Character
Bharani is the second nakshatra, from 13°20′ to 26°40′ of Mesha. Like Ashwini before it, it is contained in a single Rashi, and the sign is Mesh Rashi, the one Mars governs. Venus, the lord of Bharani, therefore governs a nakshatra that stands in a sign belonging to a different graha.
A Moon in Bharani at birth is read as an intense and capable mind, one that carries what it has taken on. The nakshatra is described as dealing in extremes of feeling, pleasure and strain alike, and as being drawn toward duties that other people avoid. With a fierce nature and Yama as its deity, a mind shaped by Bharani is read as serious about limits, consequences and the end of things.
Bharani belongs to the manushya gana, the human class. The nakshatra is read as concerned with what a person owes, endures and brings to completion, and less with the lightness of its neighbour Ashwini. The next nakshatra, Krittika, crosses into Vrishabha.
Lord and dasha
Venus is the lord of Bharani. Nine places further on it is also the lord of Purva Phalguni, and nine more bring Purva Ashadha. Its Vimshottari period is 20 years, the longest of the nine and one-sixth of the whole 120.
A Moon in Bharani at birth puts Venus’s mahadasha first in line. The portion still unspent at birth is proportional to the stretch of Bharani the Moon had yet to cross, so someone born at the nakshatra’s start has nearly the full two decades before the Sun’s 6 years follow. The Moon’s 10 years come after the Sun’s, then Mars’s 7.
With a period this long, a birth near the start of Bharani places most of a person’s first two decades under Venus. Those years are read through the bhava Venus occupies, the sign it stands in and the grahas that aspect it.
Deity and symbol
The deity of Bharani is Yama. Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita names him directly, and the Muhurta Chintamani calls him antaka. Through Yama the nakshatra is read as connected with restraint, judgement and the closing of accounts.
The symbol is the yoni, the female organ of birth. The Muhurta Chintamani’s list of shapes gives the same form. The image can be read in two directions at once, as the place where life begins and as a passage that has to be gone through. That fits a nakshatra whose deity governs endings. The symbol is a separate matter from the yoni of the next section, which is an animal.
Gana, yoni and nature
Bharani is of the manushya gana, the human class, along with Rohini, Ardra and six others.
Its yoni is the elephant. The Muhurta Chintamani pairs it with Revati, which closes the zodiac, so the second nakshatra and the last of the 27 share an animal. B. V. Raman’s Muhurtha makes Bharani the male elephant and Revati the female. Ashtakoota gives the yoni four of its 36 points.
Its nature is ugra, fierce, shared with Magha, Purva Phalguni, Purva Ashadha and Purva Bhadrapada. The Muhurta Chintamani assigns the fierce class to harsh and destructive acts: striking, setting fires, deceit, poison and weapons. This is the text’s list of what that class suits, kept here as a description of the label rather than a rule for anyone’s life.
Padas and name letters
The Moon’s navamsa in Bharani begins in Simha, for 13°20′ to 16°40′, then passes to Kanya (to 20°00′), Tula (to 23°20′) and Vrishchika (to 26°40′). Those are four consecutive signs, the fifth to the eighth from Mesha.
To learn which pada the Moon held at a given birth, the kundli calculator shows the nakshatra and pada. Each pada has its syllable in the table that Govinda gives in his commentary: Li, Lu, Le and Lo. In the custom of Namakarana a name opens with the sound of the pada at birth.
In Prashna and muhurta
In a Prashna chart the Moon takes on the tone of her nakshatra, and in Bharani that tone is weight, duty, perhaps an ending: the question asked under strain, about something owed or something that has to be borne. The Lagna of the chart is the asker, and the Moon is the asker’s mind and the course of the matter. Her Rashi is Mesha in every pada, so the sign lord whose condition is looked at is Mars.
The harsh deeds listed above belong, in the Muhurta Chintamani, to the fierce nakshatras, and Bharani is one of its five.
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