Ashtakavarga and Sarvashtakavarga: The Seven Tables and the 337 Bindus

Every sarvashtakavarga table, for every birth chart, adds up to the same number: 337. That is not a coincidence of anyone’s chart. It follows from the way the scheme is built, and once the construction is clear it gives a quick way to check any ashtakavarga table printed in a kundli. This page sets out the seven tables, counts what goes into each, and works one of them through by hand.

Ashtakavarga Meaning (अष्टकवर्ग)

Ashta is eight and varga is a group: the ashtakavarga is a system of eight reference points. The version set out in the ashtakavarga chapters of Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra takes the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn and gives each of them a table of its own, the bhinnashtakavarga (भिन्नाष्टकवर्ग, BAV), or “separate” ashtakavarga. Each table is filled from eight contributors: the seven grahas themselves and the lagna. For every contributor the text lists certain houses, counted from wherever that contributor sits; each sign that falls at one of those houses receives one benefic point, a bindu. Rahu and Ketu have no table and contribute nothing in this classical scheme.

Because a contributor can place at most one bindu in a given sign, a sign can receive at most 8 bindus in any single BAV and as few as none. Adding the seven BAVs sign by sign gives the sarvashtakavarga (सर्वाष्टकवर्ग, SAV), the “total” ashtakavarga, in which a sign can hold anywhere from 0 to 56 bindus as a matter of arithmetic (8 contributors × 7 tables). Those are bounds on the counting, not a claim that either extreme turns up in real charts.

The Seven Bhinnashtakavargas: How Many Bindus Each Holds

The table below gives, for each BAV, how many houses the Parashari lists assign to each contributor. Read across a row to see where one graha’s table gets its bindus; the row total is the number of bindus that table holds in every chart, wherever the grahas happen to be.

The row totals run from 39 (the Mars and Saturn tables) to 56 (Jupiter’s table). The bottom row turns the table on its side: it counts what each contributor supplies across all seven BAVs. Bindus counted from Mars come to 49, the largest column, and those counted from the Moon and from Jupiter come to 36 each, the smallest. The lagna, which has no BAV of its own here, still accounts for 45. Both directions sum to 337, which is the first check on the table.

Why Every Sarvashtakavarga Totals 337

Moving a graha to another sign changes which signs its bindus land in, but not how many there are. So each BAV always holds its fixed total, and the SAV, being their sum, always holds 337. Spread over twelve signs that is an average of 28.08, a little over 28; twelve signs at exactly 28 would make 336, so at least one sign must sit above 28 in every chart.

The same fixed totals give per-sign averages for each BAV. Halfway on the 0 to 8 scale is 4, but the averages are not all 4: the Sun’s table averages 4.00 a sign, the Moon’s 4.08, Mercury’s 4.50, Venus’s 4.33, Jupiter’s 4.67, and the tables of Mars and Saturn 3.25. A 4 in Saturn’s BAV is above that table’s own average; a 4 in Jupiter’s is below it. Comparing a number with the average of its own table, rather than with the middle of the scale, keeps those two apart.

The Sun’s BAV, Position by Position

One table in full shows the method. These are the houses at which a bindu falls in the Sun’s BAV, as Parashara’s lists give them, each counted from the contributor named on the left (the contributor’s own sign is the 1st). The length of each list is the number in the Sun’s row above.

The Sun, Mars and Saturn share one list in this table. Tallying the lists by position shows how unevenly the bindus fall: the 11th house from a contributor appears in 7 of the eight lists, every one except Venus’s, while the 5th appears in only 2. The full tally from the 1st position to the 12th is 3, 3, 3, 4, 2, 5, 4, 3, 5, 6, 7, 3, which sums to 48. The other six BAVs have lists of their own, set out in the same chapters; this page gives only their counts.

A Worked Example: The Sun’s BAV Across Twelve Signs

Take these placements, chosen to show the arithmetic and not anyone’s chart: lagna in Aries, Sun in Leo, Moon in Taurus, Mars in Capricorn, Mercury in Virgo, Jupiter in Cancer, Venus in Libra, Saturn in Aquarius. For each sign, count which house it is from each contributor and check that house against the list above.

Aquarius, worked through: it is the 7th from the Sun, the 10th from the Moon and the 1st from Saturn, which sits in it; all three houses are on the matching lists. Counted from Jupiter in Cancer it is the 8th, and counted from Venus in Libra the 5th; neither is on those lists, so Aquarius takes no bindu from either. The full walk: Sun 7th yes, Moon 10th yes, Mars 2nd yes, Mercury 6th yes, Jupiter 8th no, Venus 5th no, Saturn 1st yes, Lagna 11th yes, for 6 bindus.

The column adds to 48, as it must. In this example Aquarius and Pisces hold the most, 6 each, and Sagittarius the fewest, 2. Move any graha and the twelve numbers reshuffle; the total stays 48.

Kundli Me Ashtak Varg Kaise Dekhe: Reading a Printed Table

Where a kundli prints the ashtakavarga, the seven BAVs are generally set out as a grid, one row per graha and one column per sign (or per house, counted from the lagna), with the SAV as a final row. A few checks need no astrology at all:

• Every number in a BAV row lies between 0 and 8; every SAV entry between 0 and 56.
• The rows total 48 (Sun), 49 (Moon), 39 (Mars), 54 (Mercury), 56 (Jupiter), 52 (Venus), 39 (Saturn).
• The SAV row totals 337. If it totals 335, the table is printing the other count: the 672 places in the seven tables (7 × 8 contributors × 12 signs) split into 337 with a bindu and 335 without, and notation differs between traditions and programs over which of the two is drawn as dots and which as lines (rekhas).
• Columns headed by house rather than sign are the same numbers rotated so that the lagna’s sign comes first.

A table whose entries break the ranges, or whose SAV totals neither 337 nor 335, has an input or printing error, and none of its numbers should be read until it is fixed.

The “Above 28” Convention, and How Practitioners Use the Numbers

A rule of thumb among practitioners who use sarvashtakavarga treats a sign above 28 bindus as strong and one below as weak. It is a convention, and the arithmetic above shows where it comes from: 28 is the average, 28.08 rounded down. Among the same practitioners a BAV sign with more than 4 of 8 is read as favourable for the graha whose table it is, and the BAV numbers are used to weigh transits: the bindus in the sign a graha is passing through, in that graha’s own table. Those are the tradition’s uses, reported here. This page does not apply them to anyone, and a high or low count is not offered as a prediction.

What This Page Does Not Do

It does not compute your ashtakavarga, read any sign, house or transit, or date anything in a life. The free kundli does not compute ashtakavarga either; it gives the Moon sign, nakshatra, Sun sign, lagna, the running dasha, and the sign and house of Mars, which is not all eight inputs. For the grahas themselves see the planets hub, and for the twelve houses the BAV columns are counted into, the houses hub. Two other ways of counting from a point in the chart are bhavat bhavam and graha drishti; a different measure of a graha’s strength by house is digbala.

In Hindi: अष्टकवर्ग और सर्वाष्टकवर्ग: सात तालिकाएँ और 337 बिंदु.