The Texts · The Foundational Six
Bṛhat Pārāśara Horā Śāstra
बृहत्पाराशरहोराशास्त्र
Attributed to Maharṣi Parāśara (traditional) · Received text is a layered compilation — core placed around the 7th–8th century CE, with substantial later interpolation · jataka
On the dating: The attribution to the ancient sage Parāśara is traditional, not historical: Pingree treated the work as pseudepigraphic, no ancient manuscript is known, and Bhaṭṭotpala (10th c.) reports being unable to obtain a Parāśara horā. The modern printed recensions differ from one another — our own reading proved substantive divergences between the Santhanam and Sharma recensions in chapter 24.
What this text is
The fullest systematic treatise of Hindu natal astrology and the spine of the tradition as practiced today — read here with open eyes about its layered, late-compiled textual history.
Planet characterization, the sixteen divisional charts (vargas), house analysis through house lords (chapters 12–23), planetary states (avasthās), longevity, the yoga chapters (including Gaja-kesarī and Kemadruma), the full Vimśottarī daśā–antardaśā apparatus with its conditioning clauses, women’s charts, and remedial chapters including the Māṅgalika verses.
Its role in this app
The spine of our natal layer: the 144-cell house-lord (bhāveśa) matrix comes from chapters 12–23; the daśā chapters seat all 81 antardaśā pairs with their conditions restored; vargas and avasthās ride it. Our Kemadruma default is BPHS 37.11–13; the 34.15 kendra-koṇa cancellation ships as a reported flag because Phaladīpikā contradicts it; the honest four-house Māṅgalika verse (80.47) and the Manglik-marries-Manglik cancellation (80.48–49) come from here; the default combustion-orb table is Parāśara’s.
Editions our research holds
santhanam-fulltext
R. Santhanam English translation, full-text e-text — the extraction workhorse.
in copyright — read for verification only, never republished · scan quality: good
santhanam-english
R. Santhanam translation, vols. 1–2 (Ranjan 1984).
in copyright — read for verification only, never republished · scan quality: good
girish-chand-sharma-v1
Girish Chand Sharma translation, vol. 1 (Sagar) — a different recension from Santhanam’s.
in copyright — read for verification only, never republished · scan quality: poor
sudha-commentary-sanskrit-hindi
Dev Chandra Jha, Sudhā commentary (Kashi Sanskrit Series 220, Chaukhamba) — our best Sanskrit witness.
copyright status unclear — treated as in-copyright · scan quality: usable
What our reading found
Findings from this project's own verification passes — recorded because a source's defects are part of citing it honestly.
BPHS has no planets-in-houses chapter at all — chapters 12–23 work through house lords, and prose citing "BPHS, planets in bhāvas" overstates its seat. Reading chapter 24’s Sanskrit against the circulating English found harsh clauses deleted and conditions deleted or moved — the translation itself distorts in both directions. The two Sanskrit witnesses we hold diverge substantively at 24.86, 24.88 and 24.109, so one witness is not verification for this chapter. The full-text scan silently drops the English for 75.13–19 (present in the vol-2 copy). BPHS 39.33–34 pairs the 9th and 5th lords — not the 9th and 10th as a market rule claims.
Readings on this site cite texts at chapter level, with verse numbers only where our research verified the passage in a named edition. How conflicts between texts are resolved is documented on the conventions page.