Skyscript Astrology Forum

I'm just reviewing this topic today, and noted this statement by AJ:

AJ wrote:

“The value Robert Hand used of 22-21-50 for epoch January 1st, 1900 in Nova software matches the ayanamsa value used in Krishman’s Table of Houses (KPTofH for short) first published in 1986 by K Subramaniam.

I don’t know if this is the exact source that Hand originally used but regardless there is a minor problem, when Robert Hand pulled the value it is not for January 1st, 1900 but April 15th, 1900.

(Bolded italics mine.) The questionable source of Robert Hand's epoch value highlights the figures in the ayanamsa table I have, which is very precise as to degrees and minutes from the year from 1861 to 2103. Could this table have been the source of Hand's value? Because I didn't copy the title page, all we know is that these tables were in print in the 1980s when NOVA was being programmed. I know that I obtained these tables sometime after 1986 here in the United States in the San Francisco area. It's quite possible that an Indian astrologer giving classes on the west coast would also have visited Robert Hand's east coast area. Knowing Robert Hand, I think he would have been very careful in choosing his epoch value.

I still have NOVA running on a Windows 98 computer. I'll see if I can find the original documentation. As I remember, this documentation was very detailed.

Now I'm remembering. In the 1980s when NOVA was being sold, Robert Hand's company, Astrolabe, was marketing an astrology program from India, Astral 11, from a company in Bombay. I was helping to sell that program, so it seems that Robert Hand must have had more than casual contact with at least one Indian astrologer.

Astrolabe published a book in 1988, A User's Guide to Indian Astrology. Among the recommended reading was Krishnamurti's Casting the Horoscope. The publication date in the Astral 11 documentation is 1987, the same year I purchased NOVA. The scope of calculations in both programs was really incredible, considering that this was DOS, pre-windows, and prior to the Internet and instant publishing. Robert Hand was the programmer for NOVA.

Therese Hamilton wrote:I still have NOVA running on a Windows 98 computer. I'll see if I can find the original documentation. As I remember, this documentation was very detailed.

Thanks for the additional background Therese, this is very helpful. I actually contacted Rob Hand some time ago he said he didn't have access to Nova anymore because it is DOS based and also the ayanamsa didn't ring a bell with him. Once I get those pages from you they should help find the source. It also documents at least this table was in print. I'll find it, just may take some time working remotely. One of my primary contacts in India has been quiet for sometime. I hope they are okay. They actually have been quite helpful. I have reached out to some senior KP practitioners but have not been able to engage them. email addresses and stuff change over the years and one of them I know is getting quite late in years. Might even be dead for all I know. I persevere.

AJ wrote in reply to Martin (9 Jan 2022):

I assume that your comment was comparing Houck value to Solar Fire's Krishnamurti ayanamsa. It is also used in Swiss Ephemeris so most Western astrological software uses this value for KP ayanamsa. It turns out that the Solar Fire Krishnamurti ayanamsa is a bit of a special animal.

If you're using Solar Fire they use 22-21-50 (epoch Jan 1, 1900) which is off by 14.5" due to Robert Hand not realizing that the ayanamsa tables were calculated for April 15th. Clearly Hand pulled the values from KP Table of Houses (April 1986) or another reference that used those tables. This puts the difference between Houck and Solar Fire ayanamsa at 55 arcseconds.

I’ve been puzzling over the ayanamsa used in Solar Fire and then in the Swiss Ephemeris. But this may not be a dating mistake after all! The values agree with the undocumented table I’ve had since the 1980s (and have forwarded to AJ) which notes 22 21 50 for epoch Jan 1, 1900 with interpolations for each day of the year.

Remembering that I was a salesperson for the Indian Astral-11 astrology software program in the 1980s, I searched the documentation and found this paragraph:

“Krishnamurti’s ayanamsa has been found to be highly accurate for Vimsottari dasa calculations. If you wish to use this ayanamsa, manually subtract 5 minutes 47 seconds from the Lahiri ayanamsa (the program default)...???

This was of course prior to astrology software using the Swiss ephemeris. Testing this in a few Astral-11 printouts I still had in my files, this gives the precise values in the undocumented ayanamsa table (which AJ has labeled ‘Enhanced’ in our correspondence).

I’ve been thinking that perhaps this table was designed to be as close as possible to the Krishnamurti Reader #1 ayanamsa tables. For example if we take the January 1 1900 value of 22 21 50 as a benchmark and add 14 seconds to agree with the date of the Aries April ingress, the value is 22 22 04, only a few seconds different from Reader #1 figure of 22 22 00 (as no seconds were noted in the Reader). This is only supposition as we don't know the source of the 47 second adjustment from Lahiri.

It has been suggested that Reader #1 tables were meant to be for the date of the spring equinox in April rather than for the first of January. So this checks out by interpolating values for January 1900 in the Enhanced Krishnamurti tables: 22 21 50 plus 14" = 22 22 04

Is the object of making the ayanamsa values as close as possible to the Reader #1 table the source of the 5 min 47 second adjustment from the Lahiri ayanamsa? I don’t know, but it is very possible that the Solar Fire/Swiss Ephemeris tables used the same Indian source as Astral-11 since Rob Hand’s company, Astrolabe, was marketing Astral-11 here in America. The company no doubt had at least one Indian contact who visited Astrolabe headquarters.

I’ve also been considering that the reason K.S. Krishnamurti didn’t include seconds in his published ayanamsa table is that he may not have been sure himself of the precise second values, so chose to note only degrees and minutes for (we assume??) the April equinox. This means essentially that a precise to-the-arcsecond value of the KP ayanamsa is up for grabs and can be settled only by detailed research. Theory alone won't give us the answer.

I have two Jyotish programs which upon checking are using the Swiss Ephemeris values from the ‘Enhanced’ Krishnamurti tables:

Parashara’s Light 7.0.4 (March 2009) Geovision Software, Fairfield, Iowa, office in Jaipur, India.
True Astrology Software, Shejal Infotech, Jabalpur, India, V 5.71 (2018) (Programmed for S.P. Khullar)

I haven't looked into this at all, but as I recall, AJ mentioned mid-April rather than the spring equinox as the date for which the ayan??ṃśa appeared to have been calculated. That would coincide with the sidereal Aries ingress, which is also the Tamil New Year.

Therese Hamilton wrote: This was of course prior to astrology software using the Swiss ephemeris. Testing this in a few Astral-11 printouts I still had in my files, this gives the precise values in the undocumented ayanamsa table (which AJ has labeled ‘Enhanced’ in our correspondence).

I’ve been thinking that perhaps this table was designed to be as close as possible to the Krishnamurti Reader #1 ayanamsa tables. For example if we take the January 1 1900 value of 22 21 50 as a benchmark and add 14 seconds to agree with the date of the April equinox, the value is 22 22 04, only a few seconds different from Reader #1 figure of 22 22 00 (as no seconds were noted in the Reader). This is only supposition as we don't know the source of the 47 second adjustment from Lahiri.

Hi Therese:
Whoever set this table up, why not do the correct math? Just make it 22-21-46 for Jan 1, 1900 if they assumed it was exactly 22-22-00 for April 15... ???
But I think this supposition is as good an explanation as any. Without a formula for this particular ayanamsa it is hard to tell the rationale. It's just a matter of time to document this ayanamsa for clearly it has been in print and possibly additionally published in early issues of Astrology and Athrishta magazine. Once pinned down to its pub that may explain the values. It's very difficult for a western researcher at least to have ready access to this old print material and then it was mostly only of interest to students of KP Paddhati. The publisher has not answered me if they have an accessible archive or not. Covid has shut a lot of stuff down. I will try again in some months.

Therese Hamilton wrote:It has been suggested that Reader #1 tables were meant to be for the date of the spring equinox in April rather than for the first of January. So this checks out by interpolating values for January 1900 in the Enhanced Krishnamurti tables: 22 21 50 plus 14" = 22 22 04

Following the Indian tradition at that time it is believed that that Krishnamurti must have had Meesha Sankranti (ingress of sidereal Sun into Aries) in mind but KSK does not give an exact date, which leaves an uncertainty in his ayanamsa of 50???. Most ayanamsa tables that I have come across use this date, approx April 13-14 each year, often rounded to April 15th.

Therese Hamilton wrote:Is the object of making the ayanamsa values as close as possible to the Reader #1 table the source of the 5 min 47 second adjustment from the Lahiri ayanamsa? I don’t know, but it is very possible that the Solar Fire/Swiss Ephemeris tables used the same Indian source as Astral-11 since Rob Hand’s company, Astrolabe, was marketing Astral-11 here in America. The company no doubt had at least one Indian contact who visited Astrolabe headquarters.

Initial research (2022) suggests that this ayanamsa has mostly been referred to as KP Enhanced ayanamsa but I think this value should just be named KP Solar Fire or KPSF for short, to differentiate it from others. There is already too much confusion about same naming in the KP ayanamsa maelstrom. This ayanamsa has been with Solar Fire for two decades now, so right or wrong, it's part of the astrological landscape. At least in the west it has a provenance coming down through Nova software and then SolarFire. It’s really too late to change or update it, just add another version to the greater KP ayanamsa family.

It has been a 4 decade debate and earnest struggle within the KP community since KSKs death to refine his original ayanamsa and at different times since, one or the other has been the unofficial favorite. I have documented 4 and with the one you sent there is now 5! The KP Enhanced Ayanamsa may have been an early favorite until it was superseded by other proposed ayanamsa within the KP community as time went on. KP Enhanced ayanamsa is within 14" of the KP Table of Houses ayanamsa which is given for April 15th. In all other respects they are identical. My thought is that it's the same table and just one was assigned for Jan 1, the other to April 13-14th because 14" is the precessional correction for that 105 day calendar period.

In 2003 to settle the confusions, KSK's 2nd son and editor of Astrology and Athrishta magazine, which was the original magazine KSK founded, declared that the KP NEW AYANAMSA supersedes all previously published tables. A formula and tables were provided to calculate the ayanamsa for any date in K.P. & Astrology Yearbook 2003, the table is on pages 92-93. You have to be careful though with the naming conventions in KP ayanamsas, some are called by the same names especially in KP software. SJS is the same, their KP New identical to KP Straight Line Ayanamsa (KPSLA). (Note that KPSLA is 6 arcminutes too high from KP Original for epoch 1950 and also within a half arcminute to Lahiri ayanamsa).

I'm sure the argument is never going to be entirely settled.

For reference the Official KP NEW: For April 15th, 1900 the value is 22-22-30, for Jan 1, 1900 the value is 22-22-16.

Therese Hamilton wrote:I’ve also been considering that the reason K.S. Krishnamurti didn’t include seconds in his published ayanamsa table is that he may not have been sure himself of the precise second values, so chose to note only degrees and minutes for (we assume??) the April equinox. This means essentially that a precise to-the-arcsecond value of the KP ayanamsa is up for grabs and can be settled only by detailed research. Theory alone won't give us the answer.

Yes, that is essentially my conclusion as well. KSK took all those answers to his grave. His zero year of 291CE is a mystery too. Again he does not give a precise date and using Newcomb's Precessional Model it doesn't exactly jive with his table as it gives a value almost an arcminute to high compared to KP Enhanced, the one in Solar Fire.
Blessings,
~AJ

AJ, thanks so much for your detailed thoughts and information in response to my post. I'm printing your reply for my ayanamsa file, and hope I'll be around to read your competed KP research. In the meantime I might as well continue using my Swiss ephemeris based software as the Krishnamurti value is accurate enough to give interesting research results (in relation to the ascendant and MC) as Atlantean has been posting and which I'm finding myself for various small projects.

Many thanks again for opening a whole new area of KP research and data that I hadn't been previously aware of!

Therese

Martin wrote:

I haven't looked into this at all, but as I recall, AJ mentioned mid-April rather than the spring equinox as the date for which the ayan??ṃśa appeared to have been calculated. That would coincide with the sidereal Aries ingress, which is also the Tamil New Year.

Yes, you are correct! I changed the text to 'Aries April ingress.'

Therese Hamilton wrote:AJ, thanks so much for your detailed thoughts and information in response to my post. I'm printing your reply for my ayanamsa file, and hope I'll be around to read your competed KP research. In the meantime I might as well continue using my Swiss ephemeris based software as the Krishnamurti value is accurate enough to give interesting research results (in relation to the ascendant and MC) as Atlantean has been posting and which I'm finding myself for various small project.

You're welcome Therese, thanks to for bringing up many salient points and the references and history on origins of the Solar Fire ayanamsa.
Martin: Thanks for your contributions too.
None of my research calls into question the efficacy of KSK's ayanamsa, it is merely pointing out that rather than thinking in terms of 1 ayanamsa we have to think in terms of many Krishnamurti ayanamsas. It is up to the practitioner to make the decision of what works best for them KP Paddhati or other. In most work an arcminute two or three difference is of little consequence.

What led to this paper was a collaborative research project with another astrologer. Being from different backgrounds, my colleague in traditional western astrology, mine in Indian astrology, our primary astrological software was different. I knew initially that the Krishnamurti ayanamsa between our software varied slightly but thought this would not affect our combined results much. As the research project moved forward our ayanamsa settings needed to be much closer, that is, within arcseconds of each other. That’s when I began to research Krishnamurti’s ayanamsa between our software, which led me down a rabbit hole of sorts. It wasn’t long before inconsistencies and confusions came to light so by then I just wanted to understand how Krishnamurti’s ayanamsa came about and make this more widely known.

To be fair, it can also be said NC Lahiri changed his ayanamsa slightly over the years and the Calendar Reform Committee adopted a slightly 'imperfect' implementation of his ideal ayanamsa in the late 50s. Lahiri really intended that Chitra to be the fiducial star at 0 Libra. The Calendar Reform Committee used a more traditional approach to calculate the ayanamsa. To truly use Chitra as fiducial you have to take in account the actual proper motion the star and the small change in orientation of the ecliptic plane. This led to the development of the ChitraPaksha ayanamsa is based on the exact astronomical position of Chitra (Spica in the west) which is about an arcminute higher than the official Lahiri ayanamsa.

In the same sense there are a few different Lahiri ayanamsas to choose from but this is all very minor calculation stuff. The values adopted by the Indian Calendar Reform Committee is the standard for Lahiri ayanamsa.

This is another topic entirely and don't have time to get into at the moment. It's certainly not as convoluted as the KP ayanamsa history. It's all pretty well documented whereas KSK left us with a true dark cloud of unknowing around his.

Therese: Since you couldn't find one I constructed a table of Lahiri ayanamsa for the 20th century for your research that you were looking for. Any Forum members that would like a copy can PM me unless you are a jazz musician, please include your email address.

Blessings,
~AJ

AJ wrote:

Therese: Since you couldn't find one I constructed a table of Lahiri ayanamsa for the 20th century for your research that you were looking for. Any Forum members that would like a copy can PM me...

Thank you, AJ. This table has been very helpful in comparing the Lahiri and KP ayanamsas which influenced the thoughts in my next post, (or added to this post if there are no new messages in this thread). The figures in your table are one or two arcseconds higher than values given by the AstroSage calculator. This doesn't seem to be significant unless I'm adjusting for the KP ayanamsa for to-the-arcsecond precision. The AstroSage calculator is noted as "Beta" which I presume means that it hasn't been methodically checked for precision or to-the-arcsecond accuracy.

Therese Hamilton wrote:The figures in your table are one or two arcseconds higher than values given by the AstroSage calculator. This doesn't seem to be significant unless I'm adjusting for the KP ayanamsa for to-the-arcsecond precision. The AstroSage calculator is noted as "Beta" which I presume means that it hasn't been methodically checked for precision or to-the-arcsecond accuracy.

Who knows what AstroSage is using for their algorithm, or epoch value; as mentioned before some of their other calculated ayanamsas differ slightly too. If you really look under the hood of Lahiri ayanamsa there are a few slightly different ways to calculate it all giving much the same values within a few seconds. I do know the ayanamsa values and explanations given in the Indian Astronomical Ephemeris are confusing and they have slightly tweaked how Lahiri ayanamsa is calculated over the years.

The values in that table are directly from Swiss Ephemeris' standard Lahiri ayanamsa according to Indian Astronomical Ephemeris (IAE) 1985.
I don't think you can get any better than the Swiss Ephemeris developers.

These are exactly the same/match as published in their online Lahiri sidereal ephemeris.
Any software that uses Swiss Ephemeris and implements their standard Lahiri ayanamsa the values should be the same.

Therese Hamilton wrote:The AstroSage calculator is noted as "Beta" which I presume means that it hasn't been methodically checked for precision or to-the-arcsecond accuracy.

Hi Therese: I went to the AstroSage ayanamsa calculator and spent a little time there. Here are some thoughts. It consistently (as you point out) gives Lahiri ayanamsa values an arcsecond or two to low compared to Swiss Ephemeris. This does not appear to be a rounding error to me. I can only speculate it is the formula they are using.

The KP NEW in their calculator also gives results that are a arcsecond to low compared to the tables in K.P. & Astrology Yearbook 2003, P. 92-93.

As for what they are using for KP Old is a little unusual. It doesn't match up well to any KP ayanamsa values I have. It comes closest to KP Enhanced (-11 arcseconds). That of course does not mean it is not based on an existing Krishnamurti ayanamsa value. What is a bit puzzling is that it is generally assumed that KSK's original ayanamsa of 22-22 is 22-22-00 for April 15th, 1900. AstroSage has 22-22-15 for this date, it seems they assume KSK's value is for January 1st, 1900 due to the 14" precessional correction between these dates.

Anyway just thought this might interest you.