Panch Mahapurush Yoga: The Five Yogas Compared

One Rule, Five Planets (पंच महापुरुष योग)

Parashara’s Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives one rule and applies it to five grahas. Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn, placed in its own sign or its exaltation sign, and in a kendra (the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th house from the lagna), forms a Mahapurusha yoga, one named for each planet. Varahamihira gives the five types a chapter of their own in the Brihat Samhita, describing them mostly by the body; those descriptions are not repeated on this site. The Sun, the Moon, Rahu and Ketu have no Mahapurusha yoga.

Each figure below is computed from the site’s planet, sign and house tables and the 2026–2028 DE421 ingress table. It shows how the five differ as configurations. It does not rank what they do.

Why the Lagna Counts Differ

Signs come in three types, movable (chara), fixed (sthira) and dual (dvisvabhava), and the four kendras of any lagna are always of the lagna’s own type. A planet’s Mahapurusha yoga can therefore occur only for lagnas whose type matches one of its qualifying signs. Venus’s three signs cover all three types, so Malavya is possible for twelve lagnas. Mercury’s two signs are both dual, so Bhadra is possible for four. Mars and Saturn each have movable and fixed signs and no dual one, and Jupiter has movable and dual signs and no fixed one, so Ruchaka, Shasha and Hamsa are each possible for eight.

The practical consequence is a shortcut. With a dual sign rising, Ruchaka and Shasha are ruled out before any planet is looked at; with a fixed sign rising, Hamsa and Bhadra; with a movable sign, Bhadra alone. Each yoga’s own page has a lagna-by-lagna table, with the house the planet would occupy and the houses it rules for that lagna.

How Often the Sky Allows Each One

A yoga is only possible at birth while its planet is in one of its signs, so the dated windows set an upper limit. Over the 1096 days of 2026–2028 the order is Malavya (403), Hamsa (303), Bhadra (260) and Ruchaka (198), and Shasha has no window at all, because Saturn spends all three years in Pisces and Aries. On 837 of those days at least one of the five planets is in a qualifying sign, and on 262 at least two are. Inside any window the lagna still has to match, which narrows each day to some of its hours.

These are figures about the calendar, not about people: they say nothing about how many births fall in those hours, and nothing about what the yoga brings. The dated tables are on the five pages: Ruchaka, Bhadra, Hamsa, Malavya and Shasha.

A Birth-Chart Yoga, Not a Transit

Headlines about a planet “forming” a Mahapurusha rajyoga on a given date take the yoga’s definition and apply it to the moving sky, counting from each Moon sign. That describes where a transit falls for those Moon signs. In Parashara’s usage the yoga belongs to the birth chart, counted from the lagna, and it is fixed for life. A transiting Venus in Libra does not give anyone born before it a Malavya yoga.

Directional Strength, Lordship and the Rest of the Chart

Two things vary inside each yoga’s table. The planet table gives every graha a house of digbala, directional strength: the 10th for Mars, 1st for Mercury, 1st for Jupiter, 4th for Venus and 7th for Saturn. For a few lagnas the Mahapurusha house is that same house. And the houses the planet rules change with the lagna, so the same yoga can be formed by a lagna lord, a yogakaraka, or a planet that also rules a dusthana. The yoga pages show both for every lagna. They do not combine them into a grade, and astrologers weigh them differently.

Two other yogas defined by sign and house have their own computed pages: Gajakesari, Jupiter in a kendra from the Moon, and Budhaditya, the Sun and Mercury in one sign. For combinations read for wealth there is Dhan yoga, and for the frame they all sit in, what Vedic astrology is.

Checking a Chart for All Five

Start from the lagna and its type, which removes some of the five at once. Then for each remaining graha check whether its birth sign is one of its own or exaltation signs, and whether that sign is the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th from the lagna. The ascendant calculator gives the lagna from date, time and place of birth. In Hindi: पंच महापुरुष योग: पाँचों योगों की तुलना.