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Varshphal
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Varshphal (Annual Chart)

Solar return chart for any year - reveals the theme of your year

Birth Details
Enter birth details and select the year to analyze

What a Varshphal chart actually is

A Varshphal, or annual chart, is cast for the instant the Sun returns to the exact sidereal longitude it held at your birth. That instant is a solar return, and it rarely coincides with your birthday's clock time: the year is about 365.2422 days long, so the return drifts by roughly six hours each year and can land on the calendar day before or after your birthday. This page computes that instant to sub-arcsecond precision and then casts a complete chart for it.

The place is a separate input on purpose. The classical practice is to cast the varsha for where you are living during the year rather than where you were born, so the annual ascendant follows you and a year spent abroad gives a different annual chart from the same solar return. Everything else on the page is read from that annual chart: the Muntha, the year lord, two Tajika strength measures, two annual dashas and the sahamas.

The Muntha, and why its lord is a different table

The Muntha is a progressed point, not a graha. It begins at the sign of the natal ascendant and advances one whole sign for every completed year of life, so it returns to the natal lagna every twelve years. The house it occupies in the annual chart is read from B.V. Raman's Varshaphala Article 56, which covers all twelve houses.

The lord of the Muntha is a separate table and the two must not be conflated. Raman's Article 45 treats the Muntha lord in three buckets only, leaving the first and fourth houses unaddressed, and where both tables speak they disagree: the Muntha in the seventh is adverse under Article 56 while the Muntha lord in the seventh is fortunate under Article 45.

Beyond Raman the sources contradict each other too, and only the sixth, eighth and twelfth are unanimous, so a contested house renders both verdicts with both citations and a house no source addresses renders no sentence at all.

The year lord is selected from five office-bearers

The Varshesha, or year lord, is chosen from the Panchadhikari, the five office-bearers: the lord of the Muntha, the lord of the natal ascendant, the lord of the annual ascendant, the Tri-rashi lord, and the lord of the weekday on which the varsha begins. The five are scored by a Tajika strength combining sign dignity, house placement and relation to the annual ascendant, and the strongest of them holds the office for the year.

This replaces the common shortcut of simply taking the weekday lord, which ignores four of the five candidates. All five are printed with their component scores, so the selection can be checked rather than accepted on trust, and a year in which two candidates are nearly level is visible as such instead of being hidden behind a single name.

Two Tajika strength measures, both in stated units

Panchavargeeya Bala sums five dignity-based components for each classical graha in the annual chart: Kshetra worth 30, Uccha 20, Hadda 15, Drekkana 10 and Navamsa 5. The maximum is 80, and dividing by four gives the Vishwa figure on a 0 to 20 scale, classified Parakrami, Purna, Madhya or Alpa. The Hadda component uses the Egyptian terms, as Tetrabiblos I.20 to 21 sets them out.

Harsha Bala is a separate four-condition test, each condition worth 5 virupas for a maximum of 20: the graha occupying its house of joy, the graha exalted or in moolatrikona or its own sign, a male graha in a male house or a female graha in a female house, and a male graha in a day birth or a female graha in a night birth.

The gender assignments follow K.S. Charak, with Saturn male and Mercury female. The two measures are reported side by side and are never merged into one number.

Two annual dashas, built on different principles

Mudda dasha is the natal Vimshottari sequence compressed into the single year. Its seed progresses one nakshatra per completed year from the natal Moon's nakshatra, which is the rule both K.S. Charak and P.V.R. Narasimha Rao give, and the first period does not begin whole - its balance is the unexpired part. A variant that seeds from the annual Moon instead exists and is deliberately not shipped here, being outvoted by both authorities.

Patyayini dasha is not a compression at all. It divides the year by the degrees-within-sign of eight participants, the seven classical grahas plus the annual ascendant. The body with the fewest degrees rules first, and each body's share is the gap between its own degrees and the previous body's. Rahu and Ketu are excluded because no source in this corpus admits them. The implementation is checked against both published worked examples, Balabhadra's Hayanaratna 7.1 chart and Charak's tables in A Textbook of Varshaphala chapter V.

Sahamas, and the one step most implementations get backwards

A sahama is a computed sensitive point of the form A minus B plus C, where A is the minuend, B the subtrahend and C the addend. For a night birth A and B are interchanged, except in the rows marked the same for day and night, and the addend never moves. The 36-row formula table used here is P.V.R. Narasimha Rao's, from chapter 28 of Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach.

Then a correction applies: if the addend does not lie on the zodiacal arc running from the subtrahend forward to the minuend, one sign of 30 degrees is added. The body being tested is the addend, not the ascendant - Nilakantha's Samjnatantra 3.5 names the ascendant only because the ascendant is the default addend.

B.V. Raman's Varshaphal Article 64 states the arc in the opposite direction, minuend to subtrahend, which disagrees about every sahama by exactly one sign; his reading is exposed as a documented minority option rather than quietly discarded.

Frequently asked questions

What is Varshphal?
Varshphal is the annual branch of Vedic astrology, worked from a chart cast for the moment the Sun returns to its exact natal sidereal longitude. That chart, the varsha kundli, is then read with a set of techniques of its own drawn from the Tajika tradition: the Muntha, the year lord chosen from five office-bearers, Panchavargeeya and Harsha Bala, the Mudda and Patyayini dashas, and the sahamas.
Does my astrological year start on my birthday?
Not exactly. It starts at the solar return, the instant the Sun reaches the same sidereal longitude it held at your birth. Because the year is about 365.2422 days rather than 365, that instant shifts by roughly six hours each year and can fall on the day before or the day after your calendar birthday. The page prints the computed date and time of the return.
What is the Muntha?
The Muntha is a progressed point, not a planet. It starts at the sign of the natal ascendant and moves forward one whole sign for each completed year of life, returning to the natal lagna every twelve years. Its house in the annual chart is read from B.V. Raman's Varshaphala Article 56. The lord of the Muntha is a separate matter with a separate and only partial table, Article 45, and the two are not interchangeable.
How is the Year Lord chosen?
From five candidates, the Panchadhikari: the lord of the Muntha, the lord of the natal ascendant, the lord of the annual ascendant, the Tri-rashi lord and the lord of the weekday on which the year begins. Each is scored by a Tajika strength combining sign dignity, house placement and relation to the annual ascendant, and the strongest holds the office. Taking the weekday lord alone, as is often done, ignores four of the five.
What is the difference between Mudda and Patyayini dasha?
They divide the same year by different quantities. Mudda compresses the natal Vimshottari sequence into the year, with its seed progressed one nakshatra per completed year from the natal Moon's nakshatra. Patyayini divides the year by the degrees-within-sign of eight participants, the seven classical grahas plus the annual ascendant, with the fewest degrees ruling first and each share being the gap to the previous body. Patyayini excludes Rahu and Ketu because no source in its corpus admits them.
What is a Saham?
A saham is a computed sensitive point, the Indian counterpart of the Arabic parts, of the form minuend minus subtrahend plus addend. For a night birth the minuend and subtrahend swap, except in the rows marked the same for day and night, and the addend never moves. A correction adds one sign of 30 degrees when the addend does not fall on the arc from the subtrahend forward to the minuend. The 36 formulas used here are P.V.R. Narasimha Rao's table.
Should I enter my birth city or my current city for the annual chart?
The classical practice is to cast the varsha for where you are living during the year, so the annual ascendant reflects your current place. That is why the page asks for the location separately from your birth data. The solar return instant itself is the same wherever you are; only the ascendant and the house frame of the annual chart change with the place.
Is the annual chart computed on the same ayanamsha as my birth chart?
Yes. The solar return is defined as the Sun returning to its natal sidereal longitude, so both charts must be measured on the same zodiac for the return to mean anything. Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) is the default here, and changing the preference changes both the natal and the annual computation together.