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In short
A bhava is one of the twelve houses of a birth chart, each read for a field of life. BPHS Ch. 11 lists what each indicates: physique and nature from the 1st, the spouse from the 7th, profession and honour from the 10th, and so on. This app counts houses as whole signs from the rising sign, so it can number them only when the birth time and place are known.
What the term means
A bhava is a house: one of the twelve places of the chart, counted from the Lagna, each read for a field of life. A rashi is a fixed slice of the sky; a bhava is a slice counted from where the birth happened to be facing. The same sign is the 1st house in one chart and the 7th in another.
Where the term comes from
BPHS Ch. 11 is Maitreya asking what is to be deduced from each bhava, and Sl. 2-13 answer in turn. The first, Tanu Bhava, covers physique, appearance, intellect and innate nature, read "through the ascending Rasi". Dhan Bhava follows with wealth and family, Sahaj with valour and siblings, Bandhu with mother, conveyances and lands, and so on to Vyaya, the twelfth. Ch. 12 to 23 then give one chapter of effects for each bhava and Ch. 24 the lords of the bhavas placed in each other. The texts also speak of a bhava's midpoint or cusp; the BPHS translator glosses the Lagna Bhava as "Madhya, or cusp" (Ch. 4 Sl. 25-30), and Advanced Predictive Astrology prints a cuspal Bhava Chalit table beside each case chart.
How this app computes it
- Houses are whole signs: the sign holding the Lagna is the whole 1st house, the next sign the whole 2nd, and so on. No cusps are computed.
- A graha's house is its sign counted from the Lagna's sign. In the 19 January 1985, 11:14 IST, New Delhi chart the Lagna is in Pisces, so Sagittarius is the 10th house and the Moon there is a 10th-house Moon.
- Without a birth time and place there is no Lagna and so no numbered houses. A few features then count from the Moon's sign instead and say so; that is a different count, not "your Nth house".
Pages that use this term
- The 1st house (Tanu Bhava) - the house of the self, and the start of the count.
- The 7th house (Yuvati Bhava) - partnership and marriage.
- The 10th house (Karma Bhava) - work and standing.
- The 7th lord in the 10th house - how two bhavas are tied through a lord.
- Lagna calculator - the rising sign and the twelve houses from it.
Related terms
- House lord - the graha that rules a bhava's sign.
- Kendra - the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th.
- Cusp - the house boundary this app does not use.
- Chandra Lagna - houses counted from the Moon.
Lagna (Ascendant)
The rising sign and degree, and the twelve whole-sign houses counted from it.
What it needs
Date, time and place
That is more than this article asks for - it only ever takes a date, and sometimes a time, and never a name or a birth place. So this one runs on its own page, which asks for exactly what it needs and stores none of it.
Run it on its own page