Shara Yoga: all seven grahas in the 4th to 7th houses, the BPHS rule, and a 1996 chart

Shara means arrow - Saravali glosses it "Ishu", another word for arrow - and Shara Yoga is one of the twenty shape rules the classical texts call Akriti yogas. A yoga in this sense is a named rule about where planets stand, and this one is unusually easy to state: every one of the seven visible grahas sits in the four houses from the 4th to the 7th, and none of those four houses is empty. This page sets out the rule as Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and Saravali give it, how this app tests it, how rarely it occurs, and one chart where it does. For what any yoga can and cannot tell you, start with what a yoga in your chart means.

The rule: how Shara Yoga forms

BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 13 gives four shapes in one sentence: all seven grahas in the four bhavas starting from the Lagna give Yupa, starting from Bandhu (the 4th) give Shara, from Yuvati (the 7th) give Shakti, and from Karm (the 10th) give Danda. Shara is the second of the four. The engine turns that sentence into four checks, all of which must hold.

1. 1.Only the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn are counted - the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Rahu and Ketu are left out, because Saravali Ch. 21 speaks throughout of "the seven planets" and BPHS Sl. 13 says "all the 7 Grahas".
2. 2.Houses are whole-sign houses counted from the Lagna: the rising sign is the 1st, the next sign the 2nd, and so on.
3. 3.Every one of the seven is in the 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th house.
4. 4.Each of those four houses holds at least one of them. A chart with all seven in the 4th, 5th and 6th, and the 7th empty, is not Shara.

Nothing else is tested. Dignity, combustion, retrogression and aspects play no part: an Akriti yoga is a property of the shape the seven grahas make together, so the engine names no planet as its owner and reports an empty planet list for it.

Three choices the text leaves to the reader

• Fill or confine. "All the 7 Grahas are in the 4 Bhavas" can be read loosely - confined to those houses, some of them perhaps empty - or strictly, with every house occupied. The engine takes the strict reading for every Akriti rule. Its reason is recorded in the code: under the loose reading one cluster would form several shapes at once, since seven grahas all in the 5th and 6th would sit inside the four houses from the 3rd and also inside the four from the 4th.
• Which grahas. The shadow planets are excluded, as above. A reader who counted Rahu and Ketu would almost never see the shape, since the two are always six signs apart and cannot both fit inside four consecutive houses.
• Precedence. BPHS Sl. 16-17 says the seven Sankhya yogas are not operable when another Nabhasa yoga can be derived. The engine records that rule and still reports every yoga that forms, so a Shara chart also shows the Sankhya yoga its sign count gives (below).

What the classical texts say about Shara

Both texts place Shara among the Nabhasa yogas - the 32 named distributions of the planets that BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 1-2 and Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 1 select from 1800 varieties. Saravali Sl. 5-6 credits the twenty Akriti yogas to Savitracharya. The rule is the same in both: Saravali Sl. 12 asks the seven planets to occupy continuous houses counted from the ascendant and its angles, giving Yupa, Sara, Sakthi and Danda in order. The printed translation reads "for continuous Houses", which in context is the four-house count BPHS Sl. 13 states plainly.

The result attached to Shara is among the harsher in the chapter. BPHS Sl. 33 reads it as someone who will "make arrows", be head of a prison, earn through animals and engage in torture and mean handiwork. Saravali Sl. 38 gives nearly the same list and adds "equal to a mad person"; its translator glosses the arrow-making as arms manufacture and the prison role as a police officer in modern terms. These are the texts' claims about a chart shape, reported here as such.

This app does not repeat them as a verdict. Its own sentence for the yoga reads: "Classically read as a hands-on, toughened nature suited to craft and to work with authority or animals, with a harsh streak worth tempering." That keeps the classical themes - craft, authority, animals, harshness - and drops the moral judgement.

Saravali Sl. 8-10 also gives a reading for Akriti yogas as a class: the native is satisfied with his own fortunes, earns through a king and is famous. And both texts say the Nabhasa results are not tied to a period: BPHS Sl. 50 has them felt "in all the Dasha periods", and Saravali Sl. 20-21 calls them effective at all times, independent of the dashas. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Advanced Predictive Astrology and the Bhrigu Sutras, the other texts in the library, do not discuss Shara Yoga.

How rare it is, and why it belongs to the evening

In the engine's deterministic sample, Shara Yoga formed in 14 of 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060, or 0.5 percent. Continued to 20,000 moments (1985 to 2483), the same walk met it 68 times. Two things make it rare. First, all seven grahas must crowd into four consecutive signs. The slow planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are only rarely within that distance of each other and of the Sun, so most of the time the shape is impossible whatever the hour. In the same 3,000 moments, all seven grahas sat inside some block of four consecutive houses 147 times. Second, the block must start at the 4th house and every house in it must be occupied.

The second condition ties Shara to the time of day. Mercury is never more than about one sign from the Sun, and Venus never more than about two, so the Sun always sits inside any tight cluster. In whole-sign houses the Sun moves backwards through the houses once a day: the 1st around sunrise, the 10th around noon, the 7th around sunset and the 4th around midnight. A shape that needs the Sun in the 4th to 7th houses can only occur, roughly, between sunset and midnight. The engine's first four Shara moments in the walk were at 21:02, 19:09, 21:31 and 21:13 IST - all evening births.

Because the four houses are four consecutive signs, they always include a movable, a fixed and a dual sign. With all four occupied, the seven grahas cannot all share one modality, so none of the Asraya yogas - Rajju, Musala or Nala - can accompany Shara. And because each house is one sign, exactly four signs are occupied, which is always Kedara Yoga in the Sankhya count.

Worked example: a 1996 New Delhi evening

The first moment in the engine's walk that forms Shara Yoga is 15 February 1996 at 21:02 IST in New Delhi. You can re-enter it in the birth chart calculator. The ascendant is Virgo at 10.73 degrees, so Virgo is the 1st house, Sagittarius the 4th, Capricorn the 5th, Aquarius the 6th and Pisces the 7th.

1. 1.All seven inside houses 4 to 7: the Moon and Jupiter in the 4th, Mercury in the 5th, the Sun, Mars and Saturn in the 6th, Venus in the 7th. No graha is outside the block. Holds.
2. 2.Every house occupied: the 4th has two, the 5th one, the 6th three, the 7th one. Holds.
3. 3.Rahu in the 1st and Ketu in the 7th sit outside and inside the block respectively, but neither is counted, so neither helps nor breaks the shape.
4. 4.No other Akriti shape fits: the seven occupy exactly houses 4, 5, 6 and 7, so the seven-house shapes, the alternate-house shapes and the kendra shapes all fail.

The engine's output for this chart reads: "All 7 classical grahas (Sun through Saturn) sit in houses 4, 5, 6, 7 of your chart, and each of those houses holds at least one - a Nabhasa "Akriti" (shape) Yoga." Its interpretation line is the reframed sentence quoted above. The Sun is in the 6th house, which matches the hour: a little after nine in the evening.

The same chart forms eleven other yogas in the engine's report, among them Kedara (four signs occupied), Hamsa (Jupiter in its own sign in a kendra), Malavya (Venus exalted in a kendra), Gaj Kesari, Mudrika and Argala Raj. A chart that carries the harshest-sounding Akriti reading alongside two Panchamahapurusha yogas is a fair reminder that yogas are separate tests on the same positions. They do not add up to a score, and the texts give no rule for weighing one against another.

Shara beside its neighbouring shapes

Its three siblings from the same sloka are Yupa (houses 1 to 4), Shakti (7 to 10) and Danda (10 to 1). Widen the block from four houses to seven, starting again at the 4th, and the shape becomes Koota Yoga. Shara cannot coexist with any of them, because each needs a different set of houses occupied. It also cannot coexist with Maala or Sarpa, which need three kendras occupied; the Shara block contains only two, the 4th and the 7th.

What a yoga does not tell you

Shara Yoga records that the seven grahas are bunched into one quarter of the chart, below the western horizon. The classical texts attach a reading to that shape, and this app reports the reading with its harsher edges removed. Neither the texts nor the app can tell you how strongly the reading applies to a person, and the texts give no timing beyond saying the effect runs through every period. A yoga is a named rule about positions, not a prediction, and one that forms in about one chart moment in two hundred is a curiosity of the sky as much as a statement about anyone born under it.

To see whether your own chart forms Shara or any of the other 31 Nabhasa shapes, run the yoga calculator. It lists the houses your seven grahas occupy, so you can check the shape yourself.

Questions about Shara Yoga

What exactly is Shara Yoga?

A Nabhasa Akriti (shape) yoga: all seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th houses from the ascendant, with each of those four houses holding at least one. BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 13 and Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 12 give the rule.

Do Rahu and Ketu count?

No. The engine counts only the seven grahas, following the texts' "seven planets". Rahu and Ketu can be anywhere without affecting the yoga.

If all seven are in the 4th to 6th houses, is that Shara?

Not in this app. The engine requires every one of the four houses to be occupied. Under a looser reading, "confined to" the four houses, it would count, but that reading lets one cluster form several shapes at once, which is why the engine does not use it.

How common is Shara Yoga?

Rare. It formed in 14 of 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060 (0.5 percent), and the moments it formed were evening births, because the Sun must be in the 4th to 7th house.

Is Shara Yoga a bad yoga?

BPHS Sl. 33 and Saravali Sl. 38 give it a harsh reading. This app reports it as a hands-on, toughened nature with a harsh streak worth tempering, and treats it, like every yoga, as a rule about positions rather than a verdict on a person.

Does Shara Yoga give results in a particular dasha?

BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 50 says Nabhasa results are felt in all the dasha periods, and Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 20-21 says they work independently of the dashas. Neither ties the yoga to one period.

My chart shows Shara and also Kedara Yoga. Which applies?

BPHS Sl. 16-17 says a Sankhya yoga such as Kedara is not operable when another Nabhasa yoga forms. The engine reports both and leaves that rule to the reader; every Shara chart has four signs occupied and therefore Kedara as well.