Tarabalam

What is Tarabalam?

Tarabalam — Tara Bala, the strength of the star — asks where today’s Moon sits relative to the nakshatra you were born under.

It is the nakshatra counterpart to Chandrabalam, which asks the same question by sign. Like Chandrabalam, and unlike Choghadiya or Rahu Kaal, it is personal: on any given day it returns a different verdict for each of the twenty-seven janma nakshatras. The table on this page gives all twenty-seven at once, so you read your own row.

How it is counted

Count from your janma nakshatra to the nakshatra the Moon occupies today, inclusive of both. Then take that count in nines: the taras repeat in a cycle of nine, so counts of 1, 10 and 19 are all Janma; 2, 11 and 20 are all Sampat, and so on.

If you were born under Rohini (the 4th nakshatra) and the Moon is in Punarvasu (the 7th), the count is Rohini (1), Mrigashira (2), Ardra (3), Punarvasu (4) — the 4th tara, Kshema.

Five of the nine are favourable — Sampat, Kshema, Sadhaka, Mitra and Ati-Mitra. Three are adverse — Vipat, Pratyari and Vadha. Janma stands apart as neither.

The pattern is worth noticing: from Sampat to Mitra the good and bad taras alternate — 2 good, 3 bad, 4 good, 5 bad, and so on — and then Ati-Mitra doubles the good at the end of the cycle. That alternation is the structure of the scheme, not a coincidence of naming, and it is why the verdict flips almost every day as the Moon moves on.

A worked example — the Moon in Rohini

Take a day when today’s Moon is in Rohini (the 4th nakshatra). Counting from each janma nakshatra up to Rohini gives:

Same Moon, seven different verdicts — a Punarvasu-born has the adverse Vadha while a Mrigashira-born has the best tara of all. Tomorrow the Moon steps to the next nakshatra and every row shifts by one.

The three cycles

Because twenty-seven divides evenly by nine, the taras run through the nakshatras exactly three times. Some traditions distinguish them — the first cycle read as affecting the body, the second the mind, the third wealth and circumstance — and treat the second and third rounds of an adverse tara as milder than the first.

AstroShruti reports the tara itself and does not grade the cycles. Where you see a source calling a day “Vadha, but the third one”, that is what is meant.

What it is used for

Tara Bala is checked before things you have a choice about:

• Journeys, especially the first step out of the house
• Ceremonies and samskaras, where the principal’s tara is weighed
• New undertakings — a venture, a course of study, a treatment

It is not applied to routine work, to what is already under way, or to worship and remedial practice. As with Chandrabalam, a weak tara is a reason to move something elective, not a reason to stop.

An important limitation of this table

AstroShruti evaluates Tarabalam from the Moon’s nakshatra at sunrise and reports one verdict for the whole day. That is the conventional almanac treatment, and it is what a printed panchang does.

But the Moon crosses into a new nakshatra roughly once a day, and when it does so during the day the verdict genuinely changes at that moment — for every one of the twenty-seven rows at once. This table will not show that. Because nakshatra changes are this frequent, the caveat bites harder here than it does on Chandrabalam: on many days the reading describes the morning only.

Check the nakshatra timings for the day if the moment matters. Where a decision is finely balanced, that is the honest way to use this page.

Common mistakes

• Reading today’s Moon nakshatra as your row. Your row is your janma nakshatra; the Moon’s star today is the reference the counting starts from.
• Treating Janma tara as bad. It is neutral — a sensitive day for worship and birth-star rites, not one of the three adverse taras.
• Trusting one verdict for the whole day. The Moon changes nakshatra about once a day, so on many days the reading only describes the morning.
• Reading it without Chandrabalam. The two are companions — Chandrabalam counts by sign, this by nakshatra; strong Tara Bala can carry mediocre Chandra Bala, but not the reverse.

Notes on this table

• The Moon’s nakshatra is sidereal, using the Lahiri ayanamsha, which is why it will differ from a western ephemeris by roughly one nakshatra.
• The row matching today’s Moon nakshatra is marked — that is the janma nakshatra for whom today is Janma tara.
• Counting is by whole nakshatra, not by pada or degree.