Ashtakavarga

Chapter 9 · Part of our series on the Brihat Jataka of Varahamihira

A birth chart freezes the sky at one moment. But the sky does not stop. After birth, the planets keep travelling around the zodiac, the Moon through a sign every couple of days, Saturn through a sign every two and a half years. As each planet moves, it passes over different parts of the birth chart. This passage is called a transit (gocara).

Why does Saturn's passage through one sign bring a hard time to one person and a steady, fruitful time to another? This chapter offers an elegant answer. It is called aṣṭakavarga, "the group of eight".

The idea: eight votes for every sign

The method rests on a simple and powerful idea. Each moving planet is judged not from one point in the birth chart, but from eight. These eight reference points are the seven planets and the rising sign, each in the place it held at birth.

From each of these eight points, certain houses are counted as favourable for the moving planet. So for any sign of the zodiac, each of the eight points either "votes" for it as favourable or does not. A sign can therefore collect anything from zero to eight favourable votes.

The rule is then simple. When a planet passes through a sign that collected many favourable votes for it, its passage is good. When it passes through a sign with few, its passage is difficult. The traditional way of recording this is to mark each favourable vote with a dot, a bindu, in each sign.

How the favourable places are given

The first seven verses list the favourable places for each planet, counted from each of the eight reference points. Here is the first, for the Sun (9.1):

स्वादर्कः प्रथमायबन्धुनिधनद्व्याज्ञातपोद्यूनगो वक्रात्स्वादिव तद्वदेव रविजाच्छुक्रात्स्मरान्त्यारिषु । जीवाद्धर्मसुतायशत्रुषु दशत्र्यायारिगः शीतगोरेष्वेवान्त्यतपःसुतेषु च बुधाल्लग्नात्सबन्ध्वन्त्यगः ॥

svād arkaḥ prathamāyabandhunidhanadvyājñātapodyūnago vakrāt svād iva tadvad eva ravijāc chukrāt smarāntyāriṣu | jīvād dharmasutāyaśatruṣu daśatryāyārigaḥ śītagor eṣv evāntyatapaḥsuteṣu ca budhāl lagnāt sabandhvantyagaḥ ||

The Sun is favourable in the first, eleventh, fourth, eighth, second, tenth, ninth and seventh houses from itself; the same from Mars as from itself, and the same again from Saturn. From Venus, in the seventh, twelfth and sixth. From Jupiter, in the ninth, fifth, eleventh and sixth. From the Moon, in the tenth, third, eleventh and sixth. From Mercury, in these same, and also the twelfth, ninth and fifth. From the rising sign, in these same, with the fourth and twelfth.

The verse is packed tightly, as always, using the names of the houses from the first chapter: āya (gain) for the eleventh, bandhu (kin) for the fourth, nidhana (death) for the eighth, ājñā (command) for the tenth, tapas (austerity) for the ninth, dyūna for the seventh, and so on. Laid out plainly:

Across all eight reference points, the Sun has 48 favourable places in all.

Working it through

An example shows how this is used. Suppose that at someone's birth, Mars stood in Leo. From Mars, the Sun's favourable houses include the first, Leo itself. So Leo receives one favourable vote for the Sun from Mars. The same is done from each of the other seven reference points. If, when all eight are counted, Leo has collected six votes, then each year when the Sun passes through Leo, that month is a good one for the person. If Leo collected only two, the Sun's passage through it is a harder time.

The same is done for each of the seven planets, giving each one its own table of twelve signs. A slow planet like Saturn, which spends years in each sign, can thus be read sign by sign across the whole of a life.

The full table of favourable places

The remaining verses (9.2 to 9.7) give the favourable places for the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn in the same way. Here they are for all seven planets, as a reference:

Adding up each row gives the total number of favourable places each planet has across the whole system:

The totals tell their own story. Jupiter and Mercury have the most favourable places, and Mars and Saturn, the two harsh planets, have the fewest. The gentle planets find more welcome in the chart.

The closing principle

The last verse states the rule for reading the result, and adds an important refinement (9.8):

इति निगदितमिष्टं नेष्टमन्यद्विशेषादधिकफलविपाकं जन्मभात्तत्र दद्युः । उपचयगृहमित्रस्वोच्चगैः पुष्टमिष्टं त्वपचयगृहनीचारातिगैर्नेष्टसम्पत् ॥

iti nigaditam iṣṭaṃ neṣṭam anyad viśeṣād adhikaphalavipākaṃ janmabhāt tatra dadyuḥ | upacayagṛhamitrasvoccagaiḥ puṣṭam iṣṭaṃ tv apacayagṛhanīcārātigair neṣṭasampat ||

Thus the favourable places have been stated; the others are unfavourable. Measured from the birth positions, the planets give their results there, ripening the more fully where the balance is greater. The good is strengthened when the planet passes through a house of growth, or a friend's sign, its own sign, or its sign of exaltation. The bad is completed when it passes through a house that is not of growth, or its sign of fall, or an enemy's sign.

The votes are not the whole story. A planet that passes through a sign with many favourable votes gives the good fully if that sign is also one of its own, a friend's, or its exaltation, or one of the houses of growth from the rising sign. A planet passing through a sign with few votes gives its difficulty fully if that sign is also its fall, an enemy's sign, or a house that does not grow. Where the two pictures disagree, the results are mixed.

Why this method endures

The beauty of the ashtakavarga is that it judges every transit against the whole birth chart at once. A planet's passage through a sign is not good or bad in itself; it depends on the person. The same Saturn moving through the same sign can be a burden for one person and a season of steady building for another, because their birth charts cast different votes.

Later astrologers developed the method much further. They added the votes of all seven planets together into a single combined table for each sign, the sarvāṣṭakavarga, and devised ways of reducing and refining the counts. The ashtakavarga remains one of the most widely used tools for judging transits in jyotish today. Its foundation is the eight short verses of this chapter.

Verses are from Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka, chapter 9. English renderings are our own, made from the Sanskrit and checked against the public-domain translation by N. Chidambaram Aiyar (1885; second edition 1905) and against the word-by-word analysis in Michael D. Neely's edition.