Kundli matching, scored out of 36
If someone has told you a number out of thirty-six, this is where it comes from.
How the 36-guna score works
What you get
Traditional interpretation
The structure is calculated. What it means comes from the system's own texts and practice, offered for reflection. These meanings have not been shown to predict personality or events.
Also: Calculated.
How we work it out →- Both partners' birth dates.
- The Ashtakoot 36-guna score, all eight kootas shown, with any dosha named and no cancellations applied.
Why the eight do not weigh the same
The weights are the argument. Nadi carries eight on its own, more than Varna, Vashya, Tara and Yoni put together, so two people who share a nadi start twenty-two per cent down before anything else is looked at. Bhakoot carries seven and is all-or-nothing: certain distances between your two Moon signs score the full seven and three of them score zero. Between them those two kootas decide fifteen of the thirty-six, which is why most matches that fail, fail on one of them.
| Koota | Points | What it compares |
|---|---|---|
| Varna | 1 | A four-fold grouping of the twelve signs, read as temperament rather than caste in most modern practice. It scores only if the groom's is level with or above the bride's, an asymmetry the system does not hide. |
| Vashya | 2 | Which of you is the more magnetic to the other, from a grouping of the signs into human, quadruped, aquatic, wild and insect. |
| Tara | 3 | Counting from one nakshatra to the other, in both directions, and checking whether each landing place is an auspicious one. Two counts, so this one is close to symmetric. |
| Yoni | 4 | An animal per nakshatra, fourteen of them, with a sex. Same animal scores four; a traditional enemy pair, such as cat and rat, scores nothing. |
| Graha Maitri | 5 | Whether the two Moon-sign lords are friends. This is planetary friendship as Jyotisha defines it, not a metaphor. |
| Gana | 6 | Deva, Manushya or Rakshasa, nine nakshatras each. Read as disposition, and the mismatch that costs most is Deva with Rakshasa. |
| Bhakoot | 7 | The distance between your two Moon signs. The 6-8, 9-5 and 2-12 relationships score zero and everything else scores the full seven. |
| Nadi | 8 | Adi, Madhya or Antya, nine nakshatras each in a repeating pattern. Sharing one scores nothing and is called Nadi dosha. |
What this calculator will not do
It will not cancel a dosha for you. Nadi dosha alone has several documented cancellations, and different lineages accept different ones. Bhakoot has its own set, Gana has another, and Manglik, which is not part of the thirty-six at all, has more than any of them. A calculator that picked one set and applied it silently would hand you a number that looks like the tradition and belongs to no part of it. So the score you get here is the raw score, the dosha is named if it is there, and the judgement stays with a person.
- Basis
- The Moon's nakshatra and rasi in each chart, sidereal, with the ayanamsa this site states on its Vedic pages
- Cancellations
- Not applied. Nadi, Bhakoot and Gana dosha all have cancellation rules that differ between lineages, so the dosha is named and the decision left with whoever is reading for you
- Manglik
- Not computed here. Manglik depends on Mars by house, and the house it is counted from differs between schools, so it belongs with a full chart rather than a score line.
- The 18 rule
- 18 of 36 is the figure usually quoted as a minimum. It is a convention, not a result, and no study supports it
One more thing to say plainly, because people arrive at this page frightened. A low score is not evidence that a marriage will go badly. No study has found guna totals predicting whether marriages last or whether the people inside them are content, and the eighteen-out-of-thirty-six threshold you will see quoted everywhere is a convention of the last century or so of practice, not a line from a classical text. If a number is being used to stop something you want, a second astrologer is a reasonable thing to ask for, and so is a look at the whole chart rather than the total.