Bhakoot kuta

the seventh test of the ashta kuta marriage matching system, the relation of the two Moon signs

What the tradition reads

Bhakoot, sometimes called Rasi kuta, is built from the relation between the two natives' Moon signs alone, counted in whole signs from one to the other. Read within a single chart, that same count is the ordinary grammar of sign relationship any two points can hold to each other, trine, sextile, square and opposition translated into whole sign steps. Applied to two charts, bhakoot names three counted relations as inauspicious: dwirdwadash, where the Moons fall the second and the twelfth from each other, shadashtak, the sixth and the eighth, and nav-pancham, the fifth and the ninth, with shadashtak read as the most serious of the three, dwirdwadash as moderate and nav-pancham as the mildest. The same sign, the opposite sign, and the third and eleventh, fourth and tenth relations are read as favourable and score the full seven of the system's thirty six points. Bhakoot at seven points and nadi at eight are named as the two most heavily weighted of the eight tests, ranked ahead of gana at six, so a poor bhakoot is treated as a serious mark against a match even when the other tests otherwise score well. Several traditional cancellations are recognised even so, among them the two Moon signs sharing the same lord, their lords standing in classical friendship, a strong graha maitri score, or a high enough total elsewhere to be judged compensating, so the fault is not always read as final.

The story

The logic of bhakoot is the same whole sign count used everywhere else in the tradition to judge how one placement helps or hinders another, applied here to the single point two charts most directly share, the Moon. A relation of four signs, read elsewhere as a supportive trine, is scored as auspicious between two Moons for the same reason it is read as auspicious within one chart; a relation of six, an opposition, and the awkward one or two step gap of the second or twelfth, are read as strained for the same underlying reason they are read as strained anywhere the whole sign system is used. Bhakoot does not invent a new principle for marriage so much as borrow the oldest one the tradition has, sign to sign relationship, and put it to the specific work of asking whether two people's feeling natures sit in an easy geometric relation to each other before anything else about the match is weighed, treating the emotional temperament each Moon carries as the two most important things in a couple's household to check for basic compatibility first.

Written from

Corpus key kuta:bhakoot.