Article text is currently English only. The calculation below and the rest of the interface follow your chosen language.
In short
Jyotish is the classical Indian discipline that covers both calculating the positions of the heavenly bodies and reading a birth from them. BPHS calls it a limb of the Vedas with three divisions: Hora, Ganita and Samhita. On this site it means sidereal, Parashara-led chart work: positions computed by modern astronomical formulas, then read by rules taken from the classical texts.
What the term means
Jyotish (also written Jyotisha) is the classical Indian discipline that both calculates where the heavenly bodies stand and reads what a birth under them is taken to mean. On this site the word covers the whole chain this app runs for a birth. It places the nine grahas against the stars, cuts that circle into twelve rashis and twenty-seven nakshatras, finds the rising sign, and then applies the classical rules to that chart. Numerology is a separate system here, with its own books and its own engine.
Where the term comes from
BPHS opens with it. In Ch. 1 Sl. 1-4 Maitreya calls Jyotish "the supreme limb of the Vedas" and names its three divisions: Hora, Ganita and Samhita, and calls Hora, which the translation glosses as the general part, the most excellent of the three. Ch. 3 Sl. 2-6 then lays out the frame: the nakshatras do not move, the grahas move through them, the same circle is divided into twelve rashis from Mesha, and the rising rashi is the Lagna. Sl. 8-9 say the positions are to be taken "as per Drikganit", and the Lagna from the rising times of the rashis at the birth place. The book closes (Ch. 97 Sl. 1-4) by calling itself a Vedanga Jyotish Shastra.
How this app uses it
- The positions are calculated by modern astronomy, not by the texts, which (as Ch. 3 Sl. 8-9 shows) start with the positions in hand. The Sun and Moon come from Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms, Mercury to Saturn from published Keplerian elements, and Rahu is the Moon's mean node. The project's own rules document says this is accurate to well inside a nakshatra but is not a full ephemeris.
- The positions are moved onto the star-based zodiac with the Lahiri ayanamsa, which is what makes the chart sidereal in the sense Parashara's fixed nakshatras require.
- The reading is a set of named rules from BPHS, Saravali and the other books in the project's library, applied to that one chart and cited where they are used.
Pages that use this term
- Ketu in Vedic astrology - the graha the texts tie to skill in Jyotish.
- Ketu in the 5th house - quotes BPHS on Ketu in the 5th from the Karakamsa and learning in Jyotish.
- Methodology - the calculation side worked through one birth, step by step.
- Kundali - where the computed chart and its readings are laid out together.
- Birth chart calculator - the core chart, free and without an account.
- Sources - the books the rules are taken from.
Related terms
- Kundali - the chart Jyotish reads.
- Lagna - the rising sign, which BPHS makes the starting point.
- Sidereal zodiac - the star-fixed circle the positions are measured on.
- Ephemeris - the table of positions, and what this app uses in its place.