Future unveiled

By Vandana Shukla

SINCE the past is gone, present is known, only future holds mystery. Human mind has tried to probe the future through various theories and sciences. Palmistry, numerology, astrology or tarot cards provide answers to man’s insatiable appetite to know the unknown. Our mythologies are full of tales of people attributed with supernatural powers to look into the future.

Maharishi Vyas could foresee the doom of Kuru vansh in the Mahabharata. Since we have a tendency to look down upon things Indian as backward and superstitious, we often prefer quoting from western systems of future predictions.

Lately, Nostradamus’ predictions have hogged enough limelight because it comes from Europe. The Orientals and the Arabs were the ones to achieve considerable advancement in these sciences. The Arabs and the Chinese systems apart, the various schools that were developed in India hold a lot of authentic appeal and continue to amaze the modern mind.

Perhaps most amazing of these is the Bhrigu Samhita, supposed to have been written a few thousand years ago. It continues to baffle those who have the opportunity to see their life mystery unscrolled. The Bhrigu Samhita is said to have been penned down by Shukracharya, dictated by rishi Bhrigu, who had mastered the Brahma Vidya. As the legend goes, Bhrigu was born of fire. His body was charred yet the illumination of knowledge made him shine like fire. There is a myth behind the writing down of Bhrigu Samhita. Since Bhrigu was very learned, his ego was difficult to appease. Once, in anger he kicked Lord Vishnu on the chest. This infuriated Lakshmi who cursed Bhrigu that all coming generations of the Brahmins will have to bear the wrath of Lakshmi. Bhrigu realised his mistake and wanted to do something for the welfare of coming generations of the Brahmins. He then dictated Bhrigu Samhita so as to enable Brahmins to earn their bread and butter.

Bhrigu Samhita was originally a massive data on the birth charts of millions and trillions of human beings to inhabit this planet earth. It deals with their life spans, major achievements as well as losses. It also narrates a person’s previous births and the births to be. The Samhita was originally written in Pali which was perhaps later translated into Prakrit and then into Sanskrit. A few families now claim to possess parts of what must have been a massive store of data on birth, death and rebirth of human beings.

In Hoshiarpur, Pandit Ritesh Sharma who belongs to the eighth generation of a family that possesses tonnes and tonnes of paper consisting of Bhrigu Samhita says his great-great-grandmother, seven generations back happened to be a Sanskrit scholar. Once she bought something in the market that came wrapped in a paper. She realised the paper was part of the Bhrigu Samhita. Her inquisitiveness led her to a kabariwalla (junk-dealer) who had tonnes of paper, all of which contained horoscopes from Bhrigu Samhita. Since then the family has been trying its best to preserve this treasure of remarkably intriguing system of knowledge.

Almost all the members of the Sharma family are involved in this work. They have a central pool, a sort of data bank where all the horoscopes are preserved. Once a person approaches them with place and time of birth, they try to locate the desired horoscope in this massive pool. Millions of horoscopes are indexed geographically by the names of the river sides. Geographical regions transcend modern national boundaries. Manu Desh stands for present Europe, Patal Desh for the USA, Yavan Prant for Middle-East etc. Interestingly, horoscopes of foreigners do not mention the caste under which a person is born.

Pandit Sharma who has to observe an austere lifestyle, as directed in the Samhita to carry out this work, finds preservation of the Samhita the most difficult task. The paper is tattered, the ink is dimmed, some horoscopes are written on tree barks and are fragile and difficult to handle. Sometime back a lot of paper was eaten by termite. Since then, they have laminated each paper manually. There is no chance of getting it micro-filmed since the paper is now almost brittle and hard to handle. Have they ever approached the government for help, since this is a part of our unique heritage which should be preserved? When Pt. Sharma was asked this question, he said: "Governments find it difficult to preserve themselves how are they bothered about these things?".

The Samhita is based on the theory of Karma. Sceptics may raise doubts, but those, who have had the opportunity of listening to their scroll find a few things amazing, particularly the time mentioned for each individual when the person would approach them to listen to his chart of karma, says Pt. Sharma. He himself has been amazed so often by the accuracy of time penned down thousands of years back. He refuses to see ordinary horoscopes, since dealing with the ultimate knowledge he finds the rest of astrology mere jargon.

It is not possible for everybody to find his or her horoscope in the pool. Pt. Sharma says he cannot claim to possess the whole granth, perhaps parts are in Meerut and in Rajasthan. Part could also be in Tibet since, he says, he has been visited by a few monks who mention a similar scripture having been written in Tibet in Pali. The amazing accuracy of the predictions contained in the granth attract all — rich, poor, educated and illiterate. His clientele includes the who is who of not only from within the country but from abroad as well.

The tendency to know future is universal, it intrigues us all. The predictions of the gypsy woman in Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago played a major role in his life, Dr Harivansh Rai Bachchan talks about a sapphire in his autobiography that changed the course of his life. We possess many traditional systems of wisdom that our sceptical self refuses to believe yet the evident knowledge forces one to admit there is something enough to puzzle our smart limited knowledge.

What worries one is the fate of these systems of knowledge. The US Library Congress has more than 2000 manuscripts on our traditional medicine — the Ayurveda with better organised data and cataloguing than we can ever care for. In our callousness we are letting our wisdom slip out. One wonders if the Samhita will meet the same fate, as that of our precious archaeological sites.

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