Date: Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 7:30 PM
Subject: Regarding Parasara's Drigdasa (Re: JH71 Drigdasa change - to Narasimhaji)
To: jhora@yahoogroups.com
Cc: sohamsa@yahoogroups.com
Dear Sundeep,
>I still think both algorithms should be
> shown and attributed in JH 7.1, while only the one of your choice
> should be recommended.
By any chance, are you thinking that I replaced one version of drigdasa with another, i.e. deleted the old version from JHora?
If so, that is not true. Click the options button when displaying drigdasa. Both the algorithms are available in JHora 7.1 and labeled appropriately. You can choose either of them. Of course, my choice (Parasara's version) is the default.
> You have made some change
> that makes Parasara's Drigdasa show up differently. It was not a bug
> in your software, but a *change in the algorithm*.
I did NOT make any "change" in "Parasara's drigdasa". In fact, "Parasara's drigdasa" was not even available in JHora until now. There was a "drigdasa" available in previous JHora, which was based on Sanjay's teachings that were repeated by several SJC teachers including me. But those teachings were NOT based on Parasara's teachings. The drigdasa Sanjay taught was based on his memory of the interpretation of one CRYPTIC line of Jaimini by his elders.
In JHora 7.1, drigdasa as taught by Parasara was added for the first time. This is an *addition* and not a "change".
In JHora 7.03, there was only one drigdasa and it was just called "Drigdasa". Now that there are two versions, proper labeling is needed. The old drigdasa from JHora 7.03 was renamed as "Drigdasa (taught by SJC teachers in 1998-2007)". Sanjay, I and Robert and perhaps other SJC teachers taught it in books and articles in this time period and hence the name. The newly added version based on a translation of Parasara's unambiguous verses was named as "Drigdasa taught by Parasara".
If Parasara's verses were ambiguous and my translation was different from Santhanam's (or someone else's), I would have marked the variations by our names. Given that Parasara's verses are unambiguous and all translators I have seen so far translated the same way (including my own translation), I see absolutely no need to add my name in the dasa.
* * *
Just some background...
A few years back, I stumbled on the verses on drigdasa in BPHS. I noticed that sthira dasa years were used instead of chara dasa years and the direction of reckoning aspects was determined differently. Thus, dasa calculation differs from Sanjay's teaching based on Jaimini's cryptic line.
When I brought the differences to Sanjay's attention, he told me that he did not study this dasa in that much detail and that it was one of the many dasas on which he took down notes from his uncle on one afternoon. He said there *could* be mistakes and Parasara's version could be correct.
I was still not fully satisfied. As there was no ambiguity in the verses, I was confident that the calculations were right. But I could not find any more consistent results than with Sanjay's version. I knew there was some missing link that still needed to be discovered. I put it on the hold (just as so many other issues are, even now).
One day, it came in a flash. When Narayana dasa starts from 7th house, we take the 7th from dasa sign as progressed lagna. Similarly, if drigdasa which starts from the 9th house is the progression of the 9th house, the the 5th house from dasa sign must be the progressed lagna!
Once I applied that idea, this dasa worked fantastically in every spiritualist chart I tried. It works impeccably and with amazing consistency.
In my first article in Jyotish Digest on drigdasa, I explained how Jaimini's cryptic line could also be interpreted to mean the same thing Parasara taught. Thus, it is likely that what we taught earlier is simply wrong and this is the correct thing.
There are a lot of things we teach, which do not work very consistently. I consider Tithi pravesha and Parasara's drigdasa the most consistent and near-perfect techniques that I had the previlege of teaching. Most other techniques I know are quite imperfect and need corrections. I am confident that there are errors in even simple building blocks like chara karaka calculation.
I re-iterate - my contribution is in finding one core principle related to the judgment of this drigdasa and the calculations themselves are clear from BPHS. In fact, even my contribution in terms of judgment is a minor one. Now that I know it, it seems quite obvious and straight-forward and I wonder why I had to wait for a couple of years to get it!
If you are genuinely interested in drigdasa and in timing spiritual matters, please read my articles on Parasara's drigdasa in the last two issues of Jyotish Digest. If Sanjay ji agrees, I'd love to put the articles in PDF format on the web. Let us see.
Best regards,
Narasimha
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---- vedicastrostudent <vedicastrostudent@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Narasimhaji,
> Thanks for informing me about the default language setting!
>
> Regarding your comment:
>
> "Regarding drigdasa, I disagree. There is no need to add my name. My
> contribution in the 2008 articles is in the judgment rules of the
> dasa and not in the calculations. JHora gives calculations and not
> judgments. The calculations are exactly as interpreted by Santhanam
> in his translation of BPHS and, in fact, I expect anybody to
> translate the same way. If somebody else in future interprets
> Parasara differently and that interpretation is added to JHora, then
> we can think of qualifiers/adjectives to the name. For now, there is
> no need for any additional qualifiers/adjectives apart from
> Parasara's name."
>
> I remain unconvinced. For a layperson like myself, the entire
> judgement + calculation is a black box. You have made some change
> that makes Parasara's Drigdasa show up differently. It was not a bug
> in your software, but a *change in the algorithm*. That change:
> (a) Was a non-obvious one, because hundreds of astrologers, many of
> them excellent, including yourself, were unable to detect any
> problem from 1999-2007, either in its theory or in its results(!!).
> It is not as if the change is minor - in my case, it changes the
> dasas significantly, I am assuming it does so in many other cases as
> well. So this change is NOT a fine tuning, but has major impact.
> (b) Required you to present your change at a conference and get the
> assent of your peers and gurus before you brought it into your
> software.
> Both of the above, in any other field, would *require* that you
> label this change as significant and identify it distinctly. By
> simply "sliding" it in, it looks like it is a bug fix or an
> optimization and it is neither of the two, but a significant
> algorithmic change of major impact.
>
> As always, this is JMHO. I still think both algorithms should be
> shown and attributed in JH 7.1, while only the one of your choice
> should be recommended.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sundeep
>
>
