Parashari (Vedic)
Parashari is the mainstream of Vedic astrology — the system most people mean by the phrase. This branch covers what comes after the basics: how much weight a placement can carry, and what actually reaches it.
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.
Beyond placement
Knowing that a graha sits in a particular rashi and bhava is the beginning of a reading, not the reading. Two charts can share a placement and behave nothing alike, and the classical apparatus for explaining why is what this branch collects.
The questions it answers are mostly the same three, asked in different ways: how strong is this placement, what is reaching it, and does it sit where the rashi chart says it does?
Strength
Shadbala combines six independent strength measures into one figure per planet — positional, directional, temporal, motional, natural and aspectual. It is the classical answer to “can this placement actually deliver”, and a well-placed but weak graha is one of the commonest reasons a promising-looking chart underperforms.
Ashtakavarga approaches the same problem from the other side. Instead of scoring planets, it scores signs: each planet contributes benefic points to certain signs from its own position, and the totals produce a map of which parts of the chart are supported and which are not. Its second use is transits — the same planet moving through an eight-point sign and a two-point sign is not the same event.
What reaches what
Graha drishti — planetary aspects — is how influence travels. All grahas aspect the seventh from themselves; Mars, Jupiter and Saturn each have additional special aspects, and those specials are what tie distant parts of a chart together.
Upagrahas such as Gulika and Maandi are calculated shadow points rather than bodies, treated as sensitive spots whose contact matters. Special lagnas — Bhava Lagna, Hora Lagna, Ghati Lagna — are alternative ascendants derived from elapsed time since sunrise, each read for a different layer of the life.
Which house is a planet really in?
In the plain rashi chart, sign and house are treated as identical: the whole sign containing the ascendant is the first house. The bhava chalit chart drops that simplification and computes real cusps, and the consequence is practical — a graha at the very end of a sign frequently belongs to the next house once the cusps are drawn.
This is not a technicality. A reading that places a planet in the tenth when the chalit puts it in the eleventh is answering about the wrong area of life, and checking the chalit before committing to a house-based judgement is one of the cheapest corrections available.
Frequently asked questions
What is Parashari astrology?
The system set out in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, and the dominant tradition in Vedic astrology today. It reads planets in houses counted from the ascendant, uses planetary aspects, and times events chiefly with the Vimshottari dasha.
What is Shadbala?
A six-fold measure of planetary strength — positional, directional, temporal, motional, natural and aspectual — combined into a single figure. It answers how much a placement can deliver, which a placement alone does not say.
What is Ashtakavarga used for?
It scores each sign by how many benefic points the planets contribute to it, producing a map of which parts of the chart are supported. It is used both for chart analysis and for judging transits — a transit through a high-scoring sign is read very differently from one through a low-scoring sign.
What is the difference between the rashi chart and the bhava chalit?
In the rashi chart a house and a sign are the same thing. The bhava chalit computes the actual house cusps, so a planet late in a sign can fall into the neighbouring house. Where the two disagree, the chalit is what governs which house a planet actually acts on.
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