Bindu strength tables
LiveYour Ashtakavarga tables
Seven grahas hand out 337 bindus between them in every chart ever cast. Where those points land is what your own chart decides.
Enter your birth details
Ashtakavarga is sidereal and whole-sign. Your birth time sets the Lagna, and the Lagna is one of the eight points every table is scored from.
Worked example
A worked example
Our sample birth moment, run through the same tables, so you can see the shape of the answer before you enter your own.
| What | Computed |
|---|---|
| Sarva total | 337 6 of 12 signs at or above 30 |
| Most bindus | Taurus · 37 |
| Fewest bindus | Leo · 20 |
| Gap between them | 17 bindus |
A fixed sample moment, not anyone’s real chart. The numbers come out of the same engine your own birth details would go through, so they are the same every time you look. See the whole reading for this moment →
Where a bindu comes from
Eight reference points
The seven grahas and the Lagna. That eight is the ashta in the name, and every table is scored from all of them.
Count the houses
For each reference point, the texts list which houses counted from it earn a point. A sign collects one bindu for every list it turns up in.
Add the seven tables
Stack the seven tables sign by sign and you get the sarvashtakavarga — the figure out of 56 most people have seen.
Why does every chart come to 337 bindus?
Because the number of bindus a graha hands out belongs to the tables, not to your chart. Count the houses each list names and the Sun always gives 48, the Moon 49, Mars 39, Mercury 54, Jupiter 56, Venus 52 and Saturn 39. That is 337 every time. Only where they land moves.
What a bindu count is not
A high count is not good news and a low one is not bad news. The texts read a sign holding many bindus as supported, and one holding few as asking for care. Nothing here says what will happen.
What this page leaves out
The two shodhanas — the trikona and ekadhipatya reductions — are not applied, so no figure here is a reduced one. Rahu and Ketu get no table in the classical eight-fold system, and none is invented for them.
Ashtakavarga questions
What is Ashtakavarga?
A bindu, or point, system set out in BPHS chapters 66 to 72. Each of the seven classical grahas gets its own table of points across the twelve signs, scored from eight reference points. Add the seven tables together and you get the sarvashtakavarga, the figure out of 56 that a sign holds.
What is a good sarvashtakavarga figure?
The texts draw the line at 30 of 56: a sign holding 30 bindus or more is read as a favourable one for a graha to cross. It is a rating of the sign, not of you. Every chart has both kinds, because the 337 points are shared out — one sign holding more means another holds less.
Do Rahu and Ketu have a bhinnashtakavarga?
Not in the classical eight-fold system, so this page gives them none. Some later schools add a Rahu table. We do not follow that, and we would rather say so than print a table the texts do not give.
Does this apply the shodhanas?
No. The trikona and ekadhipatya reductions refine the figures for transit work, and the texts differ on the order they are applied in. Every number on this page is a raw bindu count, and none of it should be called reduced.
Do I need my exact birth time?
It helps, because the Lagna is one of the eight points every table is scored from. Without a birth time the tables are scored from seven points and the totals come to less. The page says so when that happens, instead of filling the gap with a guess.
If you want to read further
Books, because that is the only thing we are willing to earn from here. We do not link gemstones, yantras or pujas. Those are sold against the fear a page like this one can create, and not doing that is a promise made on the about page.
- Light on Life: An Introduction to the Astrology of IndiaHart de Fouw and Robert SvobodaThe usual first recommendation for a serious reader in English. Careful about what the tradition claims and what it does not.
- Hindu Predictive AstrologyB. V. RamanThe standard reference for gochar and the classical rules. We checked our own transit tables against its Gocharaphala chapter.
- Brihat Parashara Hora Shastratranslated by R. SanthanamThe foundational text almost everything Vedic descends from. Dense, and worth having if you want to check a rule at source.
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