Vimshopaka Bala calculator

What this page adds to the calculator above

The calculator prints seven rows, one for each graha from the Sun to Saturn, each with a score out of 20, a band and a sixteen-line breakdown. The notes above it state the method in two paragraphs. This section goes further: where the twenty-point idea comes from in the classical text, what the text actually prescribes and where this app's arithmetic departs from it, how every figure in a real chart is arrived at, how the scores are distributed across twenty thousand charts, and how far a few minutes of birth time can move them.

Where Vimshopaka Bala comes from

BPHS introduces the sixteen divisional charts in Chapter 6 and explains what to do with them in Chapter 7, "Divisional Considerations". Slokas 1-8 of that chapter assign a subject to each division, listed in the table further down. Each of those charts has its own page here, from the Hora D2 to the Shashtiamsa D60.

Immediately afterwards, in slokas 9-12, the text says that the good and bad effects are to be declared "after assessing the 20 point strength" of the ascending degree, the other houses and the grahas. That twenty-point strength is Vimshopaka Bala: the word means, loosely, a strength of twenty parts. Its purpose in the text is synthesis. Sixteen charts are too many to hold in the head, so each is given a share of twenty points and a graha's performance across all of them is collapsed into one figure.

The same slokas give the grading principle in its simplest form: the grahas "get full strength, when in exaltation, or in own Rasi and are bereft of strength, when in the 7th (from exaltation)", and in between the strength is to be found "by the rule of three process", that is, by proportion. So even inside one chapter the text offers two ways to grade a placement: a continuous one by distance from exaltation here, and a stepped one by relationship a few slokas later.

Four schemes, one total

BPHS Chapter 6, slokas 42-53, names four groupings of the vargas: Shad Varg (six charts), Sapt Varg (seven), Dasha Varg (ten) and Shodasha Varg (all sixteen). Chapter 7 then gives each grouping its own set of weights, and every set adds to twenty.

The engine implements the Shodash Varg scheme and no other. Its own notes give the reason: this codebase computes all sixteen charts, so the sixteen-chart scheme is the only one that uses everything already calculated. The four schemes are not interchangeable. The six-chart scheme gives the birth chart 6 points of 20; the sixteen-chart scheme gives it 3.5 and hands the largest single share to the Shashtiamsa. A score from a program using a different scheme is therefore not comparable with the one printed here, even if both programs grade dignity identically.

The sixteen weights and what each chart is for

Three charts hold 10.5 of the 20 points between them: the Shashtiamsa, the Rasi chart and the Navamsa D9. Add the Shodashamsa D16 and four charts decide 12.5 points, leaving 7.5 to be shared among the other twelve. This is why a graha's score can be read quickly from the breakdown: look first at those four rows. The weight a chart carries here says nothing about how much it matters for its own subject. The Dashamsa is the classical chart for position and carries half a point; the weight measures only its share of this particular sum.

How BPHS grades a placement, and how this engine does

The weights are the uncontroversial half. The other half is how much of each weight a graha earns in a given sign, and here the page has to be exact, because the engine does not use the table BPHS gives.

BPHS Chapter 7, slokas 21-25, says the total "remains as 20, only when the Grah is in own Bhava Vargas". Otherwise it "declines to 18 in Pramudit Vargas, to 15 in Shant Vargas, to 10 in Svasth divisions, to 7 in Duhkhit Vargas and to 5 in Khal Vargas". These figures are called Varg Vishwa. Slokas 26-27 give the arithmetic: multiply a division's full weight by the Varg Vishwa and divide by 20. Chapter 27, slokas 2-4, uses the same vocabulary for Shad Bala, where Pramudit is a great friend's sign, Shant a friend's, Duhkhit an enemy's and Khal a great enemy's. In that chapter the word Svasth names the own sign and the neutral tier is called Din; the translation used here prints Svasth at the 10 step of Chapter 7, which is where the neutral tier falls in the ladder.

The engine instead calls dignityOf(), the same function that supplies the Sthana component on the Shad Bala calculator. Its ladder is cited in the code to S. Kannan's Fundamentals of Hindu Astrology, page 24: exaltation or Moolatrikona full, own house three quarters, friendly sign five eighths, neutral one half, enemy sign or debilitation nil. The engine's notes say plainly that this is a deliberate choice: one dignity scale across the whole app, so that a graha called weak on this page is the same graha called weak in Shad Bala. The result, in the code's own words, is "a real 0-20 on a stated basis, not a verbatim reproduction of any one source's table".

Only the neutral row agrees. The engine pays less than BPHS for an own sign and for friends, and nothing at all for enemies, where the text still allows 7 or 5 of 20. The consequence is arithmetic, not opinion: a graha in a great enemy's sign in all sixteen charts would total 5 on the BPHS figures and 0 here. Scores on this page therefore run lower than a literal BPHS computation would give, most of all for grahas with many enemy placements. In the twenty-thousand-chart run described below, 27.8 percent of all varga placements were in an enemy sign or debilitation and earned nothing.

Friend and enemy are read from the birth chart

The friendly and enemy tiers depend on the relationship between the graha and the lord of the sign it occupies. BPHS Chapter 3 builds that relationship in three steps. Sloka 55 gives the natural relationship, derived from the signs counted from a graha's Moolatrikona. Sloka 56 gives the temporary one: a graha in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th from another "becomes a mutual friend", with enmity otherwise, and the sloka adds that this applies to a given birth chart. Slokas 57-58 combine the two: friend on both counts is a great friend, friend on one and neutral on the other a friend, friend on one and enemy on the other an equal, and so on down to great enemy.

The engine follows that. For every varga row it finds the lord of the varga sign, takes the natural relationship from its table, takes the temporary relationship from where the graha and that lord sit in the Rasi chart, and combines them. Great friend and friend both pay 6.25 of 10; enemy and great enemy both pay 0. The temporary half is always read from the birth chart, never from positions inside the divisional chart, which is what the note in sloka 56 points to. One effect is worth knowing: the same graha in the same varga sign can be graded differently in two people's charts, because the temporary relationship differs.

Moolatrikona inside a divisional chart

Moolatrikona is a span of degrees inside one sign, so it can be tested properly only where a degree exists, which is the Rasi chart. A divisional chart places a graha in a sign, not at a degree. The engine handles this by testing the Rasi row with the real degree and every other row with a degree of zero. What that produces is uneven, and the output shows it. In the code's table the spans for the Sun in Leo (0 to 20 degrees, since October 2026), Mars in Aries (0 to 12), Jupiter in Sagittarius (0 to 10) and Saturn in Aquarius (0 to 20) begin at zero, so those four grahas are labelled Moolatrikona and paid in full whenever a varga lands them in that sign. Since October 2026 the span for Venus in Libra (0 to 15, BPHS) also begins at zero, so in a varga Venus there is labelled Moolatrikona and paid in full too; it used to be 27 to 30, which paid three quarters. The Moon in Taurus and Mercury in Virgo are caught by the exaltation test first.

The calculation, step by step

1. 1.The birth date, time and place are turned into a sidereal chart, as on the birth chart calculator. The handler for this page requires a time and a resolved place, like the other chart calculators.
2. 2.All sixteen placements are computed for every graha: the Rasi sign itself, the Hora and Trimshamsa from their own functions, and the other thirteen from the shared varga routine. Each result is reduced to one fact, the sign the graha lands in.
3. 3.For each of the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn, and for each of the sixteen charts, dignityOf() grades the sign: 10, 7.5, 6.25, 5 or 0.
4. 4.The grade divided by 10 is multiplied by that chart's weight. This is the "earned" figure in each breakdown row, shown to three decimals.
5. 5.The sixteen earned figures are added without rounding and the sum is rounded to two decimals. That is the score.
6. 6.The score is banded: 15 or more excellent, 10 or more good, 5 or more moderate, lower weak.
7. 7.The seven scores are sorted. The highest is returned as the strongest and the lowest as the weakest. Where two grahas tie, the one earlier in the order Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn is listed first.

Rahu and Ketu get no row. They rule no sign in this codebase's dignity table, and the engine omits them rather than score them as neutral. The Ascendant is not scored either, although BPHS speaks of the twenty-point strength of the ascending degree and the houses as well; the engine grades grahas only. The Trimshamsa needs one extra step, because BPHS gives each of its bands a ruling planet rather than a sign. The engine resolves each band to that ruler's odd sign in an odd Rasi sign and its even sign in an even one, as shown on the Trimshamsa D30 page.

Each row also carries a "weight available" figure. It is the sum of the weights of the charts that could actually be read for that graha. In all 140,000 graha scores of the test run it was 20, so in practice it is a check that nothing was silently skipped.

A worked chart

The sample is the one used across the calculator pages: 14 August 1994, 06:42 IST, Ahmedabad. The figures below are a fresh run of the engine. The example card above was regenerated from the same engine on 9 October 2026 and shows the same figures.

The Moon's 10.88, row by row

Three things in this table repay attention. First, the Rasi row. The Moon is in Libra, ruled by Venus. In the engine's natural table Venus is neither friend nor enemy to the Moon. Venus sits in Virgo, the 12th sign from Libra, which is one of the six temporary-friend positions of BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 56. Neutral plus friend gives friend, so the row reads Friendly sign and earns 6.25 tenths of 3.5, which is 2.1875. Second, exaltation in Taurus in both the Navamsa and the Shodashamsa supplies 5 of the 10.88 points from two rows. Third, the largest weight of all returns nothing: the Moon's D60 sign is Scorpio, its debilitation. A graha can sit near the top of its chart while failing the single heaviest test.

Two more rows worth reading

• Venus is debilitated in the Rasi chart and still scores 11.75, the highest in the chart. Its D60 sign is Libra, graded Moolatrikona (a divisional sign is graded at 0 degrees, inside the Libra 0-15 span BPHS gives Venus), worth all 4 points; its Navamsa sign Aries is friendly (Mars is naturally neutral to Venus and sits in Gemini, the 10th from Virgo) for 1.875; and it is exalted in Pisces in both the Trimshamsa and the Khavedamsa. This is the case the measure exists to expose: a poor first impression in D1 that the finer charts do not confirm.
• Saturn is the reverse. It is in its Moolatrikona span in Aquarius in the Rasi chart and lands in Aquarius again in the Navamsa, taking the full 3.5 and 3. Those two rows are 6.5 of its 8.00. Across the other fourteen charts it earns 1.5, with enemy signs or debilitation in nine of them. A graha that is vargottama and dignified in D1 can still be only moderate here.

How to read each kind of result

The four bands

The cut-offs at 5, 10 and 15 are the ones BPHS names in Chapter 7, slokas 26-27, but the words attached to them are the engine's. The text says that below 5 a graha "will not be capable of giving auspicious results"; above 5 and below 10 it "will yield some good effects"; up to 15 it is "indicative of mediocre effect"; above 15 it "will yield wholly favourable effects". The engine labels the same four ranges weak, moderate, good and excellent. So the band called good here is the one the translation calls mediocre. And because the engine's ladder pays less than the BPHS Varg Vishwa, a score that crosses a cut-off here has cleared a harder test than the text sets. Read the bands as positions on this page's scale, not as the classical verdicts.

BPHS slokas 30-32 also list eight class names for Vimshopaka Bala, from Purna and AtiPurna down to Swalpa and AtiSwalp, and say the Dasha results are to be declared accordingly. The translation gives no numeric boundaries for those eight, and the engine does not use them.

How common each band is

To show what a typical result looks like, the engine was run on 20,000 charts at random instants between 1950 and 2010 in 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, and it was last run on 12 October 2026 on the current engine. This is a description of the arithmetic, not of people.

• Of the 140,000 scores, 47.8 percent were good, 44.7 percent moderate, 6.2 percent weak and 1.3 percent excellent. Nearly every graha in nearly every chart is good or moderate; the two outer bands are the informative ones.
• Excellent is rare. Only 1,723 of the 20,000 charts, 8.6 percent, had any graha at 15 or above. A chart with no excellent graha is the normal case, not a deficiency.
• The strongest graha in a chart most often scored between 12 and 14: 53.7 percent of charts had their top score in that range. In 295 charts, 1.5 percent, no graha reached 10.
• The average gap between a chart's strongest and weakest graha was 7.41 points. A gap of two or three points between two grahas is small on this scale.

Strongest and weakest

These two labels are simply the top and bottom of the sorted list, with their bands attached. They are relative. In the sample chart the weakest graha, Jupiter, is still moderate at 6.00; in another chart the strongest may be only moderate. Always read the band beside the label. Neither label says anything about houses, aspects, combustion or retrogression, none of which enter this score.

The breakdown rows

Each of the sixteen rows names the chart, its weight, the sign the graha occupies there, the dignity label and the points earned. The labels are exactly seven: Exalted, Moolatrikona, Own sign, Friendly sign, Neutral, Enemy sign and Debilitated. Across the test run, friendly was the most common at 28.3 percent of rows, then neutral at 22.6 percent, enemy at 19.5, debilitated at 8.3, exalted at 8.1, own sign at 7.3 and Moolatrikona at 5.8. When two grahas have similar totals, the breakdown is where they differ: one may hold its points in the heavy charts, like Saturn above, and another may collect them in small amounts across many.

Birth-time sensitivity

No part of this score uses the Ascendant or the houses. Every varga sign is derived from a graha's degree within its Rasi sign. That makes Vimshopaka Bala independent of the rising sign, and the signed-in Kundali computes it even for a profile with no birth time. It does not make it independent of time. A Shashtiamsa covers half a degree and the Moon moves about 13 degrees a day, so the Moon changes D60 sign roughly every 55 minutes, and the D60 row is 4 of the 20 points. The birth-time-unknown article explains what else survives a missing time.

Between 06:42 and 06:52 only the Moon's score moves: it gains half a point although its D60, D9 and D16 signs are unchanged, so the change is in one of the smaller charts. Venus holds 11.75 throughout the morning, its D60 sign still Libra. By 08:42 Venus's D60 sign has moved on and it reads 10.25, Mars has dropped half a point, and Saturn, which sits on a Shashtiamsa boundary at Aquarius 16 degrees 30 minutes, has crossed it and leads at 12.38; by the evening it reads 13.13. The date-only row is the most instructive: cast at noon, the Moon's D60 sign is Taurus, its exaltation, and the Moon reads 14.13, more than three points above its 06:42 figure. (Recomputed October 2026, after the Venus Moolatrikona change and the earlier planetary frame fix.)

The wider run confirms this is ordinary. Each of the 20,000 charts was recomputed for a time ten minutes later. In 38.4 percent of them at least one graha's score changed, and the Moon's own score changed in 30.8 percent. Slow grahas are steadier: Jupiter and Saturn hold the same figure through most of a day. The practical rule is that the Moon's score should be treated as approximate unless the birth time is known to within a few minutes, and the scores of Mercury, Venus, Mars and the Sun as approximate if it is known only to the hour.

What the score leaves out

• Combustion and bad states. BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 42-53 says the divisions of a combust graha, a defeated graha, a weak graha and one in a bad Avastha are to be ignored as auspicious, "for these destroy the good Yogas". Ch. 7 Sl. 28-29 adds a separate source of strength by distance from the Sun: fully effective in the 7th from it, good effects destroyed at the same longitude, proportion in between. The engine applies neither to this score. Combustion is handled on the Shad Bala page, where it zeroes the Sthana component.
• The continuous grading of Sl. 9-12. The text's rule of three would give a graha one sign away from exaltation more than one four signs away. The engine uses stepped dignity tiers only.
• The named varga counts. BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 42-53 also classifies a graha by how many of the sixteen vargas are good ones, defined there as exaltation, Moolatrikona, own sign and signs owned by the lord of a Kendra from the Arudha Lagna: two is Bhedak, three Kusum, and so on up to Sri Vallabh for all sixteen. That is a count, not a weighted score, and the engine does not compute it.
• Houses and aspects. A graha strong here may sit in a difficult house or be heavily aspected. Those belong to other calculators.
• The quality of the Shashtiamsa itself. BPHS Ch. 7 Sl. 1-8 says a house whose lord is in a malefic Shashtiamsa diminishes. This score reads only the D60 sign and the graha's dignity in it, not whether that sixtieth part is classed as benefic or malefic.
• Rahu, Ketu and the Ascendant, as noted above.

How it connects to the rest of the app

• Shad Bala is the companion measure. It grades one chart on six components, including house, direction, aspects, motion and time of birth. Both use the same dignity ladder, so the Sthana figure there and the D1 row here always tell the same story about the Rasi sign. Where they part, the reason is visible: Shad Bala has seen the houses and aspects, Vimshopaka has seen fifteen more charts.
• Ashtakavarga measures something else again: the support each sign receives from the positions of all the grahas. It is the usual tool for judging transits, which this score does not address.
• The individual varga pages show the chart behind each row. For the heaviest rows, see the Shashtiamsa D60, Navamsa D9 and Shodashamsa D16 calculators; the article on the Navamsa as the second chart explains why agreement between D1 and D9 is given so much weight.
• The signed-in Kundali shows the same seven scores in its deep-dive view, each opening to its sixteen-row working. It is computed there from the saved profile, so it appears even when the profile has no birth time.
• BPHS Ch. 7 Sl. 30-32 ties the measure to timing: the Dasha results are to be declared after classifying the Vimshopaka Bala. In practice that means looking up the score of the graha whose period is running on the Vimshottari Dasha calculator. The article on what a Mahadasha is covers the period system itself. This calculator does not combine the two for you.
• For the nature of each graha, which no strength figure describes, the planet pages start with the Sun, Moon and Saturn. Every book this app draws on is listed on the sources page.

Questions people ask about Vimshopaka Bala

Why does another website show a different Vimshopaka score for the same birth details?

There are three independent reasons. It may use a different scheme: BPHS gives six-, seven-, ten- and sixteen-chart versions, each with its own weights. It may grade dignity on the BPHS Varg Vishwa of 20, 18, 15, 10, 7 and 5, where this engine uses its Shad Bala ladder and pays nothing for enemy signs. And its planetary longitudes or ayanamsa may differ by enough to move a fine varga sign. Any one of these changes the total.

My graha is exalted in the birth chart. Why is its score only moderate?

Exaltation in the Rasi chart secures 3.5 points and nothing more. The other 16.5 depend on fifteen other signs. In the sample chart Saturn takes the full 3.5 in D1 and the full 3 in D9 and still totals 8.00, because nine of its other fourteen placements are enemy signs or debilitation.

Can a graha score 20, or 0?

Both are possible in the arithmetic. Twenty needs exaltation or Moolatrikona in all sixteen charts; zero needs an enemy sign or debilitation in all sixteen. In 20,000 test charts the highest score recorded was 20.00, for the Sun, and the lowest 0.00, for both Venus and Saturn: zero, too, occurs.

Why are Rahu and Ketu missing?

The score is built entirely on dignity, and the engine's dignity table covers the seven grahas that rule signs. Rahu and Ketu rule none in that table, so any figure for them would rest on nothing. The engine leaves them out rather than print a neutral placeholder.

Is a weak score a prediction that the graha's matters will go badly?

No. It says that across sixteen charts this graha is seldom in a sign where it has dignity, on this page's grading. BPHS itself frames the measure as one input, to be considered with combustion, rising and setting, and the running Dasha. It ignores houses and aspects altogether. Treat it as a description of consistency.

Does the calculator work without a birth time?

The public calculator asks for a time and place, as the other chart calculators do. The engine itself needs no Ascendant, and the signed-in Kundali computes the score for a profile with no time. In that case the positions are for noon, and the Moon's score in particular should not be relied on: in the sample it reads 14.13 at noon against 10.88 at the real time.

How accurate does my birth time need to be?

For Jupiter and Saturn, the date is usually enough. For the Sun, Mars, Mercury and Venus, an error of an hour or two can cross a D60 boundary. For the Moon, ten minutes changed the score in 30.8 percent of test charts. If the Moon's score matters to you, compute it for the earliest and latest plausible times and see whether it holds.