India, a country blessed with one of the oldest civilizations, has introduced or inherited, a number of human life cycle related sciences that are not in practice or known to the western civilization. Jothisham, a branch of astronomical science, is one such unique discipline. It is, to a great extent, used to predict the future life cycle of an individual, by the astrologers. The exact birth time of the individual, is noted to determine the positions of various grahams in his/her horoscope chart. Based on the positions, the life cycle predictions are made. It is stressed that accurate predictions are possible only when the exact birth time of an individual is obtained. It is a known fact that even a single second variation will impact the horoscope predictions.
The horoscope matching has got a close relationship with child marriages in India. When a school going boy and a small girl were subjected to undergo a marriage during earlier times the horoscope matching was considered essential. The matching gave the parents an idea about the future, social status, wealth conditions and above all longevity of the boy to perform the marriage. The natal charts or jadakams were used for the matching purposes.
The child marriages are banned in India and legally marriageable age for a woman is raised to 18 and a man to 21. Now, most of the present day women marry beyond 22 years and men beyond 25 years. The young men who set to marry are well educated, employed and almost settled in life. In such a situation the meticulous matching of horoscopes by both the parents before the conducting of the marriage can be termed as a superfluous exercise.
It is also an undeniable fact the metropolitan brought up, education and better employment empowers both the women and men and makes them more career oriented. Most of them look forward to settle in life with a reasonable designation in employment and adequate monetary cushion before agreeing to marry. In other words most of the women marry in the age of 27 to 30 or beyond and men marry almost beyond 30 years.
In such situations postponing the marriage to get a perfect horoscope match that satisfies both the parents will only spell doom to the marriage aspirants and delay their marriage aspirations further. It is advisable to give credibility only to the very basics of horoscope matching to finalise the marriage.
