The Vedas are the oldest texts of India, composed in Vedic Sanskrit and passed down from memory, generation after generation, for centuries before they were written. Vedic astrology was born alongside them as a supporting discipline, Jyotisha, which served to mark the right time for rituals. The birth chart, with signs, houses and planets, came later and took shape over more than a thousand years.
What the Vedas are
The word veda comes from the Sanskrit root vid, which means to know. Veda means knowledge.
There are four:
- Rigveda: the oldest, with 1,028 hymns organized into ten books.
- Yajurveda: the prose formulas the priest recited during offerings.
- Samaveda: 1,549 verses, almost all taken from the Rigveda.
- Atharvaveda: about 760 hymns, of which some 160 also appear in the Rigveda.
Scholars place most of the Rigveda between 1500 and 1200 BCE, and some widen that range to 1700 to 1100 BCE. The other three Vedas date from about 1200 to 900 BCE.
For centuries, the Vedas existed only in the voices of those who recited them. Memorization techniques made sure every syllable was repeated the same way, and the written record only came after 500 BCE. In the Indian tradition, the Vedas are shruti, "what was heard": knowledge received by the sages, with no human author.
Each Veda has four layers, written in different periods:
| Layer | What it contains | Approximate period |
|---|---|---|
| Samhitas | The hymns and mantras | From 1500 BCE |
| Brahmanas | Prose explanations of the rituals | From 900 to 700 BCE |
| Aranyakas | Reflections on the meaning of the rituals | After the Brahmanas |
| Upanishads | Philosophical texts | From 800 BCE |
The six Vedangas
To preserve and use the Vedas, six supporting disciplines emerged, the Vedangas, a word that means "limbs of the Veda". Each one took care of one aspect:
| Vedanga | Takes care of |
|---|---|
| Shiksha | Pronunciation |
| Chandas | Meter of the verses |
| Vyakarana | Grammar |
| Nirukta | Origin and meaning of words |
| Kalpa | Ritual instructions |
| Jyotisha | Astronomy and timekeeping |
Jyotisha is the root of what we now call Vedic astrology. The name comes from jyoti, light, and is usually translated as "science of light" or "science of the heavenly bodies".
Jyotisha began as a calendar
The oldest text of this discipline is the Vedanga Jyotisha, attributed by tradition to a sage named Lagadha. It exists in two versions: one tied to the Rigveda, with 36 verses, and another to the Yajurveda, with 43.
Its purpose was practical. The text teaches how to follow the Sun and the Moon to fix the dates of rituals. Kim Plofker, who studies the history of Indian mathematics and astronomy, notes that this early Jyotisha deals with the calendar and says nothing about the planets.
The date of the Vedanga Jyotisha is debated. Some scholars, among them R. Kochhar, place it between 1370 and 1150 BCE, based on the position of the solstice it describes. Others, such as Michael Witzel, argue that it was written in the last centuries BCE, based on the style of the text.
The lunar mansions come from this period
The oldest part of Vedic astrology still in use is the nakshatras, the lunar mansions. The sky is divided into stretches that the Moon travels through, one per day, over the course of the month.
The Atharvaveda gives a list of 28 nakshatras. The Taittiriya Samhita and the Shatapatha Brahmana record 27. When the sky came to be divided into equal parts, the count settled at 27 stretches of 13°20' each, and the nakshatra Abhijit was left out of the division.
When the chart and the signs appeared
The birth chart, with the 12 signs, the houses and the planets read for one person, appears in Indian texts centuries after the Vedas.
The milestone is the Yavanajataka, a name that means "the sayings of the Greeks". It was translated from Greek into Sanskrit in the 2nd century CE and is considered the first treatise on astrology in Sanskrit. The version that has come down to us is Sphujidhvaja's, in verse, from 270 CE.
The origin of the ideas India received in this period is debated. David Pingree argued for an influence coming from Mesopotamia. Yukio Ohashi disagreed, pointing out that Vedic timekeeping predates that contact. Kim Plofker considers it possible that each tradition developed on its own. The consensus is that, from this encounter on, Indian astrology began to combine what it already had, such as the nakshatras, with the chart and the signs.
The great classics
In the following centuries, Vedic astrology gained the texts that still form its foundation today.
Varahamihira lived in Ujjain in the 6th century CE. He wrote the Pañcasiddhantika, which summarizes the five schools of astronomy known in India at the time, the Brihat Samhita, on general astrology, and the Brihat Jataka, devoted to the birth chart.
The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra is attributed by tradition to the sage Parashara and is the most cited text in Vedic astrology. Historians date the form we know to between the 7th and 8th centuries CE. It describes dozens of systems of planetary periods. The most widely used to this day is Vimshottari, a 120-year cycle divided among the nine planets.
From Jyotisha to KP
In the 20th century, the Indian astrologer K. S. Krishnamurti (1908-1972) created the KP system. He started from the Vedic base, with the nakshatras, the sidereal zodiac and the 120-year cycle, and divided each star into smaller parts to answer whether an event happens and when. Learn more in who Krishnamurti was.
That is why the two ages coexist. Jyotisha has about three thousand years of history. KP has about 70.
Timeline
| Period | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1500 to 1200 BCE | Composition of most of the Rigveda |
| 1200 to 900 BCE | The other three Vedas, with the first lists of nakshatras |
| Date debated | Vedanga Jyotisha, the ritual calendar |
| After 500 BCE | The Vedas begin to be written down |
| 2nd century CE | Translation of the Yavanajataka into Sanskrit |
| 6th century CE | Varahamihira writes his treatises |
| 7th and 8th centuries CE | Current form of the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra |
| 20th century | K. S. Krishnamurti creates the KP system |
What this changes for anyone looking at their own chart
When you see the nakshatra of your Moon, you are looking at the oldest part of this history, the same division of the sky mentioned in the Vedas. When you see which planetary period you are in, you are using the 120-year cycle described in the text attributed to Parashara.
Vedik calculates your chart with its own engine, from the position of the planets at the minute you were born, and reads the periods using the KP method. The tradition provides the method. The last word is always yours.
To understand how this system works today, see Vedic astrology: what it is and the difference between Vedic and Western astrology.
Reference works
- David Pingree. The Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja. Cambridge (USA): Harvard University Press, 1978. Harvard Oriental Series, volume 48.
- Kim Plofker. Mathematics in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
- T. S. Kuppanna Sastry and K. V. Sarma (eds.). Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa of Lagadha in its Ṛk and Yajus Recensions. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1985.
The dates and attributions in this text follow what these authors and other scholars have published, as gathered in reference encyclopedias. Where they disagree, the text shows the positions.
