The legend of Nostredame is complete Myth.
According to French Scholars:
Michel de Nostredame led an extraordinary life. He was not a Jew who converted to Christianity, one of his grandfathers was; and so he inherited nothing special from the Issachar tribe. He had no grandfathers who were doctors in the court of King René of Provence. He did not go to Montpellier in 1521 to study medicine, and did not remain there as a teacher; instead, he wandered the countryside from 1521 to 1529 and taught himself the art of apothecary. His wife and two children did all die from disease, but there is no evidence to suggest it was the plague. He did not use antiseptics as they were unknown in his time, and he did not recommend a low-fat diet or exercise. There is no evidence that he made any Copernican style discoveries about the solar system. His only alleged contact with any Inquisition was an invitation to comment on the qualities of a bronze casting, but there is no documentation that this ever happened. All the actual evidence indicates that he was always on the best of terms with the Church. He was not placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books in 1781, because the Vatican had no such list in 1781, and he was never placed on any such list in any year. He never met and knelt before any Franciscan friar destined to become Pope. As an author, Nostradamus' prophetic writings were virtually unknown during his lifetime; he gained his notoriety from writing cookbooks and almanacs that were no more accurate than other almanacs of the day. His prophesies were not called the Centuries; they were called Les Propheties de M. Michel Nostradamus. They were not written in code, they were in rhyming verse. His astrologies were disastrously wrong, containing flagrant astronomical errors that even the other astrologers of the day found fault with. He did not use a bowl of water as a "magic mirror" when writing his prophecies, he used a regular mirror. If he predicted his own death in Presage 141, he missed it by a year — so some editions show a version of that Presage posthumously edited by his secretary to match the correct date. He was not buried upright and there is no record of any medallion or anything else with any date written on it. About the only popular notion that's true about Nostradamus is that he was a noted and reputable plague doctor, although he admitted regretfully that he never found any cures or preventive measures that worked.
Urban legends, and modern inventions, created to sell 19th century tabloids.
Michel de Nostredame led an extraordinary life. He was not a Jew who converted to Christianity, one of his grandfathers was; and so he inherited nothing special from the Issachar tribe. He had no grandfathers who were doctors in the court of King René of Provence. He did not go to Montpellier in 1521 to study medicine, and did not remain there as a teacher; instead, he wandered the countryside from 1521 to 1529 and taught himself the art of apothecary. His wife and two children did all die from disease, but there is no evidence to suggest it was the plague. He did not use antiseptics as they were unknown in his time, and he did not recommend a low-fat diet or exercise. There is no evidence that he made any Copernican style discoveries about the solar system. His only alleged contact with any Inquisition was an invitation to comment on the qualities of a bronze casting, but there is no documentation that this ever happened. All the actual evidence indicates that he was always on the best of terms with the Church. He was not placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books in 1781, because the Vatican had no such list in 1781, and he was never placed on any such list in any year. He never met and knelt before any Franciscan friar destined to become Pope. As an author, Nostradamus' prophetic writings were virtually unknown during his lifetime; he gained his notoriety from writing cookbooks and almanacs that were no more accurate than other almanacs of the day. His prophesies were not called the Centuries; they were called Les Propheties de M. Michel Nostradamus. They were not written in code, they were in rhyming verse. His astrologies were disastrously wrong, containing flagrant astronomical errors that even the other astrologers of the day found fault with. He did not use a bowl of water as a "magic mirror" when writing his prophecies, he used a regular mirror. If he predicted his own death in Presage 141, he missed it by a year — so some editions show a version of that Presage posthumously edited by his secretary to match the correct date. He was not buried upright and there is no record of any medallion or anything else with any date written on it. About the only popular notion that's true about Nostradamus is that he was a noted and reputable plague doctor, although he admitted regretfully that he never found any cures or preventive measures that worked.
Urban legends, and modern inventions, created to sell 19th century tabloids.
His book Les Propheties is what he's best known for. It consists of ten sets (which he called Centuries) of quatrains. A quatrain is simply any four-lined poem. Various versions were published during his lifetime, and there is no one authoritative collection. Due to the poor state of printing at the time, all versions include various misspellings and errors, and there are many such differences even among copies of the same edition. Over 200 different translations and interpreted versions have been published since his death, so the folly of hoping to find Nostradamus' original text is quite hopeless. The books that were popularly published during his lifetime were his almanacs, some of which contained prophecies as well, and these are known today as his Presages.
How accurate are his predictions? You could fill a library with books claiming to match quatrains with major events in world history — all, of course, deciphered and published after those events occurred. The straight fact is that nobody has ever used Nostradamus' writings to predict a future event in specific terms which later came true. Nobody has ever used Nostradamus' writings to predict a future event in specific terms which later came true. Nobody has ever used Nostradamus' writings to predict a future event in specific terms which later came true.
So where are all these authors getting all this stuff? Nostradamus' writings are exploited in a number of fallacious ways. Ambiguous and wrong translations, "creative" interpretations, hoax writings, fictional accounts, and the breaking of non-existent codes within his quatrains all contribute to a vast body of work, all of it wrong, and many times the size of everything Nostradamus ever actually wrote.
The greatest problem with modern Nostradamus interpretations is the translation and various issues that it raises. Nostradamus wrote in 16th century French, which was significantly different from modern French. There have been various translations in various orders: first finding similar meanings in modern French and then translating to English, either literally or figuratively; or performing direct word-to-word translations into English; or by interpreting probable meanings and then translating into English or paraphrasing into modern French. All of these methods result in modern meanings that can be substantially different from whatever Nostradamus originally wrote.
He did not even know about India.