Learn Vedic Astrology
Vedic astrology, Jyotisha, has a small vocabulary that everything else is built from: twelve signs, nine grahas, twelve houses and twenty-seven nakshatras. Every chart, horoscope, panchang and match on this site is a combination of these, and this reference sets out what the site's own tables hold for each of them. The facts on these pages are not written for the occasion: the lord of a nakshatra, the gana and yoni used in matching, the navamsa of each quarter and the rest are read from the same tables the birth report, the panchang and kundali matching reckon with, so what you read here is what the calculators use. Where a figure comes from a classical text, the page names it. Each page begins with a short introduction and then gives the tables in full sentences, with links between the related pages and to the tool where each is used.
Nakshatras
The nakshatras are the twenty-seven lunar mansions: equal parts of the zodiac, each 13°20′ long, through which the Moon passes in about a day each. They are older than the twelve signs in Indian astronomy, and they remain at the heart of Jyotisha. The nakshatra the Moon occupied at birth is the birth star: it sets the order of the Vimshottari dasha, it gives three of the eight kootas of kundali matching, and the panchang names the day's nakshatra along with its tithi. Each nakshatra has four quarters, or padas, of 3°20′, and each quarter falls in a sign of the navamsa chart. The table below gives all twenty-seven with their span, lord, gana, yoni and nadi; each name leads to a page with the nakshatra's deity and symbol, its padas, its place in matching and the taras counted from it.
Signs
The twelve signs, or rashis, divide the zodiac into equal parts of thirty degrees, counted in the sidereal zodiac from the first point of Aries. Each has a lord, an element and a quality, and each is the sign of a planet's exaltation, fall or rule. The sign rising at birth is the Lagna, from which the houses are counted.
Grahas
The nine grahas are the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, and the two nodes of the Moon, Rahu and Ketu. Each rules signs and nakshatras, has its friends and enemies, and signifies particular things in a life.
Houses
The twelve houses, or bhavas, are counted from the Lagna, and each governs a part of life: the self, wealth, siblings, home, children and so on round to the twelfth. A planet's house and the house its lord stands in shape a reading.
Put it to use
Your own chart combines all of these: a free birth chart shows the sign rising at your birth, the house and sign of each graha and the nakshatra of your Moon. The panchang names each day's nakshatra and tithi, kundali matching reads three of its eight kootas from the two birth stars, and the horoscope counts the planets' houses from your Moon sign.