Bṛhat-saṃhitā[a] is a 6th-centurySanskrit-language encyclopedia compiled byVarāhamihira in present-dayUjjain, 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 4000shlokas (verses).Sudhakara Dvivedi's edition of the text, withUtpala's commentary, contains 105 chapters, plus the last chapter containing the table of contents;H. Kern's edition contains an additional chapter (#36) titledRaja-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.[3]
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.[4]
The contents of the text fall into two major categories:anga andupanga. Theanga discusses divination based on planets,asterisms, and zodiac signs. Theupanga discusses a wide variety of other topics, as listed above. Varāhamihira does not discuss several traditional topics which he considers legendary and unscientific.[6]
The text displays Varāhamihira's skill as a poet:[7] it uses at least 63 different metres (Arya being the most frequent) in theBrihat-samhita.[8]
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 nowlost and is known only from Utpala's commentary onBrhat-samhita.[9]
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.[10][11]
Several chapters of the text - such asChitraymayura,Drgargala (Jalagala-shastra) andPrasada-lakshana - were studied as independent treatises by later scholars, who regarded Varāhamihira as an authority on a variety of topics.[12] 11th-century Iranian scholarAl-Biruni also quotes Brhat-samhita.[13]
Abd Al-Aziz ibn Shams ibn Baha' Nuri Dihlavwi (fl. c. 1350/1375) composedTarjamah i Barahi, a Persian translation ofBrhat-samhita, for the Delhi SultanFiruz Shah Tughluq.[14]
For modern scholars, the wide range of the text makes it a very useful source of history about the contemporary period.[6]
Printed editions and translations of the text include:[15]
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