Kundli Symbols and Abbreviations: A Legend for the Birth Chart

A printed kundli packs nine grahas, a lagna and twelve numbers into one small square, so almost everything on it is abbreviated. Two letters stand for a graha, a single letter or a Hindi syllable marks its state, and the numbers are easy to misread. This page is a legend: what each short form stands for, how to read the numbers in a North Indian chart, and which grahas would carry an R in a chart cast on a given date this winter.

One caution before the tables. Apart from the graha names, none of these marks is fixed by any text. They are habits of chart software and of the people who draw kundlis by hand, and two programs can print the same chart with different letters. Where a mark is shown below, read it as a common printing convention, not a standard.

The Nine Grahas: Su, Mo, Ma, Me, Ju, Ve, Sa, Ra, Ke

English-language kundlis use the first two letters of the English name. Hindi kundlis usually print the first syllable of the Sanskrit name in Devanagari, which is where सू, चं and the rest come from.

Two pairs are easy to confuse. Ma is Mars and Me is Mercury, never the other way round. Sa is Saturn; the Sun is Su. On a Hindi chart, श standing alone is Shani and शु is Shukra, so the vowel mark is the whole difference. Some programs write Rahu and Ketu out in full because they are short already. The nine grahas hub has a page for each.

Asc, As, La and ल: the Lagna

The ascendant, or lagna (लग्न), is not a graha but it is always marked. English charts print Asc, As, La or Lg; Hindi charts print ल or लग्न. So “kundli me Asc ka matlab” has a one-word answer: lagna. In a North Indian chart the mark is often left out, because the lagna is always the top-centre house anyway. The site’s own chart, in the Janam Kundli report, prints “As” there.

Watch for As next to Ast. As in the first house means the lagna. Ast (or अ) printed beside a graha means that graha is combust, which is a different thing entirely; see below.

Status Marks: R, Rx, व, C, Ast, Arrows

Beside a graha’s short form there may be one more mark. These vary more than anything else on the chart, and software differs on all of them.

Kundli me R ka matlab (कुंडली में र का मतलब): R, Rx or व means the graha was retrograde when the chart was cast, that is, moving backwards against the stars as seen from Earth. It is an apparent motion, and the planet does not physically reverse. A station is the instant that apparent motion turns round. The Sun and the Moon are never retrograde, so they never carry R.

Kundli me Ast ka matlab: Ast, C or अ marks a graha the chart treats as combust, near enough to the Sun that the tradition counts it as asta, “set”. How close is a question of orb, and orbs differ between texts and programs; this page does not give one. The site’s graha table says only that three never take the mark: the Sun, Rahu and Ketu. The Sun does not combust; it is the Sun that combusts the others.

Ur, Ne, Pl: Planets Parashari Reading Does Not Use

If a chart shows Ur, Ne or Pl (or U, N, Plu), it was made by software that adds the three outer planets of Western astrology. Jyotish works with nine grahas, and none of the three is among them; they were not discovered until 1781, 1846 and 1930. A Parashari reading leaves them out. Western astrology also pairs each one with a sign as a co-ruler, which the Vedic scheme does not do.

A lone U needs one more look. In English-language Western software it is usually Uranus; on a Hindi chart, उ beside a graha is more likely the exalted mark. The letters around it, English or Devanagari, tell you which system the chart is written in.

The Numbers in a North Indian Chart Are Signs, Not Houses

The North Indian kundli is a square crossed by two diagonals and a diamond, giving twelve fixed compartments. The houses never move: the top-centre diamond is always the 1st house, and the houses run anticlockwise from it. What changes from chart to chart is the small number printed in each house, and that number is a sign, counted from Aries as 1 to Pisces as 12.

So “kundli mein ek number” is Aries (मेष), wherever it sits, and the number in the top-centre house is the lagna sign. A 1 at the top means an Aries lagna; a 1 anywhere else only says which house Aries falls in. The last column below tells you where the 1 lands for each lagna.

The glyphs (♈ to ♓) appear mostly on Western-style charts; a South Indian chart does the opposite of a North Indian one, keeping the signs in fixed boxes and marking the lagna instead. Every lagna puts the 1 in a different house, so the 1 can turn up in any of the twelve.

Worked Example: a Leo Lagna

Take a chart with 5 in the top-centre house. That is Leo (सिंह), so this is a Leo lagna. Going anticlockwise, each house carries the next number, and after 12 the count starts again at 1. The rule is: the sign of a house is the lagna number plus the house number minus one, taking away 12 when the total passes 12.

In this chart the 1 is printed in the 9th house, which means Aries is the 9th sign from the lagna, not that it is the 1st house. The 7th house carries 11, Aquarius; the 4th carries 8, Scorpio; the 10th carries 2, Taurus. A graha written in the 7th compartment of this chart is therefore in Aquarius, and its short form together with that number gives both its sign and its house. What each house covers is set out in the guide to the twelve houses and on the houses hub.

Which Grahas Would Carry R on a Given Date, Nov 2026 to Feb 2027

Because R depends only on the sky, it can be read straight off the site’s station table. The rows below are sample dates, each at least three days from any station, so the answer does not depend on the hour. For a chart cast within a day or so of a station date, check the exact time; different ephemerides can place a station near midnight on different days.

The changes come at the stations: Mercury turns direct on 13 Nov 2026 and Venus on 14 Nov 2026, Saturn on 11 Dec 2026; Jupiter turns retrograde on 13 Dec 2026, Mars on 10 Jan 2027 and Mercury again on 9 Feb 2027. The busiest sample is 1 Nov 2026, with 3 of the five. The dates for the whole year are on the retrograde planets 2026 page.

Rahu and Ketu are a separate case. The site’s node table treats them as retrograde permanently, since it works from the mean node, which only ever goes backward through the signs. So a chart may leave R off them, since it would be on every chart, or print it every time; neither is an error. Note too that the mean node changes sign on 5 Dec 2026, which is why the node column above changes between the 1 December and 20 December rows.

Where the Exalted and Debilitated Marks Can Appear

An exalted or debilitated mark is tied to one sign per graha, so it can be checked against the chart. The signs below are the Parashari ones from the site’s graha table, given at sign level only.

For Rahu and Ketu the table records two reckonings: the one shown, and another that moves the pair to Gemini and Sagittarius. Two programs can disagree about the mark on a node for that reason alone. Each graha’s debilitation sign is the 7th from its exaltation sign.

What This Page Does Not Do

It decodes the letters and numbers and stops there. It does not say what a retrograde, combust, exalted or debilitated graha means for anyone, does not read the reader’s chart, and does not time any event. For the order in which a chart is read once the symbols are clear, see how to read your kundli. The free kundli tool does not draw a chart: it lists the lagna, the Moon sign, the Sun sign, the nakshatra, the running dasha, and Mars with its sign and house, writing “vakri” after Mars when Mars was retrograde at birth.