Shringataka Yoga: the seven grahas in the ascendant and its two trines, and a shape the engine has never met

Shringataka is a three-pointed figure - a place where three ways meet - and the yoga draws one across the chart: all seven classical grahas in the ascendant and the two houses that form a trikona with it, the 5th and the 9th. It is one of the twenty Akriti, or shape, yogas of the Nabhasa family. Its twin is Hala Yoga, which uses the other three triangles of the chart. This page gives the rule as the engine codes it, what BPHS and Saravali say, why the engine has not met the shape in five centuries of sampled moments, and a worked hypothetical beside the nearest real miss. What any yoga is worth is taken up in what a yoga in your chart means.

The rule: how Shringataka Yoga forms

BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 9-11: "All Grahas in Lagn, Putr and Dharm Bhava cause Shringatak Yog." Lagn is the 1st house, Putr the 5th and Dharm the 9th. Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 15 puts it as "all planets relegated only to the Ascendant and its Trines". The engine checks:

1. 1.The seven classical grahas: the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Rahu and Ketu are not counted.
2. 2.Houses are whole signs from the Lagna, so the three houses are the ascendant's sign and the signs four and eight places on from it.
3. 3.Every one of the seven grahas is in the 1st, 5th or 9th.
4. 4.Each of the three houses holds at least one of them.

No dignity, combustion, retrogression or lordship test applies. The engine reads "in" and Saravali's "relegated only to" the same way it reads every shape rule: the occupied houses are the shape. Under a looser "confined to" reading, all seven grahas in the 1st alone would satisfy Shringataka, Gada, Shakata, Kamala and Yupa at once; the engine's comment rejects that for exactly this reason.

Shringataka and Hala: one triangle against three

The twelve houses fall into four triangles of houses four apart: 1-5-9, 2-6-10, 3-7-11 and 4-8-12. Shringataka is the one that contains the ascendant. BPHS lists the other three by name as Hala; Saravali describes them as "mutual Trines, avoiding the Ascendant". Both texts therefore draw the same line, and the engine codes it as two separate shapes. Since signs four apart share an element, Shringataka puts all seven grahas in the three signs of the ascendant's element.

What the classical texts say: BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 26 and Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 33

Both books frame the family the same way. BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 1-2 speaks of 32 Nabhasa yogas with "1800 different varieties"; Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 1 says the Yavanas described 1800 kinds, of which it details 32, and Sl. 2-6 credits the twenty Akriti yogas to Savitracharya. Shringataka is third in BPHS's list of twenty and appears as "Sringataka" in Saravali's.

The two readings are close and mixed. BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 26 says one born in Shringataka Yoga is fond of quarrels and battles, happy, dear to the king, has an auspicious wife and is rich, and adds a final clause of hostility toward women. Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 33 repeats the list, calls the native a warrior, and keeps the same closing clause. Saravali Sl. 8-10 adds the general Akriti reading: satisfied with one's own fortune, earning through a king, famous.

This app keeps the combative streak and the good fortune and drops the closing clause about women. The engine's sentence reads: "Classically read as a combative but fortunate nature - happy, favoured by those in authority and prosperous." It is a paraphrase of the texts' claim, not a description of any person.

BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 50 says Nabhasa results are felt through all dasha periods; Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 20-21 says they act at all times. On precedence, BPHS Sl. 16-17 says a Sankhya yoga is not operable when another Nabhasa yoga forms; the engine lists every match and leaves that ranking to the reader. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's yoga chapter (pp. 145-154, read from page images) sorts yogas into five groups - lagna, Raja, Chandra, Sun and Parivartana - with no Nabhasa section; the Bhrigu Sutras and Advanced Predictive Astrology do not mention Shringataka. The yoga calculator page sets the 32 Nabhasa yogas side by side.

How rare it is

Shringataka fired in 0 of 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060. The engine-facts walk - New Delhi, from 1 January 1985, in steps of 9 days, 2 hours and 37 minutes - did not meet it in 20,000 moments, roughly 490 years.

The houses of a triangle are four signs apart. Mercury never gets more than about one sign from the Sun, and Venus never more than about two, so neither can reach another corner of the Sun's triangle: the Sun, Mercury and Venus must share one of the three houses. That leaves only four grahas - the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - to occupy the other two corners, with none of the four outside the triangle, and the birth time must also make the triangle the one that includes the ascendant. Hala has three triangles to choose from; Shringataka has one, which is a large part of why the walk met Hala and never Shringataka.

Worked example: the nearest miss, and the hypothetical that completes it

Searching the 3,000 sampled moments for the most grahas in the 1st, 5th and 9th together, the best was six, reached at seven moments. The first of them is 2 September 1987 at 21:59 IST, New Delhi, with an Aries ascendant. This is a real engine chart, but it does not form the yoga.

1. 1.Count from Aries: Leo is the 5th sign and Sagittarius the 9th. All three corners of the triangle are occupied.
2. 2.Six of the seven grahas are inside it. The Sun, Mercury and Venus share Leo, as the astronomy requires.
3. 3.Saturn is in Scorpio, the 8th house. One graha outside the triangle is enough to break the shape, and the engine returns no Shringataka.

Run through the full detector, the chart returns Kedara Yoga - seven grahas in four signs - with Anapha and a Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga, and no Akriti yoga at all.

All seven near misses in the sample

Six of seven inside the triangle happened at seven of the 3,000 moments. Listing them shows that the missing graha is only half the problem: in five of the seven, a corner of the triangle was also empty, so moving the stray planet in would not have been enough unless it landed in that empty corner.

The stray graha was Mars three times, Saturn twice, and the Sun and Venus once each. The 2040 moment is a curiosity: six grahas packed into the 9th house alone, with the Sun just behind them in the 8th - close to a single-sign cluster, and nowhere near a triangle.

The hypothetical: move one planet

Now imagine the same chart with one change and no new figures: Saturn one sign further on, in Sagittarius with the Moon. Every graha would then stand in Aries, Leo or Sagittarius, each corner occupied, and the engine would report Shringataka Yoga with the meaning that all seven grahas sit in houses 1, 5 and 9. Seven grahas in three signs would also make it Sula Yoga, the Sankhya yoga for three signs, every time; BPHS Sl. 16-17 would set the Sula aside. No Asraya yoga could form, because the three signs of a triangle are one movable, one fixed and one dual. And neither Vajra nor Yava could, since each needs a group of planets across two opposite angles and a triangle holds only one angle.

The same thought experiment works in reverse. Leave Saturn in Scorpio and move the Moon from Sagittarius into Leo, and the 9th house is empty: the grahas are still inside the triangle except Saturn, and even with Saturn moved too, an empty corner would fail the engine's test.

Shringataka beside its neighbours

Shringataka sits apart from the angle-based shapes - Gada, Shakata, Vihaga and Kamala - because only one of its houses is a kendra. It cannot coincide with any of them, nor with Maala or Sarpa, which need three occupied kendras. Its closest relative is Hala, the same figure turned away from the ascendant; Saravali makes the contrast explicit by defining Hala as the trines "avoiding the Ascendant".

What a yoga does not tell you

A yoga is a named rule about positions. Shringataka says that the whole chart sits on the ascendant's triangle; the texts read that as combative and fortunate, and the app reports the reading in its own words. It is not a forecast and has no strength grade. The texts give no timing beyond "all times", and in the signed-in Kundali, which attaches Mahadasha windows to yogas with named planets, a shape yoga is marked as a whole-chart pattern with no Mahadasha window of its own. A shape the engine has not met in 20,000 moments says nothing by its absence. Nor is a near miss a partial yoga: the rule is all or nothing, neither text grades a chart by how many grahas fall inside the triangle, and the engine gives no credit for six out of seven. The seven charts in the table above simply do not have Shringataka Yoga.

To see which Nabhasa shapes your own chart forms, run the yoga calculator.

Questions about Shringataka Yoga

What is the rule for Shringataka Yoga?

All seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn are in the 1st, 5th or 9th house (whole signs from the ascendant), and each of those three houses holds at least one of them. Rahu and Ketu are not counted.

How is it different from Hala Yoga?

Both are triangles of houses four apart. Shringataka is the triangle that contains the ascendant (1-5-9); Hala is any of the other three (2-6-10, 3-7-11, 4-8-12). BPHS lists Hala's three sets, and Saravali describes them as trines "avoiding the Ascendant".

How often does it occur?

It fired in 0 of 3,000 sampled birth moments 1985-2060, and the engine's walk found none in 20,000 moments from 1985 onward. The best of the 3,000 had six grahas in the triangle.

Why is it so rare?

Mercury and Venus cannot reach another corner of the Sun's triangle, so the three must share a house, leaving four grahas to fill the other two corners with none straying outside, and the triangle must be the ascendant's.

What if Rahu or Ketu falls outside the triangle?

It makes no difference. The engine counts only the seven classical grahas for every Nabhasa yoga, following Saravali Ch. 21, which speaks of "the seven planets" throughout. The nodes can be anywhere.

Does it involve the lords of the 5th and 9th, like a Raja Yoga?

No. Shringataka is about where the seven grahas stand, not which houses they rule. The rules that use the lords of the trines - the Raja Yoga of the 5th and 9th lords, Dharma-Karmadhipati and Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga - are separate tests with their own pages.

Does Shringataka Yoga need the planets to be strong?

No. Like every Nabhasa yoga, it is stated purely by position. The engine does not test dignity, combustion or retrogression for it.

Would a Shringataka chart show other Nabhasa yogas too?

Always Sula, because seven grahas in three houses are in three signs. Never an Asraya yoga, Vajra, Yava, Maala or Sarpa, for the reasons given above.