''Bṛhat-saṃhitā'' is a 6th-century

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

-language encyclopedia compiled by Varāhamihira in present-day

Ujjain Ujjain (, , old name Avantika, ) or Ujjayinī is a city in Ujjain district of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It is the fifth-largest city in Madhya Pradesh by population and is the administrative as well as religious centre of Ujjain ...

, India. Besides the author's area of expertise— astrology and astronomy—the work contains a wide variety of other topics.His book is divided into 3 sections namely Tantra, Hora and Samhita.

According to the penultimate verse of the text, it contains 100 chapters in less than 4000 ''

shloka Shloka or śloka ( , from the root , Macdonell, Arthur A., ''A Sanskrit Grammar for Students'', Appendix II, p. 232 (Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 1927).) in a broader sense, according to Monier-Williams's dictionary, is "any verse or stan ...

s'' (verses). Sudhakara Dvivedi's edition of the text, with Utpala's commentary, contains 105 chapters, plus the last chapter containing the table of contents; H. Kern's edition contains an additional chapter (#36) titled ''Raja-lakshnam''. According to Utpala, Varahamihira excludes five chapters from the contents, thus arriving at 100 as the number of chapters; However, Varahamihira himself excludes 3 more chapters from the table of contents, bringing the number of chapters to only 97; so, it is not clear how exactly is the number 100 is arrived at. Utpala cites the authorship of one of the excluded chapters to Vidhya-vasin. He also declares four verses to be spurious, and does not comment on two additional verses, which suggests that these may be later interpolations. The contents of the text fall into two major categories: ''anga'' and ''upanga''. The ''anga'' discusses divination based on planets, asterisms, and zodiac signs. The ''upanga'' discusses a wide variety of other topics, as listed above. Varāhamihira does not discuss several traditional topics which he considers legendary and unscientific. The text displays Varāhamihira's skill as a poet: it uses at least 63 different metres (Arya being the most frequent) in the ''Brihat-samhita''. 6th-century Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira, 1279 CE Hindu text palm leaf manuscript, Pratima lakshana, Sanskrit, Nepalaksara script, folio 1 talapatra from a Buddhist monastery, 1v, 2r 2v leaves.jpg , 1279 CE palm-leaf manuscript from a Buddhist monastery 6th-century Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira, Hindu text copied and preserved in a Jain temple, paper manuscript, Sanskrit, Devanagari script, incomplete folio 1r 1v 2r leaves.jpg , Devanagari manuscript from a Jain temple 6th-century Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira, Bhattotpala commentary manuscript, Chapter 3, Sanskrit, Grantha script, palm leaf 1 2r 2v.jpg , Manuscript with Utpala's commentary in

Grantha script The Grantha script (; ; ) is a classical South Indian Brahmic script, found particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Originating from the Pallava script, the Grantha script is related to Tamil and Vatteluttu scripts. The modern Malayalam script ...

Influence

Varāhamihira's text became far more popular than earlier similar texts, because of its comprehensiveness, lucidity, appealing presentation, and literary merit. He wrote an abridged version of the text, '' Samāsa Saṃhitā'', which is now lost and is known only from Utpala's commentary on ''Brhat-samhita''. According to Varāhamihira, in some verses he was merely summarizing earlier existing literature on astronomy, ''Shilpa Sastra'' and temple architecture, yet his presentation of different theories and models of design are among the earliest texts that have survived. Several chapters of the text - such as ''Chitraymayura'', ''Drgargala'' (''Jalagala-shastra'') and ''Prasada-lakshana'' - were studied as independent treatises by later scholars, who regarded Varāhamihira as an authority on a variety of topics. 11th-century Iranian scholar

Al-Biruni Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (; ; 973after 1050), known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern ...

also quotes Brhat-samhita. Abd Al-Aziz ibn Shams ibn Baha' Nuri Dihlavwi (fl. c. 1350/1375) composed ''Tarjamah i Barahi'', a Persian translation of ''Brhat-samhita'', for the Delhi Sultan Firuz Shah Tughluq. For modern scholars, the wide range of the text makes it a very useful source of history about the contemporary period.

Editions

Printed editions and translations of the text include: * 1895-97, Varanasi: Edited with Bhattotpala's commentary by Sudhakara Dvivedi (2 volumes) * 1865, Calcutta: Edited by H. Kern * 1870-1875: English translation by H. Kern in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society * 1947, Bangalore: Text with English translation by V. Subrahmanya Sastri and M. Ramakrishna Bhat (2 volumes)

Notes

References

Bibliography

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External links