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In short
A dosha is a named rule that flags a placement which classical or popular practice reads as a difficulty, such as Mars in certain houses. This app computes a short list of them from the chart, shows each as a flag with the placement behind it, and does not treat any of them as a verdict on a life.
What the term means
Dosha means "fault" or "flaw". In chart work it names a rule that flags a placement as a difficulty: Mars in certain houses, all the grahas on one side of the lunar nodes, Saturn's transit through the signs around the natal Moon. Like a yoga, a dosha is a stated condition about positions, and a chart either meets it or does not. This site reports doshas as flags with their mechanism shown, never as a forecast.
Where the term comes from
The word is rarer in the classical corpus than in popular use. A full-text search of BPHS finds it once, a "Rikta-Bhadra Dosha" in Ch. 88 on births in Bhadra; the text's own words for such conditions are "Yog" or "evils", as in Ch. 9, "Evils at Birth", and in Ch. 80 Sl. 47, which states the Mars marriage rule as a Yog. Saravali uses "Tridoshas" in Ch. 8 in the Ayurvedic sense of bile, phlegm and wind. The modern case-study book Advanced Predictive Astrology uses "Kendradhipathya dosha" freely. Several doshas popular today are not named in the classical texts this app reads at all.
How this app computes it
- detectDoshas() needs the Ascendant. It flags Kendradhipathya (Jupiter or Venus owning a kendra but not the 1st), Mangal Dosha (Mars in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th or 12th), Kaal Sarp, and three cautions about the 2nd house taken from BPHS Ch. 42 Sl. 16-18.
- Each flag carries a severity label (Mild, Moderate or Present) and a sentence naming the placement.
- Other doshas live elsewhere: Kemadruma in the lunar-yoga code, Sade Sati and Ashtama Sani in the Saturn transit code, and Nadi and Bhakoot as zero scores in kundli matching.
- Pitra, Guru Chandal, Shrapit and Grahan dosha are not flagged by this app.
A small illustration
For the chart of 19 January 1985, 11:14 IST, New Delhi, detectDoshas() flags Mangal Dosha as Mild (Mars in the 12th) and Kaal Sarp as present (Rahu in the 3rd, Ketu in the 9th). Kendradhipathya is not flagged: with Pisces rising, Jupiter rules the 1st as well as the 10th, and Venus rules the 3rd and 8th. Across the first 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060 used by this site's tools, the six-house Mangal rule fired in 1,500 and Kaal Sarp in 208.
Pages that use this term
- Mangal Dosha: what it is and is not - the six-house rule against the BPHS rule.
- Kaal Sarp Dosha explained - the geometry, and how close the call was.
- Mangal Dosha calculator - runs detectDoshas() on your chart.
- Kaal Sarp calculator - the verdict with its margin.
- Sade Sati - the Saturn transit flag and its dates.
- Mars in Vedic astrology - the graha behind the most-asked dosha.
Related terms
Manglik, Kaal Sarp, Sade Sati, Ashtama Sani, Nadi koota and Bhakoot koota.