Brihat Jataka of Varahamihira, translated by Swami Vijnanananda
The Brihat Jataka is Varahamihira's chief work (sixth century) and the foundation of all later Indian natal astrology. Nearly every later treatise — the Jataka Parijata, the Sarvartha Chintamani, the Phaladipika — either restates its rules or argues with them, so reading the later books without this one is futile: half of what they assert turns out to be quotation.
Its twenty-eight chapters run in a strict order: the signs and their divisions, the nature of the planets, multiple births, conception, the circumstances of birth, early death, length of life, dasas and antardasas, ashtakavarga, avocation, raja yogas, nabhasa yogas, chandra yogas, planetary conjunctions, ascetic yogas, the Moon in the nakshatras and signs, the planets in the signs, aspects, planets in the bhavas and in the vargas, miscellaneous yogas, evil yogas, female horoscopy, death, and nashta jataka (reconstructing a lost horoscope).
Swami Vijnanananda's translation follows the versified Sanskrit line by line. That makes it awkward to read straight through but invaluable for checking: one can see where the verse ends and the translator's gloss begins, and therefore what is not in the original.
In our work this book serves as the reference for yogas. The yoga names produced by JHora were checked against it and against the Jataka Parijata: where the definitions diverge, we look at whose rule the program actually follows.
Details: 426 pages, 19.3 MB.
The book has been recognised: alongside the PDF there is a plain UTF-8 text file whose pages are separated by lines of the form ===== стр N =====, convenient for searching and for quoting with a page reference.