Anusha S Rao is the author of How to Love in Sanskrit and likes writing new things about very old things. @AnushaSRao2
Credit: DH Illustration
With the election results now out, and all the politicians of competing formations scrambling to present a united front, it is time to think about how the exit polls were so wildly off-mark. All the political analysts are welcome to think about why the exit polls were misleading, and why the BJP’s campaign backfired -- after all, hindsight is 20-20. Among all this political punditry, there’s another kind of pundit having his say – the astrologer. There are a spate of articles examining the election results in light of Modi’s horoscope with a supposedly Scorpio ascendant. Someone even tried using I-Ching to make election predictions. But why resort to imported mumbo-jumbo when we have the home-grown variety that does the task nicely! So, here is a peek into the rich tradition of astrology and false predictions in Sanskrit literature.
Granted, Sanskrit takes some jyotisha seriously, but the astrologer is one of the stock characters in Sanskrit satire -- criticised both for his ineptitude at his professed job, as well as his attempts to wilfully deceive his customers. The astrologer in Kashmiri poet Kshemendra’s Narmamala, for instance, always checks upcoming weather from fishermen before making any predictions about the rains. As Kshemendra opines here, mix a little astrology with some general knowledge, some incantations, and a little knowledge of medicine, and you are well poised to fool a lot of idiots.
And Nilakanta Dikshita knows how astrologers thrive on ambiguity -- his advice is to tell people, “This could go two ways...there will be good times and bad...it’s all a mixed bag.” He also recommends that an astrologer always maintain plausible deniability -- tell the mother it will be a girl, and the father that it will be a boy!
Of course, one could also take one’s fortune into one’s own hands. The legend of the god Srinivasa of Tirupati tells us that he once went on a hunting expedition, where he came across the princess Padmavati and fell in love at first sight. He wanted to marry her. But given that he was a nobody while she was a princess, he did not trust his foster mother, Vakuladevi, to arrange his wedding with Padmavati successfully, and so decided to intervene on his own behalf. He disguised himself as a fortune teller and made his (or her, in the disguise) way to the palace, lingering until the women there summoned the fortune teller to predict the princess’s future. And then, happily, the fortune teller narrated how all the princess’s ills were a result of pining away for Srinivasa, and predicted a long and happy future for the princess once she married him. The ruse worked and the princess’s parents, the king and the queen, approved of the match.
And for those who still believe in the power of the planets to make or break our futures, a wise poet says: Shukra is blind in one eye, and Shani limps along on one leg. Rahu had half his body lopped off, and the moon wanes away. Not knowing how these planets suffer the results of their own doings, we still believe that they are punishing us for ours!