Kundli Matching
and Gun Milan

The eight kootas

The points are unevenly distributed, and the distribution is the argument. Varna carries one point for temperament grade, Vashya two for mutual amenability, Tara three for health and family welfare, Yoni four for physical compatibility, Graha Maitri five for mental disposition and affection, Gana six for character, Bhakoot seven for tastes and mutual attraction, and Nadi eight for constitution and heredity.

Several score zero rather than partially. Sharing a Nadi scores nothing at all out of eight. Gana scores nothing where the pairing is the adverse one. Bhakoot collapses to zero on the sixth-eighth, second-twelfth and fifth-ninth relationships between the two Moon signs. That is how an otherwise pleasant match arrives at a low total.

Northern practice uses these eight. Southern practice uses ten, and other schools eighteen, so the same couple can be scored differently by two competent astrologers using different regional conventions.

The cancellations are part of the technique

The exceptions are not modern leniency; they sit in the same texts as the rules. The Gana defect is set aside when the rulers of the two Moon signs are the same or friendly, and under several other conditions. The Bhakoot defect is set aside when those rulers are identical, friendly, or placed opposite each other. The Nadi defect can be disregarded when one planet rules both Moon signs, or when their rulers are friends.

There is a stated hierarchy too. The older authorities treat the matching of the sign rulers as the most important item in the whole scheme, and both the Gana and Bhakoot defects lose their force when those rulers are friendly. A report that lists a defect without testing its cancellation has done half the work.

Manglik, and what the score cannot see

Mars in the second, fourth, seventh, eighth or twelfth is the base rule, checked from the ascendant, the Moon and Venus, with the weight increasing across those three reference points. The exemptions are extensive: by sign, where Mars in certain positions produces no defect at all; by association, where Jupiter or the Moon reaches Mars; and by dignity, where Mars sits in its own signs or exalted. Raman describes the whole dictum as among the most misunderstood and misapplied in astrology.

The structural limit is larger. The entire thirty-six-point scheme rests on the Moon's sign and star in two charts. It never looks at the ascendants or their rulers, the seventh houses or their lords, the eighth lords, affliction to Venus, or how Venus and Mars sit relative to each other. Those are where a real answer about two specific people lives, which is why this report runs them alongside the score rather than instead of it.