Shad Bala calculator

What this page adds to the calculator above

The calculator prints seven rows, one for each graha from the Sun to Saturn, with a total out of 20, six component figures, a band and a reason line. The method notes above state the rules in two short paragraphs. This section goes further: where the six strengths come from in the classical texts, exactly what the code does for each one and where it stops short of the textbook procedure, how every figure in a real chart is arrived at, how often each band actually occurs, and how far a change in birth time moves the result.

One point first, because it shapes everything else. This is a simplified Shad Bala. The classical computation in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra is measured in Virupas and needs declinations, planetary hours and several divisional charts. The version here keeps the six headings and reduces each to one rule that can be checked by hand from a birth chart. Every number is therefore inspectable, and the totals are not interchangeable with Shad Bala printed by other software.

Where the six strengths come from

Shad Bala means six strengths. BPHS Ch. 27, Evaluation Of Strengths, opens by naming them: Sthan Bal (positional), Dig Bal (directional), Kaal Bal (temporal), Chesht Bal (motional), Naisargika Bal (natural) and Drik Bal (aspectual). The same passage fixes the scope: these strengths are computed for the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn, and the nodes are not considered. That is why the calculator has no row for Rahu or Ketu.

BPHS then breaks two of the six into parts. Sthan Bal has five: Uchch Bal (distance from the deep debilitation point), Sapt Vargaj Bal (dignity in seven divisional charts), Ojhayugma Bal (odd or even sign and Navamsa), Kendradi Bal (house type) and Dreshkan Bal (decanate). Kaal Bal has the day-and-night strength called Nathonnata, Paksh Bal from the lunar fortnight, Tribhag Bal from thirds of the day or night, the lords of the year, month, weekday and hour, Ayan Bal from declination, and an adjustment for planetary war.

Kalyana Varma's Saravali covers the same ground in prose rather than arithmetic. Ch. 4, Sl. 34 says a planet's directional, positional, temporal and motional strengths are needed to assess its effects, and that without them it is considered weak. Sl. 35 to 40 then state the conditions: the houses of directional strength, exaltation and own or friendly signs for position, day and night for time, retrogression and freedom from combustion for motion, and a fixed natural order from Saturn up to the Sun. These slokas give conditions, not point values.

The calculator's own scale, with maxima of 10, 3, 1, 1, 4 and 1 adding to 20, is taken from S. Kannan's Fundamentals of Hindu Astrology, Ch. VI, which the code cites page by page and which is listed on the sources page. The table below sets the three side by side.

How each component is computed

Sthana bala: the dignity ladder (0 to 10)

Sthana is the largest component, half the scale. The engine tests the graha's sign in a fixed order and stops at the first match: exaltation sign, then the Moolatrikona degree range, then debilitation sign, then own sign. If none applies it looks up the lord of the sign and asks how the graha stands with that lord.

Exaltation is read by sign, not by degree, except for Mercury, which is exalted only below 15 degrees of Virgo.BPHS Sl. 1 grades Uchch Bal continuously, from nothing at the deep debilitation point to its maximum 180 degrees away. This calculator does not: a Sun at 1 degree of Aries and a Sun at 29 degrees both score 10. Moolatrikona, by contrast, is degree-sensitive, so Saturn at 19 degrees of Aquarius scores 10 and Saturn at 21 degrees scores 7.5.

The friendly, neutral and enemy rungs use the fivefold relation of BPHS Ch. 3, Sl. 57-58, which combines two things. The natural relation is a fixed table: the Sun, for example, counts the Moon, Mars and Jupiter as friends and Saturn and Venus as enemies. The temporary relation is read from the chart itself. BPHS Ch. 3, Sl. 56 says a graha placed in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th from another becomes its friend for that chart, and an enemy otherwise; Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 30 gives the same six positions. Friend on both counts makes a Great Friend, enemy on both a Great Enemy, friend on one and enemy on the other cancels to Neutral, and a neutral natural relation takes its colour from the temporary one.

The practical consequence is that the same graha in the same sign does not always score the same. Mars in Gemini sits in the sign of Mercury, its natural enemy. If Mercury is in Cancer, the 2nd sign from Mars, the two are temporary friends, the enmity cancels and Mars scores 5. If Mercury were in Gemini with Mars, they would be temporary enemies as well and Mars would score 0.

Combustion overrides the ladder. If the graha is within its orb of the Sun, Sthana is set to 0 whatever the sign. The orbs are measured in longitude: 12 degrees for the Moon, 17 for Mars, 14 for Mercury, 11 for Jupiter, 10 for Venus and 15 for Saturn. Kannan gives narrower limits for two retrograde grahas, and the engine applies them: 12 degrees for a retrograde Mercury and 8 for a retrograde Venus. The Sun cannot be combust.

Drig bala: who aspects the house (0, 1.5 or 3)

The engine first works out which houses each of the nine grahas aspects. Every graha, Rahu and Ketu included, aspects the 7th house from itself. Mars also aspects the 4th and 8th, Jupiter the 5th and 9th, Saturn the 3rd and 10th. It then lists the grahas aspecting the house the scored graha occupies. Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the Moon count as benefic; the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu count as malefic. Only benefic aspects give 3, only malefic aspects give 0, and both together or none at all give 1.5.

• A graha sharing the house is not an aspect. The Sun and Mercury together in one sign do not affect each other's Drig.
• Rahu and Ketu are always opposite, so any graha in Rahu's sign is aspected by Ketu, and the reverse. Unless a benefic also aspects that house, the Drig is 0.
• The Moon and Mercury are always treated as benefic here, whatever the Moon's phase and whoever Mercury is with.
• Aspects are whole-sign and all-or-nothing. BPHS Ch. 26 grades aspects in quarter steps, and Ch. 27, Sl. 19 builds Drik Bal from that graded sum; none of that gradation is used.

Naisargika bala: a constant (0.125 to 0.875)

Natural strength never changes from chart to chart. BPHS Ch. 27, Sl. 14 divides one Rupa into sevenths and gives one to seven of them to Saturn, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, the Moon and the Sun in that order. Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 40 gives the same ascending order and adds its purpose: when other strengths are similar, the graha with the greater natural strength prevails. The engine keeps the order but counts in eighths, because the ranking it takes from Kannan places the nodes above the Sun. As a constant it says nothing about your chart in particular; it only tilts close contests.

Chesta bala: a yes-or-no test (0 or 1)

Three rules can each award the single point. The Sun and the Moon earn it in the six signs from Capricorn through Gemini; Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 36 says the luminaries get strength in their northern course. Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus earn it when retrograde. Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn earn it in Gemini or Virgo, the two signs of Mercury. Saturn is absent from the retrograde rule, which is why a retrograde Saturn outside those two signs scores 0, as the FAQ above explains.

Retrogression is decided numerically: the engine computes the graha's longitude half a day before and half a day after birth and marks it retrograde if the longitude fell. BPHS Sl. 21-25 is far more detailed, naming eight kinds of motion with different values and deriving a continuous figure from the graha's mean and true longitudes. The one-point test here keeps only the headline condition.

Dik bala: distance from the peak house (0 to 4)

Each graha has one house of full directional strength. Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 35 names them with their directions: Jupiter and Mercury in the Ascendant (east), the Sun and Mars in the 10th (south), Saturn in the 7th (west), the Moon and Venus in the 4th (north). BPHS Ch. 27, Sl. 7 says the same thing in reverse, measuring each graha's arc from the opposite point and dividing by 3. The engine counts whole-sign houses from the peak, either way round, and removes two thirds of a point per house, so the degree within the sign makes no difference.

Kala bala: day or night (0.5 or 1)

Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 36 says the Sun, Jupiter and Venus acquire strength by day, Saturn, the Moon and Mars by night, and Mercury at all times. The engine follows that with Mercury also listed on the day side, which changes nothing since Mercury always scores 1. A graha born in its own half of the day scores 1; in the other half, 0.5. Day means the Sun's centre was above the standard sunrise line of minus 50 arc-minutes at the birth place and moment, the line on which the app draws sunrise and sunset, as in the Panchang.

The 0.5 floor stands in for everything else under Kaal Bal that is not computed: the fortnight, the thirds of the day, the four time lords and declination. So Kala never separates two grahas by more than half a point.

The total and the three bands

The six figures are added and rounded to two decimals. Totals of 13 or more are banded Strong, 7 or less Weak, and everything between is Medium. The cut-offs are the app's own, roughly the top and bottom thirds of the scale; no classical text sets them.

Because Naisargika is fixed below 1, no graha can reach 20. The Sun's ceiling is 19.875 and Saturn's is 19.125. The floor is not zero either: Naisargika and the 0.5 Kala baseline are always present, so the lowest possible total is 0.625, for Saturn. Both extremes occurred in the 20,000-chart run described below.

A worked chart, figure by figure

The figures below are the engine's output, run on 2026-10-06, for a birth on 14 August 1994 at 06:42 IST in Ahmedabad. The Ascendant is Leo at 2.33 degrees, and the Sun was above the sunrise line, so it is a day birth.

• Saturn, 17.63. At 16.50 degrees of Aquarius it is inside the 0-20 Moolatrikona range: Sthana 10. It is in the 7th, its peak house: Dik 4. Jupiter in the 3rd aspects the 7th by its 5th-house aspect and no malefic does: Drig 3. It is retrograde, but not in Gemini or Virgo: Chesta 0. A day birth for a night-strong graha: Kala 0.5.
• Mars, 13.08. Gemini is Mercury's sign and Mercury is Mars's natural enemy, but Mercury sits in the 2nd sign from Mars, a temporary friend, so the relation is Neutral: Sthana 5. Jupiter's 9th-house aspect reaches the 11th: Drig 3. Gemini earns the Chesta point. The 11th is one house from the 10th: Dik 3.33. The total clears the Strong line by 0.08.
• Sun, 12.29. The Moon, lord of Cancer, is a natural friend and stands in the 4th sign from the Sun, a temporary friend too: Great Friend, Sthana 6.25. Nothing aspects the 12th: Drig 1.5. The 12th is two houses from the 10th: Dik 2.67. Cancer is outside the Capricorn-to-Gemini half: Chesta 0. Day birth: Kala 1.
• Moon, 10.83. Venus, lord of Libra, is naturally neutral to the Moon and sits in the 12th sign from it, a temporary friend: Sthana 6.25. Rahu shares the Moon's sign, so Ketu aspects it from the 9th and no benefic does: Drig 0.
• Jupiter, 9.17. Venus is Jupiter's natural enemy but a temporary friend from the 12th sign: Neutral, Sthana 5. The same Ketu aspect gives Drig 0. A day birth lifts Kala to 1.
• Mercury, 6.21. The fivefold relation with the Moon works out Neutral, which would be 5, but Mercury is 1.17 degrees from the Sun, inside its 14-degree orb, so Sthana is 0. Being with the Sun is not an aspect: Drig 1.5.
• Venus, 5.29. Debilitated in Virgo: Sthana 0. Mars in the 11th aspects the 2nd by its 4th-house aspect: Drig 0. Virgo earns the Chesta point and the day birth earns Kala 1, which is all that keeps the total above 5.

How to read each part of a result

The band

Strong, Medium and Weak describe where the total falls on this app's 20-point scale and nothing more. Treat a total within about half a point of 7 or 13 as sitting on the line: Mars in the sample is Strong at 13.08 and would be Medium with a single component one step lower. The component breakdown is more informative than the band.

The reason line

The sentence beside each band is assembled from clauses, and not every clause is a scored component. Knowing which is which prevents double counting.

• Dignity in the sign (exalted, moolatrikona, own sign, friendly, neutral, enemy, debilitated): this is the Sthana rung before any combustion override.
• House type (kendra for houses 1, 4, 7, 10; trikona for 5 and 9; dusthana for 6, 8, 12; panapara for 2 and 11; apoklima for 3): descriptive only. The classical Kendradi Bal of BPHS Ch. 27, Sl. 5 is not part of the total, so a dusthana placement costs no points in itself.
• Combust: scored. It is the reason a graha in a decent sign shows Sthana 0.
• Retrograde: scored through Chesta for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus; a label only for Saturn.
• Badhaka house: a label only. It appears when the graha occupies the 11th from a movable Ascendant sign, the 9th from a fixed one or the 7th from a dual one.
• Aspected by: the grahas behind the Drig figure, benefics and malefics listed in separate clauses. When both clauses appear, Drig is 1.5.

What is typical

To give the bands some context, the engine was run over 20,000 charts with birth instants spread evenly from 1950 to 2010 across eight Indian cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. The instants and cities were drawn with a seeded random-number generator, so the run can be repeated exactly; it was last run on 12 October 2026 on the current engine.

• Medium is the usual result and the average total sits a little under half the scale. A graha at 9 or 10 is ordinary, not deficient.
• A chart with no Strong graha is common: 33.8% of the charts had none, 37.7% had exactly one, 21.7% had two and 6.8% had three or more.
• A chart with no Weak graha is unusual: 4.5%.
• Mercury is Weak in just over half of all charts. It never strays far from the Sun, it was inside its combustion orb in 41.4% of the charts, and combustion removes all ten Sthana points. A Weak Mercury is the expected outcome of the rule and says little on its own.

How much the birth time matters

Three of the six components depend on the Ascendant or the hour: Dik and Drig through the houses, Kala through day or night. Sthana depends on the time only when a graha is near a sign boundary or near the edge of a combustion orb or Moolatrikona range. The table reruns the sample date at three times.

• Within one rising sign and one side of sunrise, nothing moves. Minutes matter only near a boundary.
• An hour earlier, the Ascendant is Cancer and the Sun is still below the sunrise line. Every house number shifts by one and the day and night grahas swap their Kala. The totals move by about one point each, enough to take Mars from 13.08 to 12.92 and so from Strong to Medium.
• By the evening the Moon has crossed from Libra into Scorpio, its debilitation sign. Its own Sthana falls from 6.25 to 0 and its total to 1.92. Because the Moon rules Cancer, the Sun's relation with its sign lord drops from Great Friend to Neutral, and Mercury's from Neutral to Great Enemy, although neither has moved sign.
• Saturn stays Strong in all three, because its ten Sthana points and its benefic aspect do not depend on the hour. Its Dik, however, falls from 4 in the 7th house to 0.67 in the 2nd.

If your time is approximate, find how long your rising sign holds with the Lagna calculator, check which side of sunrise you fall on, and run this page at both ends of the plausible range. Rows that keep their band at both ends can be relied on; rows that change cannot. With no time at all the calculator returns nothing, because there are no houses to count from; what still works without a birth time lists what the app can compute in that case.

What the classical measure includes that this one does not

• Divisional dignity. BPHS Sl. 2-4 scores the graha in seven charts, from the birth chart to the Trimshamsa. Only the birth-chart sign is used here. Dignity across the divisional charts is graded separately by the Vimshopaka Bala calculator, which uses the same dignity ladder in each of sixteen vargas.
• The lunar fortnight. BPHS Sl. 10-11 derives Paksh Bal from the Moon's distance from the Sun, giving it to benefics and its complement to malefics, and Sl. 18 makes it the Moon's Chesta. The engine does not read the phase at all here, so a Moon one day from new moon is not penalised for it. The Moon phase calculator shows the phase itself.
• Not computed at all: odd and even signs, decanates and house type (Sl. 4.5-6); thirds of the day and the lords of the year, month, weekday and hour (Sl. 12-13); declination (Sl. 15-17); planetary war (Sl. 20); and Bhava Bala, the strength of each house (Sl. 26-31).

BPHS Sl. 32-33 also states how much is enough, in its own units: 390, 360, 300, 420, 390, 330 and 300 Virupas for the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn respectively, with separate minimums for individual components in Sl. 34-36. Those requirements differ by graha. The calculator's cut-offs of 13 and 7 are the same for all seven and belong to a different scale, so a Strong here does not mean the graha meets the BPHS requirement, nor a Weak that it fails it. Software reporting Virupas or Rupas measures more inputs on a different scale and can rank your grahas differently without either being miscalculated.

Ishta and Kashta: the Ch. 28 columns

The Ishta kashta columns follow BPHS Ch. 28, Sl. 2-6 and sit beside the 20-point score without changing it. Uchcha rasmi is the graha's distance from its deep debilitation point in signs, plus one: 1 at deep debilitation, 7 at deep exaltation. Cheshta rasmi is built the same way from the Cheshta Kendra. Ishta phala is half of ten times each rasmi less one, added together, out of 60; Kashta phala is 60 less Ishta. In the worked example the Sun's two rasmis are 3.42 and 5.30, giving Ishta 33.62 and Kashta 26.38.

BPHS gives the Cheshta Kendra fully only for the Sun (its tropical longitude plus three signs) and the Moon (its distance from the Sun). For Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, Ch. 27, Sl. 24-25 subtracts the average of the graha's mean and true longitudes from its Seeghrochcha, but the translation never says what the Seeghrochcha is. That part comes from outside BPHS. Surya Siddhanta Ch. I, Sl. 29-32 (Burgess's 1860 translation) gives Mars, Jupiter and Saturn the mean Sun as their Seeghrochcha. For Mercury and Venus it reverses the roles: their mean is the mean Sun and their Seeghrochcha is their own mean heliocentric longitude. The mean longitudes are JPL's published mean elements (Standish), the same table the app uses for true positions. In the worked example Mars's Kendra is 75.70 degrees (Cheshta rasmi 3.52, Ishta 21.55) and retrograde Saturn's is 160.07 (Cheshta rasmi 6.34, Ishta 37.26).

The 20-point total does not use this. Its Chesta is Kannan's one-point rule, on Kannan's scale. BPHS's Cheshta Bala is a 0-60 Virupa figure meant to be added to other Virupa figures and checked against the Sl. 32-33 requirements. Neither text says how to turn it into Kannan's single point. For the Sun and Moon, BPHS also takes Cheshta Bala from Ayan and Paksh Bal (Sl. 18), which this calculator does not compute. Swapping it in would mean inventing a conversion, so the totals stay as they were.

What the texts say strength is for

The classical authors treat strength as a measure of capacity to deliver, not as good or bad fortune in itself. BPHS Ch. 27, Sl. 37-38 puts it in one line: whatever yogas or effects have been stated with respect to a house will come to pass through the strongest graha. Sl. 32-33 says a graha with the required strength proves favourable by virtue of it, and then qualifies even that: Saturn's extreme strength is said to give long life as well as miseries. Strong does not mean pleasant.

BPHS Ch. 28, Sl. 11-12 ties this to timing: the quantum of each strength a graha has is the extent of the auspicious effect available from it, and where that predominates the dasha and houses related to that graha are read as auspicious. Saravali Ch. 5 describes the individual strengths in the idiom of its time. A planet with positional strength is associated with lasting happiness, courage and independent work (Sl. 34-35); one with directional strength with gains in the direction it rules (Sl. 36-38), provided it is not combust or debilitated. These are the texts' own associations. The calculator makes none of these statements about you; it returns the numbers and the clauses, and the Vimshottari Dasha calculator shows which graha's period you are in.

Where these scores are used elsewhere in the app

• The Kundali shows the same seven totals in its planetary strength section; the app's strongest-planet insight is simply the highest of them.
• Career and Money multiplies each career signifier's role weight by 0.4 plus 0.6 times its Shad Bala fraction, gives the strongest graha a role weight of its own, and compares Saturn's total with the Sun's when weighing employment against independence.
• The Life Blueprint strength index is the plain average of the seven totals, each as a percentage of 20.
• The Decision Engine converts the ruling graha's total into up to 40 points of its confidence figure.
• AI Life Chat receives those verdicts as computed facts and is instructed not to re-derive them.

Two neighbouring calculators answer questions this one cannot. Ashtakavarga scores signs and houses rather than grahas, by counting contributed points sign by sign. The Yogas calculator tests named combinations, several of which turn on the same dignity table used for Sthana. For the grahas themselves, the learn pages on Saturn, Mercury and the Sun set out what each one signifies, which is the thing a strength score is a strength of.

Frequently asked questions

Why are Rahu and Ketu not scored?

BPHS Ch. 27 states that the six strengths are computed for the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn and that the nodes are not considered. The engine follows that. Rahu and Ketu still take part as aspecting grahas: each aspects the 7th house from itself and counts as a malefic when another graha's Drig bala is worked out.

My graha is exalted but only Medium. How?

Exaltation fixes Sthana at 10, which is half the scale, but Strong needs 13. If only malefics aspect the house, Drig is 0; if the graha is five or six houses from its peak, Dik is under 1; and outside its half of the day Kala is 0.5. An exalted Saturn in the 1st house aspected only by Mars, born by day with no Chesta, totals 10.63. And if the exalted graha is inside its combustion orb, Sthana itself becomes 0.

Does being in the 6th, 8th or 12th house lower the score?

Not directly. The reason line names the house type, but no component reads it. Those houses affect the total only through Dik bala, by how far they are from the graha's peak house. For Saturn the 8th is one house from its peak and scores 3.33; for Mercury the 12th is likewise one house from the 1st.

Why does the same graha in the same sign score differently in two charts?

Outside exaltation, Moolatrikona, own sign and debilitation, Sthana depends on the fivefold relation with the sign's lord, and half of that relation is read from where the lord sits in the particular chart. A lord in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th sign from the graha is a temporary friend; anywhere else, a temporary enemy. So Mars in Gemini can score 5 in one chart and 0 in another.

Is a retrograde graha stronger?

In this scheme, retrogression adds exactly one point, and only for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. Saravali Ch. 4, Sl. 36 lists retrograde motion among the conditions of motional strength, and BPHS Ch. 27, Sl. 21-23 gives retrogression the highest value among its eight kinds of motion. For Mercury and Venus, retrogression also narrows the combustion orb, which can restore all ten Sthana points.

The Moon was nearly new when I was born. Why is it not Weak?

Because this version of Kala bala does not read the Moon's phase. BPHS derives Paksh Bal from the Moon's distance from the Sun, and that is one of the classical parts left out here. A Moon within 12 degrees of the Sun is caught by the combustion rule and loses its Sthana; beyond that, phase has no effect on this score.

Which graha is the strongest in my chart?

The one with the highest total, which is the rule the Kundali uses for its strongest-planet line. Check the margin before leaning on it: Naisargika alone gives the Sun 0.75 more than Saturn in every chart, so a lead of less than a point is close to a tie.

Can a score change over my lifetime?

No. All six components are read from the birth moment, so the figures are fixed for a given date, time and place. What changes over time is which graha's period is running and where the grahas are now, which the dasha calculators and the Gochar calculator track. What a Mahadasha is explains the periods.

Does a low score call for a remedy?

This app does not prescribe remedies, gemstones or rituals for any result. A Weak band means the total was 7 or less under six simplified rules. It describes the placement and is not a forecast.