Gulika, Mandi and Upagraha Calculator
All eleven upagrahas with sign and degree — including why Gulika and Maandi can land in different signs.
A worked example
All eleven points for one illustrative chart, with the derivation of each so the arithmetic can be checked.
Chart: 13 December 1961, 05:30, Channarayapatna, India (Lahiri ayanamsa)
All eleven upagrahas — 13 December 1961
The Sun is at Scorpio 27.43° (237.43° from 0° Aries, Jyeshtha, pada 4). Every step in the first five can be checked against it.
| Upagraha | Sign | Degree | From 0° Aries | How it is obtained |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dhuma | Aries | 10.76° | 10.76° | Sun + 133°20′ |
| Vyatipata | Pisces | 19.24° | 349.24° | 360° − Dhuma |
| Parivesha | Virgo | 19.24° | 169.24° | Vyatipata + 180° |
| Indra Chapa | Libra | 10.76° | 190.76° | 360° − Parivesha |
| Upaketu | Libra | 27.43° | 207.43° | Indra Chapa + 16°40′ |
| Kaala | Capricorn | 18.61° | 288.61° | Rising point at the Sun's eighth of the day |
| Mrityu | Pisces | 7.59° | 337.59° | Rising point at Mars's eighth of the day |
| Artha Prahara | Aries | 2.82° | 2.82° | Rising point at Mercury's eighth of the day |
| Yama Ghantaka | Aries | 26.36° | 26.36° | Rising point at Jupiter's eighth of the day |
| Gulika | Scorpio | 27.47° | 237.47° | Rising point at Saturn's eighth of the day |
| Maandi | Sagittarius | 7.11° | 247.11° | The other end of Saturn's eighth — see below |
Check the first five without trusting us. 237.43° + 133°20′ = 370.76°, which is 10.76° once you take off a full circle — Dhuma. 360° − 10.76° = 349.24°, which is Pisces 19.24° — Vyatipata. Subtract 180° for Parivesha, reflect again for Indra Chapa, add 16°40′ for Upaketu. Dhuma and Indra Chapa end up on the same degree of their signs, and so do Vyatipata and Parivesha, because each pair is a reflection of the other about 0° Aries.
Illustrative birth data used to demonstrate the output. It is not a customer chart, and no birth details you enter above are ever stored, put in a URL, or published.
Upagrahas are not planets. They are eleven calculated points on the ecliptic with no body attached to them, and the usual translation shadow planet oversells the resemblance. What makes them worth a page of their own is that the eleven are produced by two completely different methods, and the two behave so differently that treating them as one list will mislead you.
Family one: five points that are pure Sun arithmetic
Dhuma is the Sun's longitude plus 133°20′. Vyatipata is 360° minus Dhuma. Parivesha is Vyatipata plus 180°. Indra Chapa is 360° minus Parivesha. Upaketu is Indra Chapa plus 16°40′. Every step is a fixed offset or a reflection, so all five are completely determined by the Sun and by nothing else.
The consequences are easy to see in the worked example. Dhuma and Indra Chapa share the same degree within their signs, and so do Vyatipata and Parivesha, because each pair is separated by a reflection about 0° Aries. It also means these five points barely move across a whole day and are nearly identical for two people born the same day on opposite sides of the world. They cannot carry anything specific to a birth time.
Family two: six points taken from the divisions of the day
The second family is computed from the length of the day itself. The span from sunrise to sunset — or sunset to sunrise for a night birth — is divided into eight equal parts. Seven of the eight are ruled in weekday order starting from the lord of the birth weekday, and the eighth is left unruled. The degree of the ecliptic that was rising at the boundary of a given planet's part becomes that planet's upagraha.
Saturn's part yields Gulika, Mars's yields Mrityu, the Sun's yields Kaala, Mercury's yields Artha Prahara and Jupiter's yields Yama Ghantaka. Unlike the first family these depend on the exact time of birth, on the latitude, and on the date, because all three change the length of the day and the rate at which signs rise. This is why an upagraha table can never be reconstructed from a birth date alone.
Gulika and Maandi are not always the same point
Many texts use Gulika and Mandi as two names for one point, and a great deal of software follows that convention. Others take Gulika at the beginning of Saturn's eighth of the day and Mandi at its end, which puts the two a fraction of a sign apart — sometimes enough to place them in different signs and therefore in different houses.
Our engine reports both. In the worked example Gulika lands at Scorpio 27.47° and Maandi at Sagittarius 7.11° — adjacent signs, and adjacent houses, from the same chart. If two calculators disagree about where your Mandi is, this convention is very nearly always the reason, and neither of them is wrong; they are answering two different questions with one word.
How the eleven are actually used
Gulika carries by far the most classical weight. Parasara treats it almost as a planet for the purpose of judging the house it occupies, the sign it falls in and the planets it joins or aspects, and it appears throughout the longevity and maraka literature. The remaining ten are used far more narrowly, most often as corroborating detail rather than as the basis of a reading on their own.
Read them as sensitive degrees rather than as agents. A point with no body has no dignity, no motion and no dasha of its own, so the questions you can ask of it are limited: which house does it fall in, which sign, and what is it conjunct. Anything stronger than that is being imported from somewhere else in the chart, and the honest thing is to say so.
Classical source. Both methods are set out in Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra, in the chapter on the upagrahas; Gulika's use in judging a house is discussed there and repeated in the later handbooks.
This calculation is one panel of the full chart
The free birth chart runs every calculation on this site for one set of birth details at once — 23 divisional charts, 56 dasha systems, ashtakavarga, yogas and every bala, including this one.
Other calculations
- Vimsopaka BalaScore each planet out of 20 on its dignity across the vargas — four schemes, from six charts to sixteen.
- Bhava BalaStrength of the twelve houses — lord, direction and aspect combined, then ranked one to twelve.
- Vimshottari DashaThe standard nakshatra dasha: 120 years across nine lords, with the period you were born partway through shown as a balance.
- Kalachakra DashaSign-based dasha periods read off the Moon's nakshatra pada, running forward or backward through the zodiac.
- Ashtottari DashaThe 108-year conditional dasha — eight lords instead of nine, counted from Ardra rather than Ashwini.