Chandraचंद्र

Chandra (चंद्र), the Moon, presides over the mind in Hindu thought as the Sun presides over the self. Counted second among the Navagraha, the nine seizers whose positions frame every horoscope, he governs emotion, nourishment, the mother, and the tides of feeling that his own monthly swelling and shrinking seem to enact. He is also Soma, and in that name carries one of the oldest threads in Indian religion.

From Soma to Chandra

In the Rigveda, Soma is the deified sacrificial drink, pressed, filtered and praised through an entire book of hymns. Already in the late Vedic period the drink was identified with the moon, imagined as a luminous cup of amrita which the gods drain through the dark fortnight and which refills through the bright. The equation held: in later Sanskrit, Soma is simply a standard name of the moon god, and Monday, Somavara, is his day.

The curse of Daksha

The Puranas make Chandra the husband of the twenty-seven daughters of Daksha, the lunar mansions or nakshatras through which he passes each month. Doting on one of them, Rohini, and neglecting the rest, he was cursed by his father-in-law to waste away. On the intercession of the gods the curse was moderated rather than lifted: he would wane, but also wax again, perpetually. Tradition connects his restoration to the worship of Shiva at Prabhasa on the Gujarat coast, the site associated with the Somnath shrine, whose name means lord of Soma.

Tara and the lunar line

Chandra's other great story is a scandal. He carried off Tara, the wife of Brihaspati, preceptor of the gods, provoking a war between the gods and the asuras who took the moon's side. Tara was returned, but bore Chandra a son, Budha, Mercury, from whom the lunar dynasty of kings, the Chandravamsha that includes the Kurus and Krishna's Yadavas, traces its descent.

In astrology and worship

As a graha, Chandra is a gentle benefic when strong, and his afflictions are read as troubles of mind and mood. He is imaged as fair and youthful, drawn across the sky in a chariot of white horses, associated with silver, pearls and the white lotus. The full and new moons order the entire ritual calendar, and fasts and observances keyed to his phases remain among the most widely kept in Hindu practice.