Old Astrologers and writers of books

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Some one sent this to me. It makes a lot of sense. I met PS Sastry a few

months ago. Trouble is he is not long for this world.

 

SHyama

 

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Old Astrologers and writers of books

 

3 June 2003

 

I knew most of those old and famous astrologers , senior to me by ten or

more years.More than ninety percent of them were good scholars of astrology

with some knowledge of Sanskrit but with no critical scholarship and no

background of English or English education. They were good to excellent

predictors. They never wrote books.I knew most of the writers with

background of English whose knowledge of astrology was theoretical and

predictive success from sound to superlative. Among them the greatest giant

is P.S.Sastry from a Vedic family and capable of delivering a speech in

Sanskrit for four hours torrentially though he was the head of the

department of English in Nagpur university. I accept only his translation of

Jaimini Sutras as authentic. Some of the Varanasi translations are good but

confusing. Others with their matriculation level Sanskrit are no better than

the rest..The contrast between good predictors and good writers was always

there. To write books on those astrological classics there should have been

a combination of sound Sanskrit scholarship and a sounder record of at least

twenty or thirty years of predictive success. Unfortunately, none had it.

 

Then Santhanam started a new trend. He had ordinary knowledge of Sanskrit.

He read translations in Hindi and retranslated them into English. Later , he

employed some Sanskrit pandits and paid them five rupees for the translation

of each shkloka for his book on nadi. The credit of making them available

certainly goes to Santhanam.So when you read those books proceed slowly,

respecting and praising their efforts but do not accept their interpretation

or in many cases, their illustrations. The earlier generation of these

writers made available to us what was lost. The present generation is

rehashing them to produce old wine in a new bottle.

 

I have read many translations of Brihat Parashara Shastra even in Bengali,

took the help of people in Maharastra for Marathi translation of Gujaratis

to understand Gujarati version of it. The confusion created is immense. The

truth is that till now not a single good commentary on those books is

available, commentary in the sense in which we have books on Shakespeare's

plays brought out by Oxford University. I do not know if such books on Hindu

astrology will ever come out.Among all the subjects I have studied,

astrology is easily the toughest and most challenging. To launch into

authorship particularly when it comes to these classics without twenty years

of predictive success with a reasonable percentage is very risky.

 

A research in an aspect of predictive astrology is different which many can

do if they collect their data properly and interpret them soundly.

 

K.N.Rao,