Dear P.S.Narasimhan,
I do not know whether you are a vaishnavite. If you are a vaishnavite the matter reproduced below will make sense and will be helpful. I received this message when I was looking for a suitable girl for my nephew about an year back. Now please read on:
Dear parent,
Are you a vaishnavite/Aiyengar?
Are you looking for a match for your son/daughter?
Do you find Astrologers speaking in a language which is plain Latin to you?
If your answer to these questions is yes, then please read this fully. Otherwise just delete this and carry on with your chores. Thank you.
1. Know thyself
A vaishnavite is one who has accepted the Vedas as the ultimate pramaanam (unassailable truth) and Srimannarayanan as the God to be worshipped. For him all other gods in the Hindu pantheon are just devathas, who can not give him what he wants i.e. either Saayujyam/moksham after this world or lasting aayush, aarogyam, Aiswaryam etc., in this world. This is called 'ananyagathithvam' by learned men of the srivaishnava sampradhaayam. A 'prapannan' or one who has done prapatti/saranaagati has unwavering faith in these tenets. This is the reason why srivaishnavites do not offer navagrahatarpanam (aadityam tarpayami, somam tarpayami….sanaicharam tarpayami etc.,) while offering kesavaathi tarpanam during the sandhyaavandanam thrice every day. For a vaishnavite the planets are just devathas and they do what the God has ordained. Also a vaishnavite believes that his birth, fortunes, pleasures, pains, sufferings, destiny and death are determined only by his own praaraptha and sanjitha karmas which are nullified by Srimannarayana once he performed the prapatti/saranagati in his lifetime.
The very fact that you are a vaishnavite means you have accepted these Vedic truths. You might have learnt these facts from books or through listening to elders' advices and religious discourses or you might have simply inherited this sampradhaayam from your forefathers who at some point in the endless chain of generations would have consciously accepted this sampradhayam as the only true path to salvation. Either way it does not matter because you are a member of the vaishnavite community which follows the best system of religious philosophy known to mankind. This is not a boastful, hollow claim because this write-up has been prepared by one who has studied comparative religious philosophy (of major religions of the world) as the subject for his Doctoral research.
So in a gist, there are two important points. 1) a vaishnavite worships only Srimannarayana and does not believe that other smaller devathas can do anything good or bad to him. 2) a vaishnavite also believes that his birth, death and life are determined only by his own karmas which can be nullified by saranagati to Srimannarayana.
2. What are you doing?
a) If the girl's star is Rohini it will affect the health of the uncles of the girl as well as the boy marrying her.
b) If the girl's star is Ayilyam, it is not good for the mother-in-law.
c) If the girl's star is Kettai, it is not good for the elder brother of the boy marrying her.
d) If the girl's or boy's star is Moolam, it is not good for the father-in-law.
e) If the girl's star is Pooradam, it is not good for the mother-in-law.
You would have heard the above five judgments/assertions from the old ladies in the family repeatedly. Every time you get a horoscope of a girl/boy whose other qualifications/eligibilities are outstanding you would have been intimidated by these superstitious assertions and would have meekly accepted it as the easy way out of a dilemma. Now being a vaishnavite how far are you right in doing that? Let us see.
First if you subject these assertions to the test of proof you would find that there is no truth in these statements. The following books/treatises are considered to be the basic and authoritative texts for the Jyotisha Shastra:
1. Brihat Samhita by Varahamihira
2. Brihat Jatakam by Varahamihira
3. Horasara by Prithyusas
4. Jataka Parijatham by Vaidhyanatha Dikshita
5. Jataka tatvam by Mahadeva
6. Uttarakaalamrutham by Kalidasa
7. Jatakadesamargam by Pothumanai Somadri
8. Jataka Alankaram by Ganesa Devajna
9. Sangetha Nidhi by Ramadayalu
10. Kalaprakasika, Sarvartha Chintamani, Paladipika etc., by later day Astrologers.
We engaged learned researchers to study these granthas in their oldest editions and the results of their study of these texts in their authentic form has led to the conclusion that the above statements about the stars are plain superstitions and are not supported by these granthas on Jyotisha Shastra.
In practice too we have records of many families where the daughter-in-laws with these stars did not bring any misfortune to the husband's family.
Having settled that issue let us see this from another more important angle:
If you are a vaishnavite and have accepted the fact that Srimannarayana is the ultimate truth and that other devathas cannot determine anything about you, then where is the question of their determining the life and death of you, your wife or your son? For that matter how can you believe that these devathas represented by the stars(actually the stars are not even devathas) will decide your health and fortunes? If you believe that your daughter-in-law's/son-in-law's star can determine your fortunes and health what happens to your higher belief (mahavishvaasam) on Srimannarayana? Don't you think that your saranagati to Srimannarayana is hollow and meaningless if you believe in the powers of these devathas?
Now again in a gist there are three points which have emerged: 1)The assertions about the stars is neither authentic nor supported by any of the ancient literature in Jyotisha Shastra.2)these assertions are neither supported by the experience in daily life as can be seen from the large number of happily married girls/boys born in these stars.3)If you still believe in these assertions it would mean that you consciously choose to be superstitious and that brings you in direct conflict with the Srivaishnava sampradhaayam to which you claim to belong.
3. Please think about this and then act.
So parents, when next time you go to an astrologer, make it clear to him that you are a vaishnavite and so you do not believe in the bad effects of stars and ask him only to look at the compatibility in other aspects alone. Better still - go to the temple and pray before Srimannarayanan and ask for his approval of a match.