Foundation
What is Ashtakvarga?
Ashtakvarga — literally "eight categories" — is a classical Vedic scoring system that quantifies the cumulative blessing each of the 12 houses receives in a birth chart. It is the most important quantitative tool in Vedic astrology, sitting alongside the qualitative reading of planetary positions, signs, and aspects.
Seven planets — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn — plus the Lagna as an eighth reference, each contribute between 0 and 8 bindus (benefic points) to every house. The contribution rules are fixed in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Chapter 65 (Ashtakavarga Phaladhyaya) — they depend on each planet's position relative to its dispositors and reference points. This produces two matrices:
The Bhinnashtakvarga (BAV) is the per-planet matrix — seven rows showing how many bindus that planet contributes to each house. The per-planet totals have classical norms: Sun 48, Moon 49, Mars 39, Mercury 54, Jupiter 56, Venus 52, Saturn 39. Totals materially above the norm indicate that planet is unusually generative in your chart.
The Sarvashtakvarga (SAV) is the per-house total — the sum of all seven planets' contributions to each house. The classical interpretation uses three thresholds: 30+ bindus is strong (transits and Dasha activations reliably produce favourable results); 25–29 is average; below 25 is vulnerable (transits demand caution). The grand total across all 12 houses is always 337.
The most practical application is transit prediction. When Saturn — your karma karaka and the most demanding transit — passes through a house with 5 or more of its own bindus, the experience is materially softer than the same transit through a 1-bindu house. Saturn's bindu pattern is the classical Sade Sati intensity guide. Jupiter's bindu pattern shows where its expansion will land most fruitfully.
Method
How Bindus Are Calculated
Each planet's bindus in each house are computed from Parashara's classical rules: a planet contributes a bindu to a particular house if certain reference planets (each planet has its own list) occupy specific positions relative to it. The computation is mechanical — once the chart positions are fixed, the bindu count is deterministic. This is why Ashtakvarga is treated as a quantitative system: the same chart will always produce the same 337-bindu distribution.
Calculations on this page use Swiss Ephemeris for planetary positions and the standard BPHS Chapter 65 contribution tables. Verifications: the per-planet BAV totals must sum to 48, 49, 39, 54, 56, 52, 39 respectively (Sun..Saturn), and the SAV grand total must equal 337. The result page surfaces the grand total so you can sanity-check the reading.
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