Bhachakra

Where the sidereal zodiac begins, and so where every longitude on the page is measured from. There is no computing the right answer: the schools differ by more than a degree and a half, which moves a graha into another sign in about one reading in eleven and into another nakshatra or pada in four out of ten. Lahiri, or Chitrapaksha, is the one most Indian practice uses, and the default here. Pushya Paksha follows P. V. R. Narasimha Rao’s definition: Delta Cancri at 16° Cancer. Its stellar calculation includes proper motion, precession and annual aberration; the approximation here agrees within four arcseconds with Swiss Ephemeris True Pushya in daily checks from 1800 through 2100.

Jagannatha (experimental) fixes Chitra/Spica at 180° on a fixed solar-system plane. It is separate from True Chitra Paksha. This implementation has not yet been verified against Jagannatha Hora reference charts; use it for comparison, not exact reproduction of JHora research results.

Which clock the recorded birth time was read off. This changes what instant the chart is cast for, and so every position in it.

Zone time, from the place’s timezone, the default, reads the time as a clock on the wall gave it, applying the rules actually in force on the day. Local mean time, from the longitude reads it against the birthplace’s own meridian, four minutes of time to the degree.

Zone time is right for almost every chart, because it is what a clock and a birth certificate give. What it cannot know is where in the country the birth happened: for the years before standard time the timezone database keeps one local mean time for the whole zone, the one its reference city kept, which is out by up to an hour at the far end of a wide zone, and an hour moves the ascendant about fifteen degrees. Local mean time is the right reading for a birth recorded by the Sun where it happened, and the wrong one for any clock time.

Rahu and Ketu are the Moon’s orbital nodes, and this chooses how they are placed.

Mean node smooths their motion, so it always moves retrograde. True node, the default, follows the Moon’s changing orbital plane and can briefly move direct.

It can change their signs, houses and nakshatras, along with chara karakas and some yogas. It does not affect Shadbala or Vimshottari dasha. When comparing charts, use the same setting.

Whether Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are shown alongside the nine grahas.

Off is the default. On adds them to the charts, the position tables and the conjunctions, with the aspects they receive.

They are shown and not counted: classical lordships, friendships, yogas, dashas and the bala calculations keep the traditional grahas, and the three have no Ashtakavarga of their own.

Which whole-sign aspects Rahu and Ketu cast. Counting runs forward from the node’s own sign, that sign being 1.

Neither node casts aspects gives them none. Both: 7th only gives each the opposition alone. Both: 5th, 7th, 9th, the default, gives each the trines and the opposition. Rahu: 5th, 7th, 9th; Ketu: none gives them to Rahu alone. Rahu: 2nd, 5th, 7th, 9th; Ketu: none adds the second to Rahu.

It reaches chart contacts, the aspect tables and any yoga rule that admits a nodal aspect. Aspects cast at the nodes by other grahas, and conjunctions with them, are unaffected. Jaimini sign aspects and the strength calculations keep their own definitions.

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn cast a special aspect on top of the ordinary graded one: fifteen more on the 4th and 8th, thirty on the 5th and 9th, forty-five on the 3rd and 10th. A full aspect across the 7th is worth sixty virupas, the sixtieth part the strengths are counted in, and this chooses whether the sum may pass it.

Added to the ordinary aspect, the default, lets the total stand wherever the arithmetic puts it. Added, then capped at sixty holds it to a full aspect.

It changes one corner of the circle and no other. Five of the six special spans reach exactly sixty at their cusp and fall away inside, so the ceiling never binds. Saturn’s third is the exception: between 60° and 90° the ordinary value is still climbing while his forty-five is added, so the sum leaves sixty at once and reaches ninety. Sources: Raman’s Graha and Bhava Balas, section 115, says to add and sets no ceiling; Jagannatha Hora caps, and where a chart does contain an aspect over sixty, capping moves that graha’s drik bala most of the way to what that program prints.

An arudha pada is a house projected through its lord. In a divisional chart that projection can be made in two places, and this chooses which.

Longitude-based, the default, works the exact pada in D1 and then maps that point into the division, so the pada is one point seen through the division. Sign-based rebuilds the chart in the division and counts whole signs from each house to its lord there.

It reaches the arudha chart references and the pada markers. Source: the longitude method follows P. V. R. Narasimha Rao’s padamsa method.

Two grahas stand in a natural relation, which is a fixed table, and a temporal one, tatkalika, which is only where they happen to sit: a graha in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th from another is its temporal friend and the rest are enemies. Added together the two give the five-fold relation. In a divisional chart this chooses which chart those houses are counted in.

Counted in the division on screen, the default, keeps the whole relation inside one chart, since the sign and the lord being judged both come from there. Counted in the rashi, carried in reads the temporal half from the birth chart and carries it into the division.

It shows in the Vimsopaka grid and Saptavargaja bala, and D1 reads the same either way. The classical rule is the rashi reading; the divisional default follows modern practice, which treats a division as a chart in its own right. Worth knowing before changing it: published worked examples are built the rashi way and only reconcile under that setting. Source: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra verse 56, with Santhanam’s note.

The hora division holds only two signs, Cancer and Leo, so every lord in it is the Moon or the Sun. Read like any other division it collapses: own sign is reachable by the luminaries alone, exaltation by Jupiter alone, debilitation by Mars alone. This chooses whether to read it that way or by the grahas it favours.

By the grahas the hora favours, the default, grades a graha by whether the hora belongs to its own group and whether that hora is the powerful half of the sign it came from. A graha in its own group takes the top rung in the powerful half and the rung below otherwise; a graha outside it takes the middle either way; Mercury, effective in both horas, takes the top. By the lord of the sign, as other divisions reads it like every other varga, by ownership, exaltation and debilitation.

The default judges effects rather than ownership, so the Sun is never reported as owning the Leo hora he merely gives pronounced effects in. The other reading is kept for reconciling against a table built the ordinary way, and shadbala uses it regardless of this setting. Source: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.7, which grades the hora by which grahas it favours and then by which half of the sign is powerful.

The chara karakas are titles handed out by degree: the graha furthest into its sign is Atmakaraka, the next Amatyakaraka, and so on down. This chooses how many take part.

7 karakas, the default, ranks the Sun through Saturn. 8 karakas adds Rahu, counted backwards within its sign because it moves backwards, and adds a title, PiK for the father.

The basis below decides which degrees are ranked. Karakamsha ignores both and always uses the natal Atmakaraka’s D9 sign.

In a divisional chart the karakas can be ranked on two different sets of degrees, and this chooses.

Divisional Chara Karaka, the default, ranks the degrees within each divisional sign, so a division has its own karakas. D1 Chara Karaka ranks the natal degrees and carries those titles into every division.

The difference is usually large, since a division rescales each arc to a full sign and reshuffles the order. It reaches the chart labels, the Graha and Aspects tables and the karaka-based yogas. Rotating a chart does not change the assignments.

Mercury is a benefic in good company and a malefic in bad, and the texts do not fix where the line falls. This sets the test.

Combust or with another malefic, the default, counts him malefic when the Sun burns him, or when he shares a sign with Mars, Saturn or a waning Moon. With any malefic in the same sign uses one test for all of them, the shared sign, including with the Sun. Always a benefic never demotes him.

The nodes are not counted as malefic company under any of them, and the same-sign option interprets “joins” as occupying the same sign rather than an orb across a boundary. The choice reaches further than most: paksha bala, drik bala, the kartari marks and every yoga that asks whether a graha is benefic.

Where this goes beyond the texts: Parashara says only that Mercury “is a malefic if he joins a malefic”, which does not itself define association by a sign or an orb. Raman’s footnote says he is a malefic when “very closely associated with Sun or combusted”; that “or” is preserved here, but it does not establish our different tests for the Sun and for other malefics. The default is an implementation interpretation, not a rule explicitly prescribed by either quotation.

The hora division holds only two signs, Cancer and Leo, so every lord in it is the Moon or the Sun and Mercury owns neither. The texts grade the other six plainly and leave Mercury unsettled, and this chooses the grade he takes.

Effective in either, never pronounced, the default, gives him the ordinary grade in both horas and never the top one. Full in the Sun’s hora, by strength in the Moon’s gives the top grade in one and the ordinary ladder in the other. By strength, as the other six are treats him like everyone else, so he loses a rung in the weaker half. Full in either hora gives the top grade in both. Owning either hora is a rung above the ladder, treating him as lord of a sign he does not rule.

It moves Mercury alone, and only in the hora, which it reaches through the Vimsopaka grid and Saptavargaja bala. Two cautions. The second option is fitted to observation rather than taken from an authority, and no classical text asks for it. The reference charts checked here do not agree with one another either: two hora rows want one reading and a vimsopaka column wants another, so no reading of the clause satisfies all three. Sources: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.7 and Santhanam’s note to it; the last option follows Jagannatha Hora.

Budha-Aditya forms when Mercury and the Sun share a sign. Mercury never strays more than 28° from the Sun, so without a distance rule the yoga is claimed for every chart that has the two together. This sets whether a minimum distance is required.

Only outside 10° of the Sun, the default, requires the two to be at least ten degrees apart before the yoga is reported. Any conjunction in one sign drops the floor and reports it whenever they share a sign.

The difference is large: the yoga appears in about 28 per cent of charts with the floor and 52 per cent without. On either setting a combust Mercury that does qualify is reported as formed and then discounted, since burning answers how much the combination delivers rather than whether it formed.

Who reads it each way: the floor is Raman’s, stated as a rule. K. N. Rao applies none, and in Advance Techniques of Astrology Prediction counts a Budha-Aditya whose Sun and Mercury are six degrees apart, combust under every orb these authors give.

A graha is combust when it stands too close to the Sun to be seen. In a divisional chart there are two pairs of longitudes that distance could be measured between, and this chooses which.

Measured in the division on screen, the default, compares the two positions as that division draws them, so every mark on a chart is a fact about that chart. Measured in the rashi, carried in measures in the birth chart and carries the result into the division, which is the reading the texts ask for.

That is a choice against the texts, and worth knowing as one. A varga longitude is a rashi position stretched nine or ten times and wrapped, so two of them land near each other about as often as two unrelated numbers do: across 720 charts every graha comes out combust in 5 to 9 per cent of divisions whatever its orb or orbit, and Mercury, really burnt in 42 per cent of charts, drops to 5. The chart card names the frame either way. Sources: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.6 says “the divisions of a combust planet … be all ignored to be auspicious”, treating combustion as the graha’s and not each division’s; Phaladeepika and Jataka Parijata place it on the dignity ladder.

When two starry grahas stand within a degree of each other they are at war, and one of them wins. This chooses the test.

Brightness, then declination, the default, gives it to the brighter of the two by apparent visual magnitude, which means Venus wins whenever she is in it; where the two are within 0.1 magnitude it goes to whichever stands further north in declination. Northern latitude compares ecliptic latitude instead.

Both read the actual sky, so a divisional chart does not change the winner.

Hora bala gives sixty virupas to the lord of the planetary hour the birth fell in, and how long that hour is turns out to be disputed after all. This chooses the division.

Twelve by day and twelve by night, the default, splits the daylight into twelve and the night into twelve, so an hour is long in summer and short in winter. Twenty-four equal horas divides sunrise to sunrise into twenty-four equal parts.

This is the most consequential of the small settings. The sixty is all or nothing, so the two schemes can hand it to different grahas and move a total by a whole rupa where the other choices here move it by a fraction of one. The default is the older planetary-hour scheme and the one the sequence of lords comes from, running in Chaldean order from the weekday lord and starting a night birth at the fifth from it. Sources: Parashara asks for equal hours at Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.27; the textbook by K. N. Rao’s students divides day and night separately and works all three of its charts that way.

Nata-unnata bala measures how far the birth fell from noon or from midnight, the elapsed time divided by twelve. Noon can mean two different moments, and this chooses which.

Local apparent time, the sundial, the default, takes noon as the Sun actually crossing the meridian at the birthplace. Zone time, the clock on the wall takes noon as 12.00 by the timezone.

They part because a timezone is an administrative band and a clock keeps an even hour where the Sun does not. Four virupas is typical, sixteen at the far western edge of a wide zone. Use apparent time, the default. Noon here means the Sun on the meridian, so it is what the measure is made of rather than a refinement of it.

A birth time recorded in local mean time, as Indian times were before 1906, is a separate question: that is the time standard, in Chart settings. Sources: Uttara Kalamrita allows the clock, “It is enough if we take 12.00 hours as noon and zero hours as midnight”; Raman asks for the sundial by name.

Paksha bala measures the fortnight rather than the graha: one figure goes to all the benefics and what is left of sixty to all the malefics. The only question is which group the Moon joins, and this answers it.

By her fortnight group, the default, has her take her turn in both, benefic while waxing and malefic while waning. Uttara Kalamrita gives the boundary as the eighth day of the bright half to the eighth of the dark, which is the reading used here. Always as a benefic keeps her in the benefic group, so her figure follows her brightness alone. No classical text asks for it.

A thin Moon therefore scores high on the default, having joined the malefics and taken the complement. The choice moves her paksha bala by up to sixty and changes nothing else, though it shows twice over, her cheshta bala being her paksha bala. Sources: Brihat Jataka 21, “The malefic and benefic planets have strength (Pakshabala) in the dark and bright halves of the month respectively”, with Phaladeepika IV.1 saying the same.

The Moon’s paksha bala is doubled before it is counted, whichever group she is counted in, and that is not disputed. This chooses only how the row is displayed.

Doubled shows the figure as counted. Undoubled, the default, shows it halved, so the row differs from another table by a figure rather than by a factor.

Only the display changes. Kala bala and every total still count the doubled value, so a halved cell will not appear to add up. Hover it and it names the figure the total is using. Showing it undoubled follows no authority. Source: Uttara Kalamrita, “The paksha bala of the Moon is to be doubled.”

Ayana bala scales a graha’s declination against a maximum. The maximum and the obliquity the declination is reckoned at are one choice, not two, and this makes it.

Raman, the default, uses 24°, with the declination reckoned at the same 24. Parashara uses 23°27′ with the true declination.

Either pairing lets the measure reach both ends of its scale. They part by at most 0.70 virupas on a graha and twice that on the Sun, whose figure is doubled, which comes to about half a virupa on a total and changes a strong-or-weak verdict in roughly one reading in a thousand. Source: Santhanam’s note to Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.27 verses 15-17 gives the second; Raman’s constants are the first, and the textbook by K. N. Rao’s students works all three of its charts with them.

Ayana bala is scaled from a graha’s declination, and a declination can be reckoned two ways. This chooses which.

Without latitude, the default, derives it from the sayana longitude alone. With latitude uses the true declination, with the graha’s distance from the ecliptic in it.

The default is chosen for the formula rather than the sky: a declination carrying latitude passes the obliquity, the Moon reaching 28 degrees, so the scale runs past its own sixty and below nought, and a negative strength is not a reading. The two part by up to 2.5 virupas on a planet and 6.6 on the Moon, who swings furthest from the ecliptic, which is about two virupas on a total and reorders which graha is strongest in a little under a quarter of charts. Source: Santhanam’s note to Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.27 sends the reader to an ephemeris for the true declination; Raman derives the other from the bhuja of the sayana longitude.

The Sun’s ayana bala is doubled before it is counted, and that is not disputed. This chooses only how the row is displayed.

Doubled shows the figure as counted. Undoubled, the default, shows it halved, which makes a row-by-row comparison against another table easier.

Only the display changes. Kala bala and every total count the doubled value either way, so a halved cell will not appear to add up; hover it and it names the figure the total is using. Showing it undoubled follows no authority. Sources: Parashara, “The Sun’s Ayana Bala is again multiplied by 2 whereas for others the product arrived in Virupas are considered as it is”; Raman says the same in one line at section 75 of Graha and Bhava Balas.

Cheshta bala is measured from an arc called the cheshta kendra. The texts define it but give no practical way to reach it, so a shortcut is in common use. This chooses between the arc and the shortcut.

The seeghra kendra, the default, computes the arc the texts define. Seeghrocha less the mean and true averaged uses the shortcut, which stands in for the manda-corrected place the real arc is measured from.

Each answers to the book that uses it, so pick by what you are checking against. Against Sripati’s own worked example the arc reproduces his figures to 0.34 of a virupa while the shortcut averages 3.41 and misses Mercury by eight; against Raman’s Example 51 it is the other way about, 0.04 against 1.74. Sources: Sripatipaddhati identifies the cheshta kendra with the seeghra kendra; Raman calls the shortcut “a simple method” at section 83 of Graha and Bhava Balas and computes every worked example with it.

Cheshta bala scores how far a graha’s real motion departs from an even one. Two methods are in circulation, and this chooses between them.

From the chesta kendra, the default, computes it as an arithmetic quantity from the graha’s mean and true longitudes. From the eight motions grades the motion instead into named states, from deeply retrograde to swiftest, each worth a fixed score.

These are different measures rather than two roundings of one: across charts they correlate at only 0.25, so a graha can score well under one and poorly under the other. Parashara gives both in consecutive verses; the eight states follow Sripatipaddhati, which Mantreswara points the reader to at Phaladeepika IV.24. Sripati also gives the boundary, which is the mean motion itself: Manda and Mandatara fall below it, Seeghra and Seeghratara above, each pair split by whether the speed is rising or falling.

Two details in the eight-state reading are this page’s own rather than the text’s, and are worth knowing before relying on them. How near to nothing a motion must be to count as Vikala, which is set at a twentieth of mean; and reading Samagama as sharing a sign with the Moon, the text saying only conjunction.

A cheshta kendra is the gap between a graha’s true longitude and a mean one, and a mean longitude is a fiction: the place a graha would hold if it moved evenly. This chooses which model that fiction comes from.

Classical tables, the default, takes the mean rates from the Surya Siddhanta, each graha’s revolutions in a Mahayuga over its 1,577,917,828 civil days. Modern ephemeris pairs a modern mean with the modern true position.

On the default cheshta method this setting does nothing: that method takes both its places from the same ephemeris, so there is no seam to choose. It only acts once the averaged shortcut is selected above.

Be clear what the choice is. The classical tables are better at reproducing what the printed books give, not a better description of the sky: measured against the quantity the shortcut stands in for, modern means come out at 3.27 virupas and classical at 3.40, so the shortcut’s own error is twenty-five times the gap between them. Source: Raman pairs an accurate ephemeris with Surya Siddhanta tables at sections 96 to 103 of Graha and Bhava Balas, and that pairing reproduces his Example 51 to 0.02 virupas where modern means miss Mercury by 4.29.

Neither the Sun nor the Moon retrogrades, so neither has an arc of retrogression to measure, and their cheshta bala has to come from somewhere else. This chooses where.

Their own cheshta kendras, the default, gives each luminary a kendra of its own: the Sun’s from its sayana longitude plus three signs, the Moon’s from her distance from the Sun. Their ayana and paksha bala borrows the figure instead, the Sun taking his ayana bala and the Moon her paksha bala. Sun: ayana; Moon: cheshta kendra mixes the two, and leaves the Moon’s paksha bala untouched.

The figure is used for ishta and kashta phala and is not added into the shadbala total. For the Moon the first two agree while she is read as a benefic. Source: Parashara gives both rules, one in each chapter, at 27.18 and at 28.3-4; the default follows the chapter the figure is actually for.

The Sun and Moon are given a cheshta bala even though neither retrogrades, and the texts disagree on whether it belongs in the shadbala sum. This chooses.

Shown but not counted, the default, prints the figure and leaves it out of the total. Counted in the total adds it with the other five.

Take care pairing the second with the borrowed rule above: the Sun’s ayana bala and the Moon’s paksha bala already sit inside kala bala, and doubled there, so counting a borrowed figure again puts it in at three times its base where the doubling asks for twice. That is worth about a rupa on each. Sources: Raman leaves both rows empty and prints totals without them, wanting the figure only for ishta and kashta phala; Parashara gives the two a cheshta bala and lists cheshta among the six.

Saptavargaja bala scores a graha in each of seven divisions by how it stands with the lord of the sign it lands in: seven rungs, from its own moolatrikona down to a great enemy’s sign. The top two rungs are agreed; below them the texts give two different ladders.

45, 30, 20, 15, 10, 4, 2 is the default. 45, 30, 22.5, 15, 7.5, 3.75, 1.875 halves at every step below an own sign.

Neither is a mistake, and the choice decides which published figures you can check against: set the halving ladder before checking a chart against the K. N. Rao textbook, which works its examples that way. It moves a total by about 5 virupas and turns about one verdict in forty. Sources: Santhanam’s translation of Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.27 and Saravali give the first; Raman’s section 30 of Graha and Bhava Balas gives the second, as do Uttara Kalamrita at slokas 3.5-5 and a worked example in Sripatipaddhati.

Ishta is the good a graha is disposed to give in its dasha and kashta the harm. Both are read from its uchcha and cheshta bala alone, and are not part of the shadbala total. This chooses the formula.

Square roots of the two products, the default, multiplies the two balas and takes the root for ishta, and does the same with their complements for kashta. Half their sum, and sixty less it divides a fixed sixty between them instead.

They part where a graha is low in both shares, which the square roots allow and the halving cannot. Sources: Sripatipaddhati IV.6 and Kesava give the roots, and Raman’s sections 138-139 of Graha and Bhava Balas restate them; the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ch.28.6 gives the halving, which Sastri notes as “a different rule”.

In Yogini dasha the progressed nakshatra starts at the birth Moon’s star and advances with each period. The two readings part at the end of the circle, and this chooses between them.

Rohini after Revati, the default, resumes at Rohini once Revati is passed, which keeps Siddha with Rohini. Ashwini after Revati continues to Ashwini, with the eight Yoginis repeating independently.

It changes the displayed nakshatra, its lord and its sign. The periods and their dates are the same either way.

Sources: Goel resumes at Rohini after Revati, keeping Siddha with Rohini (V. P. Goel, Predict Effectively through Yogini Dasha, Research chapter); Narasimha Rao continues to Ashwini while the eight Yoginis repeat independently (P. V. R. Narasimha Rao, Yogini Dasa Progression, p.27).