Argala

What this page adds to the calculator above

The calculator above returns twelve rows, one for each house: a Yes or a No for unobstructed Argala and, beside each Yes, a short effect line. This long-form sets out the chapter the rule comes from, each step the engine takes, the clauses of the text it leaves out, the sample chart worked pair by pair, how often each answer turns up across real skies, and how to read a Yes and a No without overreading either.

Argala is counted in houses, and houses are counted from the rising sign, so nothing here exists without an Ascendant. If you have not confirmed yours, start with the Lagna calculator. If you came for the Raj Yoga that the text builds on Argala, the Yogas calculator runs that check with the same function described below.

The classical source: BPHS Chapter 31

The rule is cited from Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, Chapter 31, which the translation used here titles Argala, or Intervention from Grahas. It is a short chapter of eighteen slokas. Maitreya asks for the conditions and effects of Argala (Sloka 1), and Parashara answers that he will explain it so that the definite effects of Bhavas and Grahas can be known (Sloka 2-9). The translator's note adds that the Sanskrit word is used figuratively for an impediment or obstruction. The chapter works in both directions: grahas in certain places intervene on a house, and grahas in the opposing places block them.

Sloka 2-9 names the places. Grahas in the 2nd, 4th and 11th from a Bhava or a Grah cause Argala, and those in the 12th, 10th and 3rd obstruct it. A little further on the 5th is added as an Argala place, countered by a Grah in the 9th. That gives four pairs.

Which side wins is settled by either of two tests. The Argala prevails if the Grah causing it is stronger than the one obstructing it, or if the Argalas outnumber the obstructing Grahas. The same passage then makes five further statements, and each one matters when you compare this calculator with another.

• Vipreet Argala. Three or more malefics in the 3rd do not merely obstruct. The text says they cause a more effective intervention of their own, which it calls harmless and very favourable.
• The nodes. Because Rahu and Ketu move retrograde, their Argalas and obstructions are to be counted 'in a reverse manner'. The translation does not say which places or roles are reversed.
• Degree of effect. Argala from one Grah gives limited effect, from two medium, and from more than two excellent.
• Reference point. Argalas are counted from a Rashi or from a Grah, as the case may be, so the technique is not confined to the twelve houses.
• Outcome and timing. An unobstructed Argala is fruitful and a duly obstructed one goes astray, and the effects are to be derived in the Dasha periods of the Rashi or Grah concerned.

The translator's note records a disagreement. Some authorities count the obstruction places from the Argala place and not from the original house. The translator rejects that as illogical and points to the way obstructions are counted in transits as support. This app follows the translation: all eight places are counted from the house itself.

Sloka 10 refines the pairs by quarter of a sign. An Argala caused by a Grah in the first quarter of its sign is countered by a Grah in the fourth quarter of the obstructing sign, and a second-quarter Argala by a third-quarter obstructor. The note adds that the obstruction comes to pass only when the two sit in those matching quarters. A quarter of a sign is 7 degrees 30 minutes, so this rule needs exact longitudes, where Sloka 2-9 needs only signs. Sloka 11-17 then lists what unobstructed Argala denotes for each of the twelve Bhavas, and Sloka 18 names one combination across three of them; both are taken up below.

Parashara and Jaimini

The calculator sits in this site's Jaimini group beside Arudha Lagna, Bhava Padas, Char Karakas and Karakamsa. The rule itself is cited from BPHS, where Argala is the chapter between the Upa Pada (Ch. 30) and the Karakas (Ch. 32). Every statement on this page carries its chapter and sloka so that it can be checked against the sources page.

How the engine computes it, step by step

Positions are computed for the birth instant and converted to sidereal longitude with the Lahiri ayanamsa. The ayanamsa calculator shows the offset for any date, and the methodology page describes the astronomy and its limits. From there the Argala test uses whole signs only.

1. 1.Find the rising sign from the birth time and the coordinates of the birth place. That sign is house 1, the next sign house 2, and so on. These are whole-sign houses: every graha in a sign is in the same house, whatever its degree.
2. 2.Take the seven classical grahas: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Rahu and Ketu are set aside and counted on neither side.
3. 3.For the house being judged, count the grahas in the 2nd, 4th, 11th and 5th houses from it. These are the four supporting counts.
4. 4.Count the grahas in the 12th, 10th, 3rd and 9th houses from it. These are the four obstructing counts.
5. 5.Compare each supporting count with its partner: 2nd against 12th, 4th against 10th, 11th against 3rd, 5th against 9th. A pair is won only when the supporting count is strictly greater.
6. 6.If at least one of the four pairs is won, mark the house as carrying unobstructed Argala. If none is won, do not.
7. 7.Repeat for all twelve houses. Each row carries the house's classical name, a short area label, the Yes or No and, for a Yes only, its effect line.

Seen from a single graha, the rule turns round. A graha backs the houses for which it is the 2nd, 4th, 11th or 5th, and those are the 12th, 10th, 3rd and 9th houses counted from itself. It obstructs the houses for which it is the 12th, 10th, 3rd or 9th, which are the 2nd, 4th, 11th and 5th from itself. The house it occupies and the 6th, 7th and 8th from it are untouched. So every graha backs four houses, stands in the way of four and plays no part for the other four, and the answer for a house is the net of seven such contributions, taken pair by pair.

What the engine leaves out

The engine's own source comments call this a deliberately simplified core and name its main simplifications. Set against the whole chapter, the differences are these.

So a Yes here is not the same statement as a Yes reached through the whole chapter. It is stricter in one way, since strength can never rescue a tie, and looser in others, since no aspect, quarter or grading is asked for.

Worked example, pair by pair

The sample on this page is a birth on 14 August 1994 at 06:42 in Ahmedabad. The engine gives an Ascendant of Leo at 2.33 degrees and places the seven counted grahas in five houses: Venus in Virgo (2nd), the Moon and Jupiter in Libra (3rd), Saturn in Aquarius (7th), Mars in Gemini (11th), and the Sun and Mercury in Cancer (12th). Rahu is also in Libra and Ketu is in Aries, and neither is counted. Each cell below shows the supporting count against the obstructing count.

The three No rows are not alike. The Lagna has backing in two places, Venus in its 2nd and Mars in its 11th, and loses both pairs by one to two: the Sun and Mercury sit in its 12th, the Moon and Jupiter in its 3rd. The 7th house has one backer, Mars in its 5th, against two in its 9th. The 3rd house is a tie, with Saturn in its 5th against Mars in its 9th.

That tie is where the count and the text part company. Under the first test of Sloka 2-9 the stronger Grah prevails, and in this chart Saturn stands in Aquarius in the 7th and is the strongest of the seven on this app's own Shad Bala scale, at 17.63 of 20. A reading that weighed strength could therefore mark the 3rd house Yes. The engine does not weigh it, and reports No.

The nine Yes rows differ just as much. The 11th house wins three pairs, with the Sun and Mercury in its 2nd, Venus in its 4th, and the Moon and Jupiter in its 5th against Saturn alone in its 9th. The 6th house wins one pair through a single graha, Saturn in its 2nd. By the text's own grading the first is Argala from more than two Grahas and the second from one, yet both appear as the same Yes. To see the grahas behind your own rows, open the birth chart calculator, note which house each of the seven is in, and repeat the count above.

The same day, hour by hour

To separate what the birth time does from what the date does, the engine was run for the same day and place every two hours.

Nine houses qualify in every row, and until mid-afternoon the three that fail are always the same three signs: Leo, Libra and Aquarius. The rising sign does not change which signs are backed. It only decides which house numbers, and so which effect lines, those signs carry. Between 15:45 and 15:50 the Moon leaves Libra for Scorpio, and from then on the failing signs are Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius.

How common each answer is

Because the pattern belongs to the signs, it can be counted across real skies without choosing birth times. The engine was run once a day at 12:00 IST from 1 January 1950 to 31 December 2025, 27,759 charts in all, and the number of qualifying houses was recorded.

The average is 9.3 houses out of twelve, and each sign qualified on between 76 and 79 per cent of days. So the sample's nine is ordinary, a Yes on any one house is the usual answer about three times in four, and the No rows are the rarer and more informative part of the result. The reason is in the rule: any one of four pairs is enough, and each graha backs four houses.

There is also a floor. Across all 31,824 ways of distributing seven grahas over twelve signs, none gives fewer than four Yes rows. The daily run reached that floor on 13 days, among them 4 and 5 February 1962, when all seven grahas stood in Capricorn.

The same run, counting each of the twelve rising signs once per day, finds Argala Raj Yoga in about 39 per cent of charts, in line with the 38.9 per cent reported from a separate sample in what a yoga in your chart means. Its structure explains the alternating column in the hour-by-hour table. The 1st, 5th and 9th signs from any rising sign form one of four fixed triangles: Aries, Leo and Sagittarius; Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn; Gemini, Libra and Aquarius; Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. On a given day either all three rising signs of a triangle have the yoga or none has. On the sample day the second and fourth triangles were fully backed.

How to read each kind of result

A Yes row

A Yes states one thing: for this house, at least one of the four supporting places holds more of the seven grahas than the place opposing it. The effect line beside it is that house's entry in Sloka 11-17, where the text says what unobstructed Argala denotes for each Bhava. The table sets the text's entries, paraphrased, beside the wording this app shows.

Three entries in the text are hard ones: the 6th, the 8th and the 12th. The engine reads every row the same way, as a backed house becoming more active, and keeps that point while dropping the dread. A Yes on the 6th is worded as higher stakes in rivalry or competition, on the 8th as real change moving through that house, and on the 12th as outflow worth budgeting for. For the houses themselves, the learn pages on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th houses carry the full classical material.

A No row

A No carries no effect line, and it covers two situations that the page does not tell apart. In one, the supporting places are simply empty, so there is no Argala to speak of. In the other, there is backing but it is matched or outnumbered, which is what the text calls an obstructed Argala going astray. The sample's 1st house is the second kind. Neither is a negative statement about the house: the chapter attaches no penalty to a house without Argala. In the signed-in Kundali a No row is labelled 'Obstructed - not currently active'.

Benefic and malefic Argala

Sloka 11-17 words its list for a malefic or a benefic alike, so either can produce the house effect. It then closes with a distinction: Argala by benefics gives happiness of various kinds, the good effects are impaired where the Argala is by malefics (the translation's wording at this point is not clear), and Argala from both together will yield results. The translator's notes name the two cases. Subh Argala is caused by a benefic and can stall the role of a malefic. Pap Argala is caused by a malefic with reference to a benefic, so that the benefic's good is not enjoyed until that Argala is itself removed.

The engine counts all seven alike, so sorting them is left to you. BPHS Ch. 3, Sloka 11 gives the natural classes: the Sun, Saturn, Mars, the waning Moon, Rahu and Ketu are malefics, the rest are benefics, and Mercury turns malefic when joined to a malefic. In the sample the 12th house's Yes rests on the Moon, waxing that day, and Jupiter in its 4th. The 6th's rests on Saturn alone.

The Drishti clause

There is one more condition in Sloka 11-17 that a plain Yes does not carry. Each house effect is stated for a Grah that causes unobstructed Argala and also gives a Drishti, an aspect, to that Bhava. The chapter does not say which kind of aspect is meant, and BPHS describes two: aspects between signs in Ch. 8 and aspects of the Grahas in Ch. 26.

Read strictly, the condition is far narrower than the count. By the full graha aspects of Ch. 26, Sloka 2-5, where every Grah aspects the 7th and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have special aspects, only Saturn in the 4th or 11th from a house, or Jupiter in the 5th from it, both backs the house and aspects it. The same slokas give any Grah in the 4th, 11th or 5th from a house a weaker partial aspect on it, and a Grah in the 2nd none; the app's table lists full aspects only. By the sign aspects of Ch. 8, the Argala places that aspect a movable sign are its 5th and 11th, for a dual sign only its 4th, and for a fixed sign none. In the sample, full graha aspect confirms the 4th house (Saturn) and the 11th (Jupiter), and sign aspect the 8th (Mars) and the 11th (Venus). The engine applies neither filter. The signed-in Kundali lists both aspect tables on its Deep Dive tab if you want to check your own rows.

Argala Raj Yoga and the Arudha test

Two statements in the chapter combine rows. Sloka 18 says that unobstructed Argala on the Lagna, the 5th and the 9th together makes the native a king and fortunate, which this app reads as fortune and standing, not as a forecast. The engine tests exactly that, three Yes rows, and when all three hold the Yogas calculator lists Argala Raj Yoga. In the sample the 5th and 9th qualify and the Lagna does not, so it is absent.

The opening of Sloka 11-17 makes a parallel statement: Argala on the Arudha Pada, on the natal Lagna and on the 7th from each makes the native famous and fortunate. The calculator does not label this for you, but all four rows are in the table. Find the house of your Arudha Lagna, then read that row, the row for the 7th house counted from it, and rows 1 and 7. For the sample the Arudha Lagna is Gemini, the 11th house. Rows 11 and 5 are Yes and rows 1 and 7 are No, so two of the four hold.

Argala on the Arudha appears twice more in BPHS. Ch. 29, Sloka 13-15 says that Argala on the 11th sign from the Lagna Pada adds to gains, more so when a benefic causes it. For the sample that sign is Aries, the 9th house, which qualifies through the Sun and Mercury in its 4th. And one of the Raj Yoga rules in Ch. 39, Sloka 26-27 requires that the Arudha Pada, occupied in the ways it lists, be free of Argala from a malefic. The Bhava Padas table gives the other eleven Padas if you want to make the same reading from them.

When the text says Argala acts

Sloka 2-9 ends by placing the results in time: the effects of an Argala are to be derived in the Dasha periods of the Rashi or the Grah concerned. The calculator attaches no dates, so a Yes describes a standing arrangement in the birth chart, not a period you are in. To find the periods, use the Vimshottari Dasha calculator for the periods of the Grahas, explained in what a Mahadasha is, and the Chara Dasha calculator for the periods of the signs. The timing feature brings the current periods together for a signed-in chart.

The chapter does not tie Argala to transits; the translator mentions them only as an analogy for how the places are counted. Where the grahas are today is a separate reading, shown by Gochar.

Limits and birth-time sensitivity

The rising sign relabels every row

Because the test uses whole signs, a small error in birth time does not nudge the result. It either changes nothing or shifts every row at once. The engine was run for the sample day at ten-minute steps. At 06:22 Cancer is rising at 27.85 degrees and the No rows are the 2nd, 4th and 8th. At 06:32 Leo is rising at 0.09 degrees and they are the 1st, 3rd and 7th. The result then holds until 08:42, and at 08:52, with Virgo rising, the No rows are the 2nd, 6th and 12th.

At 06:22 the Lagna, 5th and 9th all qualify and Argala Raj Yoga is present. Ten minutes later it is gone, and the recorded time of 06:42 is only about ten minutes past that boundary. If your Ascendant is within two or three degrees of either end of its sign, run the calculator ten minutes earlier and later and see whether the rows move. Birth time unknown explains what can and cannot be recovered when the time is uncertain.

A graha changing sign changes the pattern

The second input is the sign of each of the seven grahas. For six of them the date settles the sign except close to an ingress. The Moon changes sign roughly every two and a quarter days, and on the sample day it did so in mid-afternoon, which altered which signs qualified. A graha or an Ascendant within a fraction of a degree of a sign boundary is also where a different ayanamsa can change this result.

What the tool will not do

• It will not run without a birth time and a birth place that resolves to coordinates. When either is missing the calculator answers that the result is unavailable and says which one it needs. It does not estimate houses.
• It does not show which pair qualified or which grahas stand behind a row. The worked example above shows how to recover that from your chart.
• It does not weigh strength, separate benefic from malefic Argala, test the aspect clause, apply the quarter rule, count from individual grahas or include the nodes.
• It attaches no dates and makes no forecast. The effect line names the area the text associates with a backed house, not an event.

Where Argala appears elsewhere in the app

The same function feeds two other places, so the same birth details give the same rows there. In the signed-in Kundali, the Deep Dive tab has a Jaimini layer that lists all twelve houses under the heading Argala (planetary backing), each with its effect line or the obstructed label, followed by a one-line count of how many houses are supported and how many are not. On the free plan that section appears as a blurred preview, and the full breakdown is included from the Basic plan. The public calculator on this page shows all twelve rows without an account.

The Yogas calculator calls the same test for the 1st, 5th and 9th houses when it checks Argala Raj Yoga.

More questions about Argala

Is a No a bad sign for that house?

No. It means that none of the four supporting places holds more of the seven grahas than the place opposing it. BPHS Ch. 31 attaches results to unobstructed Argala and says an obstructed one goes astray. It names no penalty for a house without it. A house marked No is still judged in the ordinary way: Ch. 11, Sloka 14-16 reads a Bhava's well-being from the benefics joined to it or aspecting it and from the condition of its lord.

Most of my houses say Yes. Is that unusual?

It is the normal result. In a daily run of the engine from 1950 to 2025 the average chart had 9.3 qualifying houses out of twelve, and nine or ten was the answer on about two days in three. The rule asks for only one won pair out of four, and each graha backs four houses, so a Yes on its own distinguishes little. Which houses are marked No, and how many grahas stand behind each Yes, say more.

Why does another site or program show different Argala for my chart?

Usually because it applies a clause this engine leaves out. It may let the stronger graha prevail, include Rahu and Ketu, treat three or more malefics in the 3rd as Vipreet Argala, or count the obstruction places from the Argala place, a view the BPHS translator records and rejects. The two tools may also differ on the rising sign itself because of the time or timezone entered, so compare the Lagna first.

Are Rahu and Ketu counted?

No. Ch. 31, Sloka 2-9 says their Argalas and obstructions are to be counted in reverse because they move retrograde, but the translation does not say what is reversed. The engine leaves both nodes out of every count, as it does for its lunar, solar and Nabhasa yoga rules. In the sample chart Rahu sits with the Moon and Jupiter in Libra and Ketu is alone in Aries, and neither affects any row.

What is Vipreet Argala, and does the calculator detect it?

Ch. 31, Sloka 2-9 says that three or more malefics in the 3rd from a house do not just obstruct: they give a more effective intervention that is harmless and very favourable. The calculator does not detect it. In this engine grahas in the 3rd only count against the 11th-house pair. To check by hand, look for three or more natural malefics in one sign, then count two signs back from it. That is the house they would act on.

Can I get Argala without a birth time, or with an approximate one?

Not without one. The count is made in houses, and without a time and a place there is no Ascendant to number them from, so the calculator reports the result as unavailable. An approximate time is enough when it leaves the rising sign in no doubt, because the rows move only when the rising sign changes or a graha, usually the Moon, changes sign. A date alone usually settles which signs are backed, but never which houses those signs are. Birth time unknown lists the readings that do work from a date.

Do I have Argala Raj Yoga, and what does the text mean by king?

By this engine's test you have it when rows 1, 5 and 9 are all Yes, and the Yogas calculator then lists it. About 39 per cent of charts in the daily run qualify, so under a count-only rule it is common. This app reads the word king as fortune and standing, not as a forecast, and the text's own test also weighs strength, the nodes and the quarter rule, which the count used here leaves out.

When does an Argala give its results, and does it change over my life?

The table is fixed by the birth chart and does not change. What the text ties to time is the fruit: Ch. 31, Sloka 2-9 places the effects in the Dasha periods of the sign or graha concerned. This calculator attaches no dates. The Vimshottari Dasha and Chara Dasha calculators show which periods are running.