VedaChartsBrihat Jataka
Brihat Jataka is one of the foundational works of jyotish, written by the polymath Varahamihira around the sixth century. Its 28 chapters move from the basic vocabulary of signs and planets through the placement rules that shape a life. As you read, the verses that describe your own chart are highlighted so the text speaks directly to your placements.
Varahamihira (c. 505–587 CE) was a sixth-century polymath: astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer at the court of King Vikramaditya in Ujjain. He synthesized the Indian, Greek (Yavana), and Egyptian astrological traditions circulating in his time and gave the resulting system a written backbone that almost every later commentator builds on. Brihat Jataka is the natal counterpart to his civic almanac Brihat Samhita; together the two works shaped over a millennium of Indian astrological practice. When Bhattotpala wrote his tenth-century commentary, when Mantreswara composed Phaladeepika, when Venkatesa Daivajna assembled Sarvartha Chintamani, they were all writing inside the framework Varahamihira set down here. If a single text deserves to be read first in jyotish, this is it.