Vedic astrology prescribes muhurtas for both start of studies for kids as well as start of a new session in schools. These should be thought about as two different samskaras. While start of studies for a child is thought to be as aksharambha (अक्षरारंभ), start of a new session and acquiring new stream of knowledge is known as vidyarambha (विद्यारंभ). The two are different and should be treated differently.

Aksharambha (अक्षरारंभ)

Many of us already initiate our children to learning through usage of word cards, videos, books, etc. However, in the formal sense, education starts only when we send them to school. Hence, this is for a child going to starting studies and in modern context going to school for the first time.

Rishis have prescribed following for start of schooling:

• After praying to Ganesha, Lakshmi, Vishnu and Sarasvati, studies should be started on a day except Monday.
• Let the nakshatra be Anuradha, Revati, Ashwini, Chitra, Hasta, Swati, Puvarvasu, Pushya, Shravana.
• Tithi should be – 2, 3, 5, 10, 11, 12. These do not include Anadhaya tithis that were supposed to be holidays in ancient gurukulas, before we adapted Western concept of leave on Saturday and Sundays.
• No malefic influence on Lagna should exist. 8th house should be unoccupied.
• Jupiter, Mercury and Venus should be strong at the time of starting studies.
• Avoid Sun and Lagna to be in Gemini and Pisces rashis.

Vidyarambha (विद्यारंभ)

As I mentioned above, this is about starting learning a new stream of knowledge. For the same, we should

• Avoid anadhyaya tithis – 1, 8, 14, 15
• Avoid Mondays and Wednesdays
• Avoid Bharani, Kritika, Magha, Uttara Falguni and Uttara Ashadha

I will quickly enhance the article to include good/bad days in the month of June when most of the schools reopen.

What is in a name? Very much if the wit of man could find it out.

This small article on Jyotish is about selecting name of a child, mostly a new born baby based on her birth nakshatra. This is to be used during namakarana samskar, an important ceremony that is performed after 10th day of birth of the baby.

The idea is to find out the birth nakshatra and nakshatra pada, and name the baby according to the starting letter specified in the list below.

While using this methodology, there are two problems:

• The starting letters are too vague and most of the time no good baby names begin with the letter. E.g., I was born in PurvaFalguni Nakshatra, 2nd Pada. Hence my name is supposed to begin with “ta”. One of the names that I could be given was “Tarzan”. Nope, nothing doing… in the end, good sense prevailed and my parents did a decent job in choosing my name.
• The list is so small that it can cause tremendous amount of duplication.

To find out the starting letter of child’s name, look her Nakshatra and Nakshatra Pada up on birth chart generator page. Then come back to this page and look at the list. The letter to choose corresponds to the Pada. e.g. If Nakshatra is Purva Falguni, Second Pada, then the starting letter of the baby name should be “Ta” as it is second in the list. Similarly, if the Nakshatra is Anuradha, Third Pada, then the name should begin with “Noo” because it is third in the list. If you still have some doubt, please add a comment to this blog, or send me an email at “vedic dot astrology at gmail dot com”.

I have had a lot of visitors to my astrology web site complaining that they are not able to view this list of starting letter of names in one browser or the other because IE and Firefox are not always able to display Indic fonts properly. To solve all the problems once and for all, I have generated the list as an image and have stuck it to this blog.