Ashtakvarga Strength

How Ashtakvarga scores a house

Ashtakvarga turns a chart into arithmetic. Each of the 7 planets gets its own Bhinnashtakvarga — a score out of 8 for every sign — built by asking 8 contributors (the seven planets plus the ascendant) whether that sign sits in a benefic position from where they stand. A yes is one bindu. Add all seven planets together and you get the Sarvashtakvarga, which is the number people mean by "house strength".

The rules are fixed, and there are 56 rows of them totalling 337 bindus across the whole system. Jupiter carries the most at 56; Mars the fewest at 39.

Where the system is generous, and where it is not

Counting every rule row by the house position it rewards shows the shape of the scheme itself — before any chart is cast. The 11th position collects 54 of the 337 bindus, more than twice the 12th at 17. That is not a quirk of this implementation; it is why the upachaya houses are said to grow, and why a planet in the 12th rarely scores well however good the rest of the chart looks.

The 56 contribution rules

Read a row as: from this contributor's own sign, count forward — those positions each give one bindu to the planet named in the heading. Every chart is scored with exactly these numbers.

Reading your own numbers

A Sarvashtakvarga house score runs from roughly 19 to 40, and the average across twelve houses is always 28 — because the total is fixed at 337 no matter whose chart it is. That is the whole point: it makes houses comparable within a chart. A house at 33 is not strong in the abstract; it is strong relative to your own 24. Anything at or below the high twenties is where a transit through it tends to be felt as friction rather than opportunity.

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