Mahendra Porutham and Stree Deergham: Check Any Two Stars

South Indian marriage matching works with ten poruthams rather than the eight kootas of the north. Two of the ten, Mahendra and Stree Deergham (also written Stri-Dirgha), need nothing but the two birth stars and a count between them, so they can be checked by hand. This page gives the count, the rule for each, and a table of the answer for every bride’s star.

How to Count from One Star to Another

Both tests count from the bride’s nakshatra to the groom’s, along the zodiac and inclusively, so the star you start on is one. From Ashwini to Bharani is 2. From Bharani back round to Ashwini is 27, because the count has to run all the way through Revati first. A star counted to itself is 1.

For two different stars, the count one way and the count the other way always add up to 29. If the groom’s star is 5 from the bride’s, the bride’s is 24 from the groom’s. Keep that sum in mind: it is why one of these tests reads the same in both directions and the other does not.

Mahendra: Every Third Star from the Fourth

Mahendra is present when the count from the bride’s star to the groom’s is one of 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 25. That is the fourth star and every third star after it, eight of the 26 other stars for any bride. The bride’s own star, at count 1, is not among them.

The test looks directional, but it is not. Every Mahendra count leaves a remainder of one when divided by three, and 29 leaves two, so 29 minus a Mahendra count also leaves one. The count back is then another number in the same list, from 25 for a count of 4 down to 4 for a count of 25. Two stars are Mahendra to each other or not at all, whoever is the bride. Of the 351 pairs of different stars, 108 are Mahendra.

Stree Deergham: Far Enough Along

Stree Deergham is a distance: the groom’s star should stand far enough along from the bride’s. The site’s matching tables use the threshold of nine, so the count has to be 10 or more. Some sources give seven instead, and on that reading 8 and 9 pass as well. The table below also lists those two stars, so a reader who uses seven can read them off.

This one really is directional. Because the two counts add to 29, a pair whose count is 9 or less one way is 20 or more the other way. So no two different stars fail it in both directions: of the 351 pairs, 135 clear nine both ways and the other 216 clear it one way only. The counts that work both ways are 10 to 19. For a pair outside that band, the result depends on which partner is the bride. The one case that fails both ways is the same star on both sides, at a count of 1, which the same-nakshatra marriage page covers on the Ashtakoot side.

The Answer for Every Bride’s Star

Find the bride’s nakshatra in the first column. The second gives the eight groom stars that make Mahendra. The third gives where Stree Deergham starts on the threshold of nine; it runs from that star all the way round to the star just before the bride’s. The last column gives the two stars that pass only on the threshold of seven.

Of the eight Mahendra counts, 4 and 7 fall short of Stree Deergham on either threshold, and the other six clear it. So in each row, the first two Mahendra stars are the ones that do not also pass Stree Deergham.

Where Mahendra and Tara Disagree

Ashtakoot’s Tara koota also counts between the two stars, but it divides the count by nine and penalises a remainder of three, five or seven, in either direction. Running it on the eight Mahendra counts shows that the two tests do not line up:

Only counts 10 and 19 give Tara its full three. The other six Mahendra counts each land on Vadha, the seventh tara, in one direction or the other, and Tara drops to 1.5. A Mahendra pair can therefore lose half the Tara koota in the eight-koota system. The two tests read the same count in different ways, so passing Mahendra does not guarantee a full Tara.

What This Page Does Not Cover

The other poruthams of the ten, Rajju and Vedha among them, are not computed on this site, and this page does not stand in for a full porutham check. It also leaves out what any tradition holds a pass or a failure on these two tests to mean, and how much weight a family gives them against the rest. Each pair of stars has its own nakshatra matching page, with both counts and the eight-koota score side by side. How the 36 guna are spread across all 11,664 Moon-position pairings is worked out in the kundli milan guide, and what each koota compares is in 36 gunas explained. To find a birth star from a date and time, use the nakshatra finder.

In Brief

• The count: bride’s star to groom’s, inclusive, so the two directions add to 29
• Mahendra: a count of 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 25; the same both ways; 108 of 351 pairs
• Stree Deergham: a count past nine (some sources say past seven); directional, and every pair of different stars clears it one way at least
• Against Tara: only counts 10 and 19 of the Mahendra set keep the Tara koota full