Article text is currently English only. The calculation below and the rest of the interface follow your chosen language.
In short
A graha is one of the nine moving points a Vedic chart is built on: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. BPHS defines grahas as what moves through the fixed nakshatras. Rahu and Ketu are the Moon's nodes, not bodies; this app computes Rahu as the mean node and puts Ketu exactly opposite.
What the term means
A graha is one of the nine moving points a Vedic chart is made of. Pages here often say "planet" for it, but the list is not the astronomer's list of planets: it includes the Sun and the Moon, it includes two points that are not bodies at all, and it leaves out the planets beyond Saturn. On this site "graha" always means one of these nine.
Where the term comes from
BPHS Ch. 3 defines the grahas by motion. Of the lights in the sky, those that do not move are the nakshatras, and "those are called Grahas, that move through the Nakshatras" (Sl. 2-6). Sl. 10 names the nine: Surya, Chandra, Mangal, Budha, Guru, Shukra, Shani, Rahu and Ketu. Sl. 11 sorts them into natural malefics and benefics, and the translation glosses Rahu and Ketu as the ascending and descending nodes of the Moon. The translator's note to the same chapter gives their average daily motions, from about 13 to 15 degrees for the Moon to about 2 arc-minutes for Saturn.
How this app computes it
- The Sun and Moon come from Meeus's formulas; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn from published Keplerian elements; each is then shifted onto the sidereal zodiac by the Lahiri ayanamsa.
- Rahu is the Moon's mean node and Ketu is placed exactly 180 degrees from it. In the 1985 New Delhi chart the engine puts Rahu at 0.54 degrees of Taurus and Ketu at 0.54 degrees of Scorpio.
- A graha is marked retrograde when its apparent longitude moves backwards across the day around the birth. The Sun and Moon are always stated as not retrograde, and Rahu and Ketu as always retrograde, by convention.
- A graha within a fixed distance of the Sun is marked combust; in the same chart Jupiter, 3.36 degrees behind the Sun, is.
Pages that use this term
- The Sun in Vedic astrology - the first of the nine.
- The Moon in Vedic astrology - the fastest graha, and the one the dashas start from.
- Rahu in Vedic astrology - a graha that is a point, not a body.
- Kaal Sarp Dosha explained - a rule about the other seven grahas and the nodal axis.
- Birth chart calculator - all nine positions for a birth.
- Shad Bala calculator - six-fold strength, computed for the seven visible grahas.
Related terms
- Chhaya graha - the shadow grahas, Rahu and Ketu.
- Lunar nodes - what Rahu and Ketu are astronomically.
- Combustion - a graha too close to the Sun.
- Longitude - the one number each graha is reduced to.
Birth Chart (Kundli)
All nine grahas by sign, degree and nakshatra, with houses when the birth time is known and the place resolves to coordinates.
This one has its own page
This one runs on its own page, built for it, where the full result is laid out properly. No account is needed there either.