Karma

Definition

Karma is the Sanskrit word for action, deed, and its consequence — the law of cause and effect by which the acts of former lives shape the conditions you meet now. The classical tradition sorts it into types: sanchita, the whole store accumulated from past lives; prarabdha, the ripened portion allotted to and faced in this life; and kriyamana or agami, the karma you make now through present action. In astrology the same word also names the tenth house, the karma bhava — the house of your action, profession, and work in the world.

In Tradition

Across the classical and modern Jyotish literature, the birth chart is read not as rigid predestination but as the visible record of ripening karma carried from previous lives — a map of tendencies and allotted experience. Sources broadly agree that the portion ripe for this life, prarabdha, must largely be lived through, while present action stays the changeable part. That is why the tradition pairs reading the chart with remedial measures.

In Practice

A jyotishi reads the chart as a time-profile of karma rather than a fixed sentence of fate, weighing which experiences are allotted to this life and which you may still shape by present choices. Sutton, deFouw and Svoboda mark off karma so intense it gives effectively fixed results — dridha — from progressively more alterable kinds, and infer a fixed outcome only where many chart factors point the same way. Prasna Marga instead builds prediction on dridha (deliberate) and adridha (accidental) karma, the astrologer telling which is operative from how the indicative planet relates to the Moon or the Sun. Reading from the tenth house, the karma bhava, Raman draws profession, life-work, and even renunciation. The Karma Vipaka tradition reads the birth nakshatra and pada for the specific past-life deed now ripening — disease, childlessness, loss of progeny — and prescribes penances, japa, homa, and charitable gifts (dana) to lessen or cleanse it.

Historical Origin

The doctrine is attested in classical Sanskrit texts — the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (on the tenth house, trans. Santhanam), the Prasna Marga (trans. B.V. Raman), and the Shiva-Parvati dialogue Karma Vipaka Samhita — and elaborated by modern authors including Frawley, Sutton, Behari, Levacy, deFouw and Svoboda, Raman, and Rao.

Further Reading

• Santhanam, Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, Ch.21 Sl.2 (Notes)
• Raman, Prasna Marga, Part I Ch.I St.33-39
• Raman, Prasna Marga, Part I St.101-103
• Raman, Prasna Marga, Part II Ch.XXIII Sl.1 (Notes)
• Tripathi, Karma Vipak Samhita (Shiva-Parvati samvada), Editor's Introduction and Ch.1
• Ajay D.N, Karma Vipaaka Samhita, Ch.13-31
• Frawley, The Astrology of the Seers, Sanskrit Glossary
• Levacy, Beneath a Vedic Sky, Introduction
• Sutton, The Essentials of Vedic Astrology, Introduction and Glossary
• Behari, Fundamentals of Vedic Astrology
• Behari, Vedic Astrologer's Handbook, Volume II: Planets in Signs and Houses
• Raman, How to Judge a Horoscope, Volume Two
• Raman, Notable Horoscopes, Index of Technical Terms
• deFouw & Svoboda, Light on Life, Ch.2 — Karma and Jyotish
• Rao, Yogis, Destiny and the Wheel of Time, Ch.9