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In short
A Kendra is one of the four angular houses: the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, counted from the Ascendant. BPHS names them first among its house groups. This app labels a planet in one of them "kendra house" and uses the same four houses to test Gaj Kesari, the Panchamahapurusha yogas and Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga.
What the term means
Kendra means "angle" or "centre". In a birth chart the Kendras are the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th houses, counted from the Lagna. Because this app uses whole-sign houses, each Kendra is a whole sign: the rising sign, then the 4th, 7th and 10th signs from it. The four are three signs apart, which is why the Moon-based yogas also speak of a planet "in a kendra from the Moon": the same count, started from the Moon's sign.
Where the term comes from
BPHS Ch. 7 Sl. 33-36 defines the house groups and starts with these four: Lagn, Bandhu, Yuvati and Karm Bhava, the translation's names for the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th. Ch. 32 Sl. 35-37 calls the Kendras and Konas the auspicious Bhavas. Ch. 34 adds a twist that matters for lordship: benefics that own Kendras "will not give benefic effects", malefics that own them do not stay inauspicious, and the Lagna lord is singled out because the 1st is both a Kendra and a Kona. Sl. 11-12 of the same chapter make a link between a Kendra lord and a Kona lord the basis of a Raj Yog.
How this app uses it
- The engine's house test is a fixed list, houses 1, 4, 7 and 10. Kendra is checked before Trikona, so a planet in the 1st is reported as "kendra house".
- The planetary-strength table prints the label in its reason line. For a 1990-05-15, 10:30 IST Mumbai chart (Cancer rising) the engine reads Mercury as "a friendly sign in Aries, kendra house (10th), retrograde". The label is descriptive: it does not change the strength total.
- Directional strength (Dik Bala) peaks only in Kendras: the 1st for Mercury and Jupiter, the 4th for the Moon and Venus, the 7th for Saturn, the 10th for the Sun and Mars.
- Yoga tests: Panchamahapurusha needs a planet in own sign, exaltation or moolatrikona in a Kendra; Gaj Kesari needs Jupiter in a Kendra from the Lagna or the Moon, as BPHS Ch. 36 Sl. 3-4 has it; Kemadruma needs, among other things, no graha in a Kendra from the Moon.
- Kendradhipathya Dosha is flagged, as mild, when Jupiter or Venus owns a Kendra without also owning the 1st.
Pages that use this term
- The 1st house (Tanu Bhava) - the house that is both a Kendra and a Kona.
- The 10th house (Karma Bhava) - the highest of the four angles.
- Gaj Kesari Yoga - Jupiter in a Kendra from the Lagna or the Moon.
- Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga - a Kendra lord linked to a Kona lord.
- Kendradhipathya Dosha - a benefic that owns an angle.
- Shad Bala calculator - prints the house type beside each planet.
- Yogas calculator - runs every Kendra-based yoga test on your chart.
Related terms
- Trikona - the trines, the other auspicious group.
- Panaphara and Apoklima - the houses that follow and precede each Kendra.
- Dusthana - the 6th, 8th and 12th.
- Panchamahapurusha yoga - five yogas formed in Kendras.
Shad Bala calculator
Six components, one simplified score out of 20 for each of the seven grahas.
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