What Vashya measures

Kundli matching (comparing two birth charts before a marriage) in North India usually means Ashtakoot, the “eight-part” match. It scores a couple on eight kootas (tests), and the eight add up to a total out of 36 points, also called gunas. Vashya is the second of the eight in the usual order, and it carries 2 of the 36 points.

The word comes from the Sanskrit vasha, control or sway: vashya means “that which comes under another’s influence”. That is why some families read a low score as a sign that one partner will dominate the other. It is not. Vashya is a 2-point reading of which groups two Moon signs fall in. It does not look at how two people behave, and it does not forecast an unequal marriage. A later section, “Vashya does not say who will lead”, explains why.

Vashya reads one fact in each chart: the Moon sign (rashi), the sign the Moon was in at birth. It puts each Moon sign into one of five groups, and scores how the two groups sit together. For two of the twelve signs it also needs the Moon’s degree, as a later section shows.

Vashya is one of the four kootas read from the Moon sign. Our Graha Maitri guide, the previous post in this series, covers another one: the friendship between the planets that rule the two Moon signs.

The five Vashya groups

Our engine sorts the Moon signs into five groups. Each group has a Sanskrit name that pictures a kind of creature, as listed below. The names are symbols. They describe the sign, not the person.

Two signs are split in the middle. A Moon in the first half of Dhanu (Sagittarius) is human, and in the second half four-footed. A Moon in the first half of Makara (Capricorn) is four-footed, and in the second half water.

The groups are not the same size. Count the Moon’s path in degrees: the human group covers 135 of the 360 degrees, the four-footed group 90, the water group 75, and the wild and insect groups 30 each. So Simha and Vrishchika each stand alone in a group of one sign.

• Chatushpada (four-footed; chatus means four, pada means foot): Mesha (Aries), Vrishabha (Taurus), the second half of Dhanu, the first half of Makara
• Manava (human): Mithuna (Gemini), Kanya (Virgo), Tula (Libra), Kumbha (Aquarius), the first half of Dhanu
• Jalachara (water-dwelling; jala means water): Karka (Cancer), Meena (Pisces), the second half of Makara
• Vanachara (forest-dwelling, wild; vana means forest): Simha (Leo) only
• Keeta (insect): Vrishchika (Scorpio) only

How the two points are scored

Our engine scores Vashya from a five-by-five grid of the groups. There are four rules, listed below.

The grid reads the same in both directions. A Simha groom with a Tula bride scores what a Tula groom with a Simha bride scores. So the order of the two people never changes the Vashya score.

• 2 points: both Moons are in the same group
• 0.5 points: one Moon is human (Manava) and the other is water (Jalachara)
• 0 points: one Moon is in Simha (Vanachara) and the other is not
• 1 point: every other pair of different groups

Six pairs, worked through

Here is one pair of Moon signs for each case, with the groups that decide it.

• Mesha with Vrishabha: both four-footed. 2 points.
• Simha with Simha: both wild, the same group. 2 points.
• Vrishchika with Kumbha: insect and human. 1 point.
• Mithuna with Karka: human and water. 0.5 points.
• Simha with Tula: wild and human. 0 points.
• Mesha with a Dhanu Moon at 20 degrees: both four-footed, 2 points. Move the Dhanu Moon to 10 degrees and it is human: 1 point.

Why a Simha Moon scores 0

Every 0 on the Vashya line has the same cause: a Simha Moon on one side, and any other Moon sign on the other. The wild group holds only Simha, and in our grid it scores 0 with all four other groups.

So if neither of you has the Moon in Simha, Vashya cannot be 0. Its lowest is then 0.5. And if both of you have the Moon in Simha, the two Moons share a group and Vashya scores the full 2.

Vrishchika also stands alone in its group, but it is not cut off in the same way. An insect Moon scores 1 with the four-footed, human and water groups, and 0 only with Simha.

Dhanu, Makara and the 15-degree split

For ten signs the Moon sign alone fixes the Vashya group. For Dhanu and Makara the Moon’s degree inside the sign decides it, because both signs are split at 15 degrees.

Most birth stars sit wholly on one side of that line. Mula is all in the first half of Dhanu, for example, so a Mula Moon is always human. Two padas cross it: the first pada of Purva Ashadha in Dhanu, and the second pada of Shravana in Makara. A pada is one of the four quarters of a birth star, each 3 degrees 20 minutes wide.

If either of you has one of those two padas, the birth star and pada cannot say which side of 15 degrees the Moon was on. Our star-based calculator shows the two possible totals as a range in that case. The exact Moon degree from a full birth chart settles it.

How often each score comes up

Take each person’s Moon as equally likely to be at any degree of the zodiac. That is the same as taking each sign as equally likely, with Dhanu and Makara counted in halves. Then the Vashya scores fall as the list below shows.

The most common result is 1, in more than 4 pairs in 10. The full 2 comes up in about 1 pair in 4. A 0 comes up in about 3 pairs in 20, and every one of them has a Simha Moon on one side. Across all pairs the average is just over 1 out of 2.

• 2 points: about 26 in 100
• 1 point: about 43 in 100
• 0.5 points: about 16 in 100
• 0 points: about 15 in 100

Vashya does not say who will lead

Some sheets and some advice read Vashya as a forecast of which partner will control the other. The word itself, “under another’s sway”, invites that reading.

Our engine cannot make that forecast, and it does not try. The grid is the same in either order, so a score of 0 for a Simha groom and a Tula bride is also 0 for a Tula groom and a Simha bride. A score that does not change when you swap the two people cannot name one of them as the one who leads.

Nor does a low score forecast that someone will dominate. Vashya reads one fact in each chart, the Moon sign, and puts it in one of five groups. It knows nothing about how two people talk, decide or share power. A 0 or a 0.5 is a fact about two groups of signs, not a forecast of an unequal marriage.

Our app describes Vashya as “mutual influence and respect — checks for a healthy power dynamic rather than dominance.” Read that as the theme the koota is named for, not as a test your marriage has failed. How two people share decisions is something they shape together; a table of sign groups cannot measure it.

What a low Vashya decides, and what it does not

Vashya is 2 of 36 points. Only Varna, at 1 point, carries less. A 0 here moves the total by 2 points, no more.

Our engine applies no exception to Vashya, and it raises no “vashya dosha” (a dosha is a flaw that a match is said to carry). Our matching flags three doshas. Two are a 0 on Nadi or Bhakoot, the two heaviest kootas. The third is Mangal dosha (a dosha read from where Mars sits in each chart), which needs both full charts. Our Nadi and Bhakoot guide explains when a 0 on either is cancelled.

Some sheets print “vashya dosha” beside a 0. Treat it as a label for a low score on one koota, not as a warning about the marriage. We do not know of a text we can quote that makes a Vashya 0 a dosha on its own, so we do not call it one. Nothing in this score calls for a remedy, a fee or a fear. Two points can still matter at the edge: they can move a total across the 18 out of 36 that many families treat as the line. So read the total with the eight scores, not on its own. Our guide to the 36 gunas explains what each total means.

Why two calculators can print different Vashya scores

If two matching reports give the same couple different Vashya scores, there are three usual reasons.

The first is a different Moon sign. The Moon changes sign about every two and a quarter days. A birth near the change can fall in one sign on one calculator and the next sign on another, if the two use a different ayanamsa (the correction between the star-based zodiac and the Western one) or a slightly different birth time.

The second is the 15-degree split. A Moon near 15 degrees of Dhanu or Makara can land on one side on one calculator and the other side on another. Some calculators may not split these two signs at all.

The third is a different table. Calculators do not all use the same Vashya grid. Our engine’s grid is the one shown above. We show it as our table, rather than call it the only correct one. A report from elsewhere can differ from ours by half a point or a point on this line. Our guide to why calculators give different guna scores shows how these differences add up.

Vasya Porutham in the Tamil tradition

In the Tamil tradition, matching often uses Dasa Porutham, a set of ten poruthams (tests), instead of the eight kootas. One of the ten is Vasya Porutham. It carries the same name and asks the same broad question about mutual influence between the two Moon signs. The method and the output can differ from Ashtakoot’s 0-to-2 scale. Our Dasa Porutham guide sets the two systems side by side.

Check your own Vashya in a minute

You need the two birth stars and their padas; the star and pada fix the Moon sign, and almost always the Vashya group. Our kundali shows your own birth star, and our free sign check shows your Moon sign. Open our star-based calculator, enter both stars, and it scores all eight kootas, Vashya among them. There is nothing to sign up for.

If your sheet already lists all eight koota scores, enter them in the koota score reader. It reads them back one by one and tells you what they add up to. It does not re-score anything, and nothing is saved.

Then ask Jyothshi with the score in hand. Jyothshi can name the two groups, explain the score, and say what the other seven kootas add.

• Rebuild all eight scores from two birth stars: the star-based calculator.
• Read the eight scores from your sheet: the koota score reader.
• The earlier guides in this series: Gana, Yoni and Graha Maitri.
• The whole 36-point system: our guide to the 36 gunas.