What a kundli shows
A kundli is a map of the sky at the minute and place of your birth, drawn the way Jyotish draws it. Its raw material is short: the rashi of every graha, the Lagna — the sign then rising in the east — and the nakshatra, or lunar mansion, each graha stood in. Everything else is derived from those: the twelve bhavas, the dignity of each graha and the Vimshottari dasha, the timetable of planetary periods that Vedic astrologers use to time events.
The positions are sidereal: measured from a fixed point among the stars rather than from the spring equinox. Because the equinox drifts slowly backwards against the stars, the two zodiacs are now about 24° apart, so most grahas in a kundli sit one sign earlier than in a Western chart for the same moment. Nothing else changes: the planets are where they are, only the starting point they are measured from differs.
Rashi, bhava and graha
The table under the chart lists the nine grahas with their rashi (sign), degree, bhava (house), nakshatra and dignity. The grahas are the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, plus Rahu and Ketu, the Moon’s north and south nodes. Rahu here is the true node, and Ketu lies exactly opposite it. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not part of classical Jyotish and are left out.
The bhavas are whole signs counted from the Lagna: the rising sign is the 1st bhava, the next sign the 2nd, and so on round the zodiac. This is how the classical texts and most Indian astrologers count them. Dignity is judged by sign: exalted, moolatrikona, own sign or debilitated, in that order of precedence, and neutral otherwise; Rahu and Ketu are given none. An R after the degree marks a retrograde graha.
Nakshatras and padas
The zodiac is also divided into 27 nakshatras of 13°20′ each, starting with Ashwini at 0° Aries. Each nakshatra has four padas, or quarters, of 3°20′, so there are 108 padas in all — nine to a sign. The nakshatra of the Moon at birth, the janma nakshatra, is the most important: it sets the dasha sequence and is the basis of many traditional choices, from naming a child to matching horoscopes. The notes under the chart give a short reading of your Moon’s rashi and nakshatra.
North and South Indian charts
Both styles are square and show the same twelve signs; they differ in what stays fixed. In the North Indian chart the houses never move: the top central diamond is always the 1st bhava, the houses run counter-clockwise from it, and each carries the number of the sign that falls there (1 for Aries, 2 for Taurus and so on). In the South Indian chart the signs never move: Pisces sits in the top-left box, Aries next to it, and the signs run clockwise round the border, with the Lagna marked by a diagonal line in its box. Switch between them under the chart — the grahas don’t change, only the drawing.
Vimshottari dasha
Vimshottari is the dasha system Parashara treats as the main one. It divides a 120-year cycle among the nine grahas: Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, the Sun 6, the Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19 and Mercury 17. The first period belongs to the lord of the Moon’s birth nakshatra, and the part of it still to run is in proportion to the part of the nakshatra the Moon had left to cross. Each mahadasha divides into nine antardashas in the same order, each as long as the two lords’ years multiplied together and divided by 120.
The dates here use a year of 365.25 days. Some software counts a 360-day year instead, which moves dates by several days per year of dasha, so another program can disagree with these dates by weeks or months.
From kundli to Prashna
Jyotish has a second use for a chart besides the birth chart. In Prashna, its horary branch, the astrologer sets the kundli aside and casts a fresh chart for the moment the question is put; the Lagna of that moment stands for the person asking and the matter is judged from that chart alone. The AstroGPT app’s Vedic mode follows this method: the minute you open a chat and put your question, it erects the Prashna chart for that time and place and judges the question from it, without consulting your kundli or your dashas. To see how a question chart is read, start with Prashna: the Vedic approach in the horary astrology guide.
Everything here is offered for reflection and entertainment.