What Yoni measures

Kundli matching (comparing the 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. Yoni is the fourth of the eight in the usual order, and it carries 4 of the 36 points.

In this koota, each person’s yoni is an animal symbol. Our app describes it as the koota that “evaluates instinctive behaviour”: how naturally two people’s habits and instincts sit together, pictured as two animals.

The animal is not chosen and not read from behaviour. It comes from one fact in the birth chart: the nakshatra (birth star) the Moon was in when the person was born. So the two birth stars on a matching sheet settle the Yoni score completely.

Yoni is one of the four kootas read from the nakshatra rather than from the Moon sign. The other three are Tara (the count of stars from one birth star to the other), Gana (temperament) and Nadi (a three-way split of the stars that carries 8 points). Our Gana koota guide, the earlier post in this series, explains Gana in full.

The 14 animals and the 27 birth stars

The 27 nakshatras share fourteen animal symbols. Thirteen animals hold two stars each. The mongoose holds one, Uttara Ashadha. The list below is the one our engine scores with. Find each person’s birth star, then find its animal.

Your sheet may also mark each yoni male or female. Many star lists give each star such a label. Our engine does not read it: it scores the two animals only, and this guide does not print a male or female table. Other methods may use the label. The score below depends only on the two animals.

• Horse: Ashwini, Shatabhisha
• Elephant: Bharani, Revati
• Goat: Krittika, Pushya
• Serpent: Rohini, Mrigashira
• Dog: Ardra, Mula
• Cat: Punarvasu, Ashlesha
• Rat: Magha, Purva Phalguni
• Cow: Uttara Phalguni, Uttara Bhadrapada
• Buffalo: Hasta, Swati
• Tiger: Chitra, Vishakha
• Deer: Anuradha, Jyeshtha
• Monkey: Purva Ashadha, Shravana
• Mongoose: Uttara Ashadha
• Lion: Dhanishta, Purva Bhadrapada

How the four points are scored

Our engine scores Yoni from a fixed table of fourteen animals by fourteen.

When both people have the same animal, Yoni scores the full 4. Two horses, two cats or two lions all score 4. No two different animals score 4.

Every pair of different animals scores 0, 1, 2 or 3. There are 91 such pairs. In our table, 15 of them score 3, 43 score 2, 26 score 1, and 7 score 0.

The table reads the same in both directions. A horse groom with a buffalo bride scores what a buffalo groom with a horse bride scores. So the order of the two people never changes the Yoni score. Gana is different: there, a Deva (divine) groom with a Manushya (human) bride scores 6, and the reverse scores 5.

Four animals never score 3 with another animal: the tiger, the lion, the dog and the rat. Each of them scores at most 2 with any animal other than its own. If one of you carries one of these four, the Yoni score is 2 or less unless the other carries the same animal.

Find your own score in the grid below: the groom’s animal down the side, the bride’s across the top. Because the table is symmetric, either way round gives the same number.

The seven enemy pairs

Seven pairs of animals are called enemies, and they are the only pairs that score 0. They are listed below.

Many of these come from everyday pictures: the cat and the rat, the mongoose and the snake, the lion and the elephant. The table reads them as symbols of instinct. It says nothing about the two people’s character.

Every animal has exactly one enemy, and each animal holds at most two stars, so each pair covers only a few stars. Cat and rat, for example, means Punarvasu or Ashlesha with Magha or Purva Phalguni. A Yoni score of 0 happens only when the two animals form one of these seven pairs.

• Horse and buffalo
• Elephant and lion
• Goat and monkey
• Serpent and mongoose
• Dog and deer
• Cat and rat
• Cow and tiger

How often each score comes up

There are 27 × 27 = 729 ways to pair a groom’s birth star with a bride’s. Take each birth star as equally likely, which is a fair approximation because each nakshatra is the same width of sky. Then the Yoni scores fall as the list below shows.

So a 0 on the Yoni line is uncommon: about 1 pair in 14. A full 4 is just as rare. The most common result is 2, and across all 729 pairings the average Yoni score is 1.88 out of 4.

That means most couples lose some Yoni points, and a 1 or a 2 is the ordinary result. A 0 takes 4 points off the total, and the other seven kootas can still give up to 32. Whether those 4 points change anything depends on the rest of the sheet. They can move a total across the 18 out of 36 that many families treat as the line, or across a band that a report prints beside the total. So read the total with the eight scores, not on its own. Our guide to the 36 gunas explains what each total means.

• 4 points: 53 of the 729 pairings, about 7 in 100
• 3 points: 112, about 15 in 100
• 2 points: 312, about 43 in 100
• 1 point: 200, about 27 in 100
• 0 points: 52, about 7 in 100

What a low Yoni decides, and what it does not

Yoni is 4 of 36 points. It is one reading of instinct from one fact in each chart, the birth star. It cannot see how two people actually live together.

Our engine applies no exception to Yoni, and it raises no “yoni dosha” (a dosha is a flaw or affliction that a chart or a match is said to carry). A 0 only lowers the total by 4. The two kootas our engine checks for exceptions are the heaviest two. Bhakoot (7 points) compares the two Moon signs: how far one sits from the other. Nadi (8 points) asks whether the two birth stars fall in the same one of three groups. Our Nadi and Bhakoot guide explains when a 0 on either is cancelled, and our Nadi check tests the Nadi exceptions on your two stars.

Some sheets print “yoni 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 Yoni 0 a dosha on its own, so we do not call it one. Nothing in a Yoni score calls for a remedy, a fee or a fear. If a difference in instinct or habit worries you, talk about it together. Two people can do that; a table cannot.

Why two calculators can print different Yoni scores

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

The first is a different birth star. The Moon crosses into the next nakshatra about once a day. A birth near a boundary can fall in one star on one calculator and the next star 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. Neighbouring stars usually carry different animals, so the Yoni score can move. Our guide to why calculators give different guna scores shows how often that happens.

The second is a different method. Our engine’s table is the one shown above. We could not find a text and verse number that fixes every cell of it, so we show it as our table, rather than call it the only correct one. Other methods can weight the same pair differently, and some may use the male or female label that our engine does not read. If a report’s Yoni number puzzles you, ask which method it used.

Yoni 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 Yoni Porutham. It uses the same fourteen animal symbols and also treats certain pairs as hostile.

The difference is in the output. Each porutham (one test in the Tamil set) is traditionally graded uttamam (excellent), madhyamam (acceptable) or adhamam (poor), while Ashtakoot, and our engine with it, grades Yoni on its 0-to-4 scale. Our comparison of Dasa Porutham and the 36 gunas sets the two systems side by side.

Check your own Yoni in a minute

You need the two birth stars and their padas (the four quarters of each star). Our kundali shows your own birth star. Open our star-based calculator, enter both, and it scores all eight kootas, Yoni 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.

To read a Yoni score against the rest of a match, ask Jyothshi. Give it the two birth stars or the eight scores, and it explains what Yoni adds, what Bhakoot and Nadi say, and what the numbers leave open.

• 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 guide in this series: the Gana koota guide.