Upagraha

Gulika is the degree of the ascendant rising over Saturn’s share of the day. The daylight from sunrise to sunset is divided into eight equal parts and given to the weekday lords starting from the lord of that weekday, so on a Sunday the parts run Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, with the eighth left without a lord. The ascendant over Saturn’s part is Gulika. At night the same eight parts run between sunset and the next sunrise, but they start from the fifth weekday lord counted from the day in question. The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives all of this in chapter 3, verses 66 to 72.

The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra says in as many words that Gulika and Mandi are one and the same and not different, and on the reading the verse gives they fall at exactly the same degree. Later practice separates them by reading them at different points inside the same part of the day, usually Gulika at its start and Mandi at its middle, which is what most software does and what this calculator shows by default. Both are printed, and the page says which reading each figure came from.

Almost always because they read it at a different point within Saturn’s part, and both of the common choices are scriptural. The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra chapter 3 verse 72 puts Gulika at the degree ascending when that part begins. Phaladeepika chapter 25 verse 2 gives a table of ghatikas instead, and its figures fall at the end of the part rather than at the start. A third convention takes the middle. This calculator shows all three side by side with the source of each, rather than choosing one and leaving you to wonder.

The previous one. The parts are measured from sunrise, so the day they belong to runs sunrise to sunrise, and a birth at two in the morning falls in the vedic day that began at the previous sunrise. Using the calendar weekday instead moves Gulika by a whole part of the night, which is the single most common way an upagraha figure goes wrong. This calculator says on the working tab which weekday it used and why.

The five upagrahas taken from the Sun alone, given in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra chapter 3 verses 61 to 64 as a chain. Add 4 signs 13 degrees 20 minutes to the Sun for Dhuma, take Dhuma from 12 signs for Vyatipata, add 6 signs for Parivesha, take that from 12 signs for Indrachapa, and add 16 degrees 40 minutes for Upaketu. They need no birth time beyond what the Sun needs, and the verse that closes the passage calls them malefic by nature.

Phaladeepika chapter 25 gives results for Gulika in each of the twelve bhavas, and this calculator reports them for the house Gulika falls in. They are given as what the tradition holds rather than as a statement about you: the classical descriptions of Gulika are harsher than any one point in a chart supports, and the 6th and the 11th are the two placements the same text reads well. No results are printed for the other ten upagrahas, because the texts checked give them positions and no house by house readings, and nothing has been invented to fill that gap.