sounds like we imported a bunch of BS from the Greeks and put it on a very nice clock and calendaring system and ruined it completely yeah well I like to think about why did such a system start and Thrive and it's still around right yeah so there are a bunch of good reasons for the [ __ ] to work right very simple is for political strategy right if you have to make decisions and somebody comes up with a bunch of rules saying this is it decision is made for you then it's so much easier to convince the
popul that oh there is a rule my hands are tied that is why I have to increase taxes sh is in the fifth House of whatever I have to increase taxes right also social coordination becomes easier if everybody is arguing somebody saying that let's do it to tomorrow somebody saying do it on Monday and there is just a rule saying do it on Thursday and then everybody has to do it on Thursday impr coordination right on Mondays exactly also it sort of makes you feel good that makes you feel that the god the universe is taking an interest in your Affairs and that's why good things will happen to you right so Puri kayat will help you
in your quest tomorrow right very sh but the most important is that this also helped with preserving of knowledge right complex calculations that were required to figure out the muras and the agricultural decisions and so on right were memorized by people because they wanted to do all of this astrology stuff right so you get many more people who are capable of doing these calculations so in a way it helped uh pass on knowledge of the ancient in terms of the clock and calendaring that we spoke about through a weird system of uh BS infused knowledge absolutely but to understand how astrology fools people and even today so many people believe that it actually works check out our
episode on the Barum effect yeah the Barnum effect is uh something that will blow your mind once you watch the first 5 minutes of the video because we have said some really interesting truths about you I'm not kidding actually about you so go check that out uh meanwhile I will digest this entire new knowledge about astrology jotis shastra horoscope kundali and how all of them are same same but different in my own way Shri Kant naen future IQ