Saptarishi

[Guest guest]

Barry had asked us about Saptarishi and our Madhavaji had obliged with

information from the scriptures. Since then Barry came back with the

following which is more to do with Astrology. Some members may be interested

in his findings - hence forwarding this to the list:-

 

From Barry Pittard

Email: bpittard

Snailmail: c/o McIvor, Hunchy Road, Hunchy. Queensland. Australia 4555.

Phone: 61 7 5442 9597

 

I am exploring a branch of Indian astrology (Jyotish) called Naadisaastra

(pron. nahdi shahstra). This refers to divinatory writings, predictive far

into the future of the lives of individuals destined to have a reading.

These writings, often written on a surface such as palm leaf, are attributed

to great sages (often Vedic), such as Bhrigu, Shuka, Agasthya, and some to

deities like Shiva, Ganesha, Surya, Nandi, Meenakshi, Rajeswari. There are a

good many other naadis, often very little known - e.g., Shukra, Druva,

Amsa, Kousika, Koumara, Kakbhusandi, Bhoga, Pullipani, Vashista,

Vishwamitra, Parasara, Sahadeva, Kashyapa ...

 

Some collections I have personally spent a lot of time exploring. I have

also entered a vast correspondance with many people (mostly Indian or

overseas resident Indian) who have had readings from various naadi

collections in various parts of India. Already, I have collective weighty

evidence that some naadis are astonishingly accurate. One question is to

what extent some naadi readers consciously inject something of their own

into a reading. Another concerns well-meaning but inaccurate translation.

One area which needs extensive research into Tamil history is why naadi

jyothisham, mainly in regard to the Agasthya tradition, is so highly

organised and widespread in Tamil Nadu.

 

This best case accuracy is true of the predictions for one's future, but

there is more than this. One's naadi can be identified and brought from a

naadi library (which are in the keeping of traditional families who strictly

hold on to them) by means, e.g., only of the taking of an intending

subject's thumb print (female, left; male, right), or by the measuring of

one's shadow.

 

Observing some fundamental rules of empirical validation, I have been able,

a great many times, to confirm that by such means alone, a subject can find

a reading in his or her own name(s), date of birth, parent name(s), spouse's

name, uniquely referring bio-data. There is past life and future life (if

any) data. One way of confirming past life material is to compare a

subject's readings in different naadi traditions.

 

(I should point out, too, that fraudulence - sometimes highly expert -

is also encountered in some places, and my work has been able to document

various methods by which this is effected).

 

Another question is whether - and if so, to what degree - a great sage

(past or present) could manage to be so incredibly correct in being able to

predict at such a profound level. Was astrology the means? Or was it

superabundant yogic power?

 

To assist my study (which is a long-term one), I trust you will be able (as

so many respondants have already so tremendously well done) to let me know

any thoughts, findings, experiences, and also pass my query to to friends,

associates, etc.

 

Barry Pittard (Australia)

 

 

PREDICTIVE PALM LEAF READINGS OF INDIA (NAADIS)

 

Barry Pittard

 

 

The naadis (pronounced nahdees) are purported by custodians of these

texts,inscribed on palmyrah or palm leaves, to be the predictive utterances

of ancient Indian sages or rishis. These ancient sages - such as Brighu,

Shuka, Shukra, Druva, Amsa, Agasthya, Kousika, Koumara, Kakbhusandi, Bhoga,

Pullipani, Vashista, Vishwamitra, Parasara, Sahadeva, etc., ... are held

throughout much of India's history to have been endowed with extraordinary

psychic power resulting from their profound meditational techniques.

 

The seven most famous of these sages are called the Sapta Rishis. In

Sanscrit, " Sapta " means seven. In the Bhagawad Gita, Sri Krishna says that of

Rishis he is Brighu, and of the wise he is Shuka, the son of Brighu. There

are naadi traditions in both these names. By and large, the Brighu Samhita

(or Book) is the most renowned.

 

I have corresponded with a great many people of India, non-resident Indians,

and a few dozen westerners familiar with India. Many respondants knew the ex

istence of naadi writings attributed to Brighu or Shukha (his son). Many

south Indians of the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, especially, have heard

of the Agasthya leaf writings. However, there are a number of others. Yet

again, these go by the name of the sage who is supposed to have written

them, such as: Kousika, Koumara, Kakbhusandi, Bhoga, Pullipani, Vashista,

Vishwamitra ... Other naadis are called: Siva, Surya, Ganesha ... Thus,there

is plenty of opportunity to investigate and compare results as between the

different traditions. I have unearthed the case of only one many who has

done so to any extent. He has some truly remarkable data to relate. (I shall

suppress his name until I have his personal permission to release it and,

hopefully include his researches within my study).

 

The naadis I've most recently investigated are in the state of Tamil Nadu -

the Agasthya naadis. In this south Indian tradition of naadi reading, one

is requested to produce no more than a thumb impression (right for a male,

left for a female) of a subject. From characteristics found in this

impression, a palm leaf reading which corresponds to the subject is said to

be located in the library.

 

I have found repeated evidence - both in my explorations at first hand and

from sending out well over two thousand emails to people who could possibly

help - many accurate details can be discovered about oneself. It all goes

against the grain of rationality. What can one do? Simply, report

findings.

 

In 1998, Shanti (now my wife) and I explored naadi readings at libraries at

Vaithiswarankoil and Thanjore. Shortly after, I also visited a library at

Chennai. Yet again, I found stunningly accurate information. Moreover, it

too corresponded with information from both the Vaithishwarankoil and

Thanjore libraries.

 

Shanti and I very strictly adhered to our intent only to provide our thumb

print. This is all that is supposed to be needed by a reader, who then,

according to the accounts of all naadi librarians themselves, goes,into the

library to find a bundle (or even two or three bundles) of leaves that

matches certain features in the thumb print. I have not yet been able to

discover the method used. It is widely held to be a closely guarded secret.

Perhaps one can be glad of this. Given that details contained in the

prophetic writings do in fact pertain to oneself, there is, thus, a privacy

protection. What is more, the fragile palm leaves on which the predictions

are written need to be handled with care. We can consider too that naadi

reading is the means of living for each family who has a holding of the

writings.

 

Shanti and I wanted to be sure that, for example, we were not

surreptitiously " milked " for clues. Otherwise, these could supply the basis

for, technically speaking, deductions or inductions, which would later be

" fed " back to us as a more or less convincing enough sort of reading. In my

later researches, I have found a book where the author, Maseo Maki, reports

unmasking a devious means employed by the reader extract information and

then feed it back in the form of a reading. (The Spiritual Adventures of a

Sushi Chef, " Maki, M. 1997, Cadence Books).

 

Mr Maki says that he has always had an extraordinary natural gift for

keeping track of numbers, for example, with the abacus. In his reading in

Chennai at a library he refers to as Agasthya Manor, he had noted that, over

a six hour period, the reader had plied him with many questions concerning

facts such as date of birth. By asking lesser than and greater than type

questions - but spacing these out so as not to draw suspicion - it is

possible to deduce a correct date of birth.

 

Maki relates that when he got back to his hotel, and rearranged the order of

questions (which by his unusual memory ability with numbers he was able to

remember) a deductive system was clearly demonstrated. He then carefully

prepared a fictive series of answers (some quite absurd and comic) which his

traveling companion then planted upon an Agasthya nadi reader at

Vaithishwarankoil . The naadi reader, he says, then reproduced the

contrived answered back - all unawares.

 

Shanti and I had no such painful six hour sessions. Far from it. Her first

reading came up within half an hour. It took an hour and a half before the

leaf came up which correctly gave my names, my parents names, my date of

birth. Indeed, we had mentally prepared ourselves to be, if necessary, the

most unhelpful of people. Even to a point of walking out, if we suspected a

nonsesense. When it comes to questing for as deep a sort of knowledge about

one's life as it is possible to get, one can be quite vulnerable. Ever more

so in economically less developed countries many will take unscrupulous

advantage of such intrinsic facts of the human condition.

 

One further example should illustrate the caution needed in exploring naadi

libraries. (I am still trying to contact the scholar involved in the story).

The incident first caught my attention in the Indology List on Web pages run

by Dr Dominik Wujastyk, director of the Welcome Institute for the History of

Medical Science, London. A colleague of his, a Sanskrit scholar, Raina Haig,

reports in the following terms:

 

" I have twice visited the Sri Agastya Nadi, in New State Bank Colony, West

Tambaram, Madras (near the airport), once in 1996, and once in 1998. I'd

heard about the tradition nearly 20 years earlier whilst studying Sanskrit

in Madras, and was intrigued. On my first visit to the Nadi in '96 I

received several remarkable readings and engaged in acts of " atonement "

(parihaara) suggested in the palm leaves. In '98 I returned with a

cameraman and DVC camera to record the reading process. The position of

observer led me to a series of startling new insights as to how the naadi

sastris operate. I was able to observe a number of clandestine techniques

used to elicit information from clients before and during the formal

consultation. This information was then fed back to them, apparently as

found in the leaves. I have filmed this process in action.

As in a good magic trick, it is not necessarily of any benefit to know how

the trick is done, but the experience was interesting.

 

" Part of the naadii experience is being given a past-life story. I had

myself been given a past-life story. This was evidently from a fairly

limited stock, since I have now discovered several others who had been given

the same story - the only differences being minor changes. I can't claim to

have totally unravelled how it is all done, but certainly I have gained some

unexpected insights.

 

" I was told that the Sri Agastyanadi collection of Tamil manuscripts was

bought some seventy years ago in an auction held by the British of a library

of palm leaf books found in a palace near Kumbakonum in Tamil Nadu.

 

" I have over an hour of Hi8 video recording of the nadi-reading process as I

was able to observe it. "

 

Notwithstanding, Shanti and I (and I in my separate explorations in Chennai)

found a whole series of accurate details about ourselves. We found our names

and family details, including our parents' names. It was amusing to hear the

reader's pronunciation of the names, particularly of Shanti's mother and

father. (Not to mention some of the western names which the reader ascribed

to leaves which did not refer to us). Her mother's names are: Barbara Rita.

The name Rita caused no problem; it is a Sanskrit word, anyway. Her

father's name is a rare one - Mungo. The reader tried to pronounce this in

some three or four ways, all too close to leave any doubt. My father's first

name Ivor he pronounced as Iwa.

 

All of birth dates were also absolutely accurately given. Shanti was told

that she was an only child,who had been separated most of her life from her

father. (There will, it said, eventually be a reconciliation when she is

around thirty). She had, it was said, a child now aged five years. He has a

well developed sense of humour. All of this is entirely accurate. I was

told that I am the eldest child in a family of three boys and three girls.

Again, the stunning accuracy. There was more to it than this, of which more

in later chapters.

 

We then went to a far-off town (Koddai Kanal). I suggested that we could ask

Shanti's father and mother to fax their thumb prints so that we could by

proxy attempt to get a reading for them. In fact, before we left

Vaithishwarankoil, the naadi reader read out to us (during one of Shanti's

readings) that there would be a reading awaiting her father. Shanti was

adamant to me that her father would not co-operate. They had been separated

for most of her life, a fact which her reading from one of the naadi

chapters only too clearly referred to. I finally prevailed upon her to ring

him, which we did from a Koddai Kanal phone booth. I spoke to him as well.

After saying that readings were not really his thing,he agreed. Shanti's

surprise filled her whole demeanor. He not only faxed his own thumb print

but also that of his wife, Shanti's stepmother. Shanti's mother did not send

a thumb print.

 

It was at this point that Shanti revealed to me her very deep wish to be

reconciled with her all too physically and emotionally absent father. I was

very touched by this. Old pain of hers surfaced as if it had just been

inflicted. On her own, she then made the very demanding journey back to the

two naadi libraries we had visited, at Thanjavore and Vaithishwarankoil. She

says that, at Vaithishwarankoil, the naadi reader took only about half an

hour to find corresponding leaves that related to the thumb prints we only

days ago received from Australia. The readings

were incredibly accurate. They gave detail after detail not only of her

father but also, in a naadi found by means of the left thumb print alone of

her stepmother. Indeed, it was not until she got home to Australia that

Shanti was able to learn the factuality of statements beyond those of which

she, Shanti, already knew about her father and stepmother. She also got a

chapter concerning her son. She reports that the reader had almost given up

on locating this leaf, but finally found it. Again, the accuracy.

 

From October, 1999, in looking for people with any experience or knowlege of

the naadis, I've sent out two thousand emails to ashrams, temples,

astrologers, institutes, universities, Indian penpal resources on the

Internet, and other resources. One can throw almost forty search engines at

a time, and yet come up with very little on the naadis on the Internet.

Slowly, painstakingly, I'm " getting there. " A database of a wide diversity

of peoples' experience of the naadis of various traditions begins to look

impressive. I have managed to compile a list of some fifty naadi libraries

in different parts of India and in different traditions. I have found that

extremely few western Indologists know anything about the naadis.

 

(To be continued. This is a very early draft - up to May 01, 1999

 

Barry Pittard <bpittard

[Guest guest]

Dear Berry:

 

Thank you for giving such a very interesting account on naaDi SAStra. I

wish you all the success. I look forward to read, further postings of your

research findings, through this medium. All the best.

 

Regards,

Madhava

 

>

> Vivekananda Centre [sMTP:vivekananda]

> Friday, July 30, 1999 12:20 PM

> ramakrishna

> [ramakrishna] Saptarishi

>

> " Vivekananda Centre " <vivekananda

>

> in different parts of India and in different traditions. I have found

> that

> extremely few western Indologists know anything about the naadis.

>

> (To be continued. This is a very early draft - up to May 01, 1999

>

> Barry Pittard <bpittard

>

>

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