Learn Jyotish & Panchang
A curriculum-shaped guide to Vedic astrology and the Hindu almanac — from the grahas, rashis and bhavas to dashas, the KP system and every limb of the panchang.
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Foundations 4
The grahas, rashis and bhavas every chart is read with — start here.
Grah Stithi (Planetary Positions)Beginner
The planetary positions table: each of the nine grahas with its sign, degree, house, nakshatra and pada. The raw numbers the whole chart is read from.
Lagna Chart (Ascendant / Birth Chart)Beginner
The D1 Rashi chart — the rising sign at your birth moment, and the twelve houses counted from it. The foundation every other chart in jyotish is read against.
Birth PanchangBeginner
The five limbs of the day you were born — tithi, nakshatra, yoga, karana and vara — computed at sunrise for your birthplace, with the lunar month and year around them.
Maitri Chakra (Planetary Friendship)Intermediate
Which grahas get along, in three layers: a fixed natural table, a temporal layer that depends on where they actually sit in your chart, and the five-fold Panchadha compound of the two.
Panchang & Muhurta 22
The five limbs of the almanac and every auspicious-time system.
Vara (Weekday)Beginner
The weekday: first of the five limbs, and the one that anchors Rahu Kaal, Choghadiya and Hora. Each vara runs from sunrise to sunrise — not midnight — and carries its ruling graha's temperament.
TithiBeginner
The lunar day: one of thirty 12-degree steps the Moon gains on the Sun. It sets most vrats and festivals, runs anywhere from about 20 to 27 hours, and seldom lines up with a clock day — which is why kshaya and vriddhi tithis exist.
NakshatraBeginner
The Moon's lunar mansion: one of 27 equal 13°20′ segments of the zodiac, each with a planetary lord and four padas. The backbone of the Vimshottari dasha, of muhurat, and of birth-star compatibility.
Yoga (Panchang)Beginner
One of 27 combinations built from the Sun and Moon's summed longitude — the fourth limb of the panchang. Nine are traditionally handled with care; the other eighteen colour the day favourably.
KaranaBeginner
Half a tithi: sixty karana slots per lunar month, drawn from eleven named types — seven that repeat and four that cluster at the new moon. Vishti (Bhadra) is the one to watch, and AstroShruti flags it.
Masa (Lunar Month)Beginner
The lunar month, Chaitra through Phalguna — the frame that carries the festival calendar, the six ritus and the Vikram and Shaka samvats. Twelve of them fall short of a solar year, which is why an Adhika month is inserted.
Vijaya MuhurtaBeginner
A short daily "victory" window — the 11th of fifteen equal parts of the daylight between sunrise and sunset. AstroShruti times it from the actual sunrise and sunset of your date and place, not a fixed clock hour.
Amanta vs PurnimantaBeginner
Two ways to bound a lunar month: amanta ends at the new moon, purnimanta at the full moon. They give the same day two different month-names in the dark fortnight — purnimanta running one month ahead.
ChoghadiyaBeginner
Choghadiya splits day and night into eight parts each, every part carrying a quality from Amrit (best) to Kaal (avoid). It is the quickest way to pick a decent time without a full muhurat calculation — the live table for your city and date is below.
HoraBeginner
Twenty-four planetary hours across the day and night, each ruled by a graha in the Chaldean order. Pick the hora whose lord suits your task — the live table for your city is below.
Gowri PanchangamIntermediate
The Tamil good-time table: eight periods each for day and night, named for the weekday lords. Amirdha, Uthi, Laabam, Dhanam and Sugam are the Nalla Neram — the good times.
Do Ghati MuhurtaIntermediate
The oldest division of the day: thirty muhurtas of two ghati each, fifteen from sunrise to sunset and fifteen from sunset to sunrise. The eighth day muhurta is Abhijit, the day's most auspicious window.
LagnaIntermediate
The rising sign, and the times each of the twelve rashis holds the eastern horizon across the Ahoratri. The fastest-moving thing in the chart, and the reason two births minutes apart differ.
Panchaka RahitaIntermediate
Which parts of today are free of the five panchaka doshas. Each lagna period is scored from the nakshatra, tithi, weekday and rising sign; the ones that come out clean are Shubha — Panchaka Rahita.
Panjika YogaAdvanced
The Ananda-adi yoga: one name for the day, formed by pairing the weekday with the Moon's nakshatra. Twenty-eight yogas from Ananda to Pravardhamana, some auspicious, some not.
Abhijit MuhuratIntermediate
The one muhurat that needs no lookup: a short window centred on true midday, auspicious almost every day. The fallback when nothing else is clean.
Amrit KaalIntermediate
The nectar period: a roughly 96-minute window set by the Moon's nakshatra, sitting exactly half a nakshatra after Varjyam. Not the same as Amrit Choghadiya.
ChandrabalamIntermediate
Whether today's Moon sits favourably from your janma rashi. Strong in the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 10th and 11th; weak in the 4th, 8th and 12th. Checked before travel, ceremonies and anything you want to go smoothly.
TarabalamIntermediate
Whether today's Moon rides a favourable star from your janma nakshatra. Nine taras cycle through the twenty-seven nakshatras — Sampat, Kshema, Sadhaka, Mitra and Ati-Mitra are the good ones; Vipat, Pratyari and Vadha are not.
Rahu KaalBeginner
An inauspicious stretch of about 90 minutes each day, fixed by the weekday and your local sunrise and sunset. Traditionally avoided for starting anything important — the live timing for your city is below.
Bhadra (Vishti Karana)Intermediate
The Vishti karana while it is running: the window most consistently avoided for auspicious work. Its bite depends on where Bhadra is said to reside.
PanchakIntermediate
The five days each month when the Moon crosses the last five nakshatras. A calendar window with five specific prohibitions — not a general bad omen.
Parashari (Vedic) 9
Classical chart analysis: strengths, ashtakavarga and yogas.
Bala (Planetary Strength / Shadbala)Advanced
Six-fold strength. Sthana, Dig, Kala, Cheshta, Naisargika and Drik Bala are totalled in virupa and reported in Rupas, then measured against each planet's required minimum. Bhava Bala does the same for the twelve houses.
AshtakavargaAdvanced
A points system. Eight contributors — the seven grahas plus the Lagna — donate a bindu to the signs they favour. Each planet's twelve counts are its BAV; the seven BAVs stacked give the Sarvashtakavarga.
Bhava Chalit ChartIntermediate
The chart that separates a planet's sign from the house arc it actually occupies. Built on Swiss Ephemeris Sripati cusps, it flags every graha whose bhava differs from its whole-sign house.
Bhava CuspsAdvanced
The twelve longitudes the unequal Sripati houses are measured from. Each cusp carries a sign and its lord, and together they are the arithmetic behind the Bhava Chalit chart.
Graha Drishti — Vedic Planetary AspectsIntermediate
Which grahas look at which bhavas, and how hard. Every graha aspects the 7th from itself; Mars adds the 4th and 8th, Jupiter and the nodes the 5th and 9th, Saturn the 3rd and 10th — whole-sign and one-directional, unlike a western aspect — plus the graded sputa form in virupa.
Upagrahas — Gulika, Maandi & the Shadow PointsAdvanced
The shadowy sub-planets, in two families — five deterministic points chained off the Sun's longitude, and five time-based points read from the rising sign at a day-or-night segment boundary.
Special Lagnas — Bhava, Hora, Ghati, Sri, Indu & VarnadaAdvanced
Ascendants other than the rising sign. Three run off the sunrise Sun and the ishta kaal; Sri rides the Ghatika lagna and the Moon, Indu is a kala sum counted from the Moon, and Varnada is Jaimini's odd-even count.
Yogi, Avayogi & Duplicate YogiIntermediate
The chart's benefic and malefic signatures. From the Yoga Sphuta (Sun + Moon + 93°20') come the Yogi planet, its counter the Avayogi, and the Duplicate Yogi — plus Bhrigu Bindu, the Moon–Rahu midpoint.
Ghatak Chakra — the Harmful ElementsIntermediate
A fixed table, not a calculation: for every Moon sign the tradition names one month, one tithi group, one weekday, one nakshatra and more as ghat — injurious. Here is the whole table, what each row means, and an honest account of how well attested it is.
Divisional Charts 1
The vargas — D1 to D60 — and what each one is read for.
Dashas & Timing 17
Vimshottari and the many other dashas that time a chart's events.
Vimshottari DashaBeginner
The default dasha system: a 120-year cycle of nine planetary periods, started from the lord of the Moon's birth nakshatra and drilled five levels deep from Mahadasha to Prana.
Ashtottari DashaAdvanced
A 108-year Moon-nakshatra cycle of eight lords, Ketu excluded. Unlike Vimshottari, each lord owns a contiguous block of three or four nakshatras — so the balance at birth prorates across the whole block.
Yogini DashaIntermediate
A 36-year Moon-nakshatra cycle of eight yoginis — Mangala, Pingala, Dhanya, Bhramari, Bhadrika, Ulka, Siddha and Sankata — running one to eight years each. Short periods, so it turns over three times in an average life.
Dwisaptati Sama DashaAdvanced
The equal dasha: 72 years, eight lords, nine years each — Ketu excluded. Sama means equal, and it is the one nakshatra dasha where no lord is favoured with a longer period than another.
Shodashottari DashaAdvanced
A 116-year Moon-nakshatra cycle of eight lords with periods stepping evenly from 11 to 18 years. Rahu is excluded — Ketu is not — making it the mirror of the eight-lord systems that drop Ketu instead.
Dwadashottari DashaAdvanced
A conditional nakshatra dasha of 112 years across eight lords — Venus is not one of them — counted backwards through the nakshatras from Revati, and classically applied when the Navamsa Lagna is owned by Venus.
Panchottari DashaAdvanced
A conditional nakshatra dasha of 105 years across seven lords — the two shadow grahas take no part — seeded at Anuradha, and classically applied when the Dwadasamsa Lagna falls in Cancer.
Shatabdika DashaAdvanced
A conditional nakshatra dasha of exactly 100 years across seven lords in doubling pairs — 5, 5, 10, 10, 20, 20, 30 — seeded at Revati and classically applied to a vargottama Lagna.
Shashtihayani DashaAdvanced
A conditional nakshatra dasha of 60 years across eight lords — and the only one of its family that assigns lords to contiguous blocks of nakshatras rather than stepping one lord per nakshatra. Classically applied when the Sun is in the Lagna.
Kalachakra DashaAdvanced
The wheel of time: a sign dasha whose nine-rasi sequence is looked up from the Moon's exact nakshatra pada, with a paramayush — a span — of 83 to 100 years rather than a fixed cycle.
Chara DashaAdvanced
The Jaimini sign dasha: twelve signs from the Lagna, forward or backward by the 9th sign's foot, each lasting however many signs it takes to reach its own lord.
Sthira DashaAdvanced
The "fixed" Jaimini rashi dasha: movable signs get 7 years, fixed signs 8, dual signs 9, running forward from the sign of the Brahma graha. A 96-year cycle that needs no counting.
Narayana DashaAdvanced
The best-known Jaimini rashi dasha. Its periods are signs, not grahas: it seeds from the stronger of Lagna and the 7th, and each sign's length is the count from that sign to its lord.
Shoola DashaAdvanced
The Jaimini longevity dasha: a flat nine years for every sign, a 108-year cycle, seeded from the stronger of Lagna and the 7th. Its seed and direction are a documented dispute, switchable in settings.
Mandooka DashaAdvanced
The "frog-leap" Jaimini rashi dasha: instead of walking the zodiac it leaps in trines, exhausting one modality quartet before jumping to the next. Durations count each sign to its lord.
Kala DashaAdvanced
The birth-time dasha: where your birth fell between sunrise and sunset decides everything. Two portions of the 120-year span, nine grahas each in natural order weighted 1 to 9.
Naisargika DashaAdvanced
The natural dasha: seven fixed planetary ages running Moon to Saturn from birth, identical for every native. It needs no Moon, no Lagna and no birth time — only a birth date.
KP System 10
Krishnamurti Paddhati: star lord, sub lord, significators and horary.
The KP System (Krishnamurti Paddhati)Beginner
The Tamil reformer's rebuild of Vedic astrology around one idea — the sub lord. Each nakshatra splits into nine unequal subs in Vimshottari proportion, and the sub lord, not the sign, decides the result.
Ruling Planets (KP)Intermediate
Six nominations from the moment itself — the weekday lord, the Moon's sign and star, the ascendant's sign, star and sub. A planet named by more than one of them ranks higher.
Grah Nirdeshan (Planet Significators)Intermediate
The planet-wise significator table. For each graha, the houses it stands for — ranked, strongest first, starting with its star lord's houses rather than its own.
Chaturvidh — The Four-Fold Significator Table (KP)Intermediate
Grah Nirdeshan gives you the answer. Chaturvidh gives you the argument — the same computation with the union undone, so you can see which of the four rules put each house on the list and weigh them yourself.
Bhaav Nirdeshan (House Significators)Intermediate
The house-wise significator table. For each of the 12 houses, the planets that can deliver it — in KP's four groups, where a planet in an occupant's star outranks the house lord itself.
Cuspal Interlinks (KP)Advanced
Each cusp's lord chain, resolved to houses. Twelve rows, six lords per row, and for every lord the houses it occupies, owns and signifies — the raw material of KP event judgement.
Nakshatra Nadi — Planet, Star Lord, Sub Lord as HousesAdvanced
Star proposes, sub disposes — stated over houses instead of cusps. Each row puts a graha's own houses beside its star lord's and its sub lord's, which is the structure a flat significator list flattens away.
KP Drishti — Aspects on the CuspsIntermediate
Not Vedic drishti in a KP hat. Ten Western angles, each with an orb and a weight, and the interesting half of them land on the cusps — which whole-sign drishti has no way to express at all.
Bhagya Saham — The Fortune Point in the KP FrameIntermediate
The one sensitive point KP software prints, computed in the frame that makes it usable: KP ayanamsha, a Placidus house, and the lord chain that decides whether the point delivers.
KP Horary (Prashna)Advanced
Ask a question, name a number between 1 and 249, and that number is your ascendant. The 249 are the zodiac's 243 subs, split further where a sign boundary cuts through one.
Compatibility 3
Kundli Milan — Ashtakoota, Mangal dosha and the poruthams.
Kundli Milan (Match Making)Beginner
The Vedic marriage-matching ritual: two Moons compared across eight kootas for a score out of 36, plus the dosha checks and chart-level analysis that a score alone cannot carry.
Ashtakoota — The Eight KootasIntermediate
The eight categories of Guna Milan in detail — what each koota reads from the Moon, the table it scores against, and why Nadi and Bhakoot carry nearly half the points between them.
Mangal Dosha (Manglik / Kuja Dosha)Intermediate
The Mars affliction behind the word "Manglik": Mars in six specific houses from three reference points, checked in both charts, with the classical cancellation grounds surfaced rather than silently applied.
Transits 1
Gochar: how the moving planets read against a birth chart.
Jaimini 6
Jaimini's sign-based system: chara karakas, arudha padas, rashi drishti and argala.
Chara KarakasAdvanced
The movable significators of Jaimini: the seven or eight planets ranked by the degrees they have crossed inside their sign — the highest is the Atmakaraka (soul), the lowest the Darakaraka (spouse).
Arudha PadasAdvanced
The perceived "image" of each house. For a bhava, count to its lord and project the same distance again; AstroShruti reports all twelve padas — AL, A2…A11 and UL — with the two classical corrections applied.
KarakamshaAdvanced
Take the Atmakaraka's sign in the D9 (the Swamsha), place it as a lagna over the birth chart, and read from there. AstroShruti reports each graha's house from the Karakamsha, plus what conjoins it and casts rashi drishti on it.
Rashi Drishti (Sign Aspects)Intermediate
Jaimini's sign-to-sign aspect. Movable signs aspect fixed ones, fixed aspect movable, and dual signs aspect the other duals — a fixed, mutual matrix that depends only on a sign's mode, not on any planet.
Argala (Planetary Intervention)Advanced
Jaimini's intervention rule. Planets in set houses from a sign lock results onto it (argala); planets in the counter-houses obstruct it (virodhargala). An argala counts only when its planets outnumber the obstructors.
Jaimini Raja YogasAdvanced
Jaimini's own yogas, read off the Karakamsha and the arudha padas rather than the lagna. What AstroShruti actually implements, by category, and the well-known rule it intentionally does not, because it is not in the sutras.
Varshaphala (Tajika) 6
The annual solar-return chart: Varshesh, Sahams, Tajika aspects and the Mudda dasha.
Varsha Kundali (Annual Chart)Intermediate
The annual chart of Tajika astrology, cast for the instant the Sun returns to its exact birth longitude — plus the Muntha, the progressed lagna that moves one whole sign every year of life.
Varshesh (Lord of the Year)Advanced
The Varshesh is the ruling planet of a Tajika annual chart. It is elected from five office bearers — but only among those that actually aspect the varsha ascendant, with the strongest winning.
Tajika Bala — Panchavargeeya & HarshaAdvanced
Tajika does not use Shadbala. It scores planets on five dignities (Panchavargeeya, giving the Vishwa Bala) and a separate four-part "joys" score (Harsha) — with an honest note on which one actually elects the year-lord.
Sahams (Sensitive Points)Advanced
Arabic-part-style sensitive points for the annual (Varshaphala) chart: each Saham is an arc, A − B + C, that most reverse for a night birth. Here is the construction and the exact formulas AstroShruti uses.
Tajika Aspects — Ithasala & IshrafaAdvanced
How the annual chart's planets exchange light: mutual sign-distance aspects, each perfected only within the mean of two deeptamsha orbs — applying is Ithasala, separating is Ishrafa — plus the derived yogas built on them.
Mudda DashaIntermediate
The Vimshottari dasha, compressed so the whole 120-year cycle runs inside one Tajika year — each lord getting its-years / 120 of the year, from a seed lord that advances one place annually.