अष्टकवर्ग

More than 30 points in a sign or house is favourable, 25 to 30 is medium, and below 25 is adverse. Those thresholds are not a modern convention: the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives them in chapter 72, and Phaladeepika gives the same three bands in chapter 24 verse 37. Note that the twelve houses always share exactly 337 points and the arithmetic average is 28.1, so the bands sit either side of the average rather than being centred on it, and every chart ever cast has some houses above and some below.

It depends which reading you follow, and this calculator prints both rather than choosing for you. Taken as the verses stand, below 25 is adverse in any house. But the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra says a high count advances the effects of a house, and a modern commentator notes on that verse that for the 6th, 8th and 12th, whose effects are illness and debt, upheaval and loss, a low count is therefore the better result. That is a commentator's note rather than a verse, Phaladeepika states the bands with no such exception, and the worked example in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra itself does not reverse them. One piece of it is directly textual though: both texts give a combination for wealth and comfort that requires the 12th to hold fewer points than the 11th.

The 11th house holding more points than the 10th, the 12th holding fewer than the 11th, and the ascendant holding more than the 12th. The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives it at 72.7 to 72.8 and Phaladeepika at 24.38, in the same words, and both say the native enjoys wealth and comforts. This calculator checks the three conditions and prints the counts each was read from, whether or not the combination forms.

A bhinnashtakavarga is one planet's own table of twelve signs. The sarvashtakavarga is the seven tables added together sign by sign, which is the single row most reports show. The individual tables are what you read for a particular planet, and the combined row is what you read for a house.

Because the classical rules grant each planet a different number of houses. The Sun collects 48 points across the twelve signs in every chart, the Moon 49, Mars and Saturn 39 each, Mercury 54, Jupiter 56 and Venus 52. The consequence is that four bindus in a Mars sign is a stronger showing than four in a Jupiter sign, and the tables here print the allowance beside the count for that reason.

A single figure per planet, produced by reducing its table twice, once within each group of trinal signs and once for the five lords that own two signs, and then weighting what remains by fixed sign and planet multipliers. It is the input to the classical timing methods built on this system. The sarvashtakavarga is always quoted unreduced, so the reduction never changes the figures reported above it.

A planet crossing a sign that stands high in its own bhinnashtakavarga is read as passing through supported ground, and the same planet crossing a sign with two or three bindus is read as passing through thin ground. That is the usual practical use of these tables, and it is why the individual tables matter as much as the combined row.