Apologies for not being able to write any new posts for a long time. A combination of personal and professional issues did not allow me to work on the site other than performing routine maintenance. I have been going through all the comments though and this one caught my attention where the person is concerned if Mercury would affect married life in a negative way.

This is a fairly generic statement and should be understood as such. The simple answer is unless Mercury is itself afflicted (because is it most mutable planet and assumes nature of planets associated with it) and is afflicting 7th house as a cruel, malefic planet, there should not be any problems with respect to marriage.

I have also read in one of the astrology books that Mercury has absolutely no effect whatsoever, either positive or negative, on capacity to have children. Mercury governs creativity of thought. What gets created with this ability is books, literature and other forms of communication that can transcend time and affect people for generations to come. Hence this planet should not be seen in a bad light.

Please let me know if this argument makes sense.

To Ishan I would like to say that strengthening mercury would help definitely help you in your problems. Please have faith. The results may not be visible immediately but situation will improve in a longer run.

Prediction about any event in an astrology chart is done by looking at either transits of planets (gochara) or by referring to a dasha period. Dasha period system is the more important of prediction systems in use. There are various dasha periods used within Indian Astrology - Vimshottari, Sodashottari, Dwadashattari, Ashtottari etc. Within these dasha systems also, Vimshottari dasha system is marked as the most important one in the ancient texts. The birth chart application in this site displays the Vimshottari dasha.

Vimshottari means 120. The dasha is called as such because of the period of effect of various planets adds up to 120. Dasha periods are always calculated according to the position of Moon in the chart. Janma Nakshatra therefore plays an important part in calculating the starting dasha period in the chart, which is determined by the lord of the nakshatra that the Moon falls in at the time of birth.

The main dasha period is called the mahadasha. This period is further divided into sub periods - antardasha and further sub periods - pratyantar dasha, sukshama dasha and finally the prana dasha. Without going into details of how these periods are calculated, if the span of the main period is of order of years, the duration of prana dasha is of the order of days or even hours. Errors in recording the time of birth are magnified quite a lot while calculating these innermost dasha periods. It is a pretty good reason for astrologers not to use sukshama dasha and prana dasha while making predictions.

Results from various planets are arrived at by looking at their natural or acquired traits in the chart. In their own or friendly house or navamsha, planets give good results. Similar results should be expected from planets that are have shadbala, vargottama or in a square or a trine position from lagna or Janma rashi. Planets involved in various yogas give results as described in the yoga. Debilitated planets, planets in enemy signs, naturally cruel planets give bad results during their dasha periods. Generally speaking, all planets do not give good results towards the end of their dasha periods.

Effects of various planetary combinations (yogas), whether good or bad, rajyogas or dhana yogas or nirdhana yoga etc. and corresponding predictions should be looked at from dasha periods of the associated planets. Essentially, the laws of :

• characteristics of planets in the chart,
• friendship between planets,
• yogas,
• strength of planets and
• retrogression

are the classical ones, some of which we have discussed earlier in this site and read in the books. Please refer to them while trying to make predictions for a particular period in a person’s life.

For ascertaining results related to affairs of a particular house or bhava, the lord of the house, planets situated in the house and those influencing the house by a drishti are considered important. This is required to predict an event in a person’s life - e.g. job, change of place, marriage and birth of children. Let us take an example of child birth. Fifth house (and also the 9th house, by principles of bhavat-bhavam) either from Lagna or Moon is important for children and childbirth. In the period of 5th house lord, putrakaraka, and a benefic planet affecting 5th house, one can expect childbirth in a family. In the period of malefic planets, e.g. Saturn or Rahu or a lord of a malefic house affecting fifth house, it will be difficult for a couple to have children, even if all other putrakaraka elements in the chart are really strong.

When antardasha and other sub-periods are looked at, combination and relationships between various period lords also come into picture. If the mahadasha lord and sub-period lord are friends either naturally or temporally in a chart, we should see good results. A 5/9 relationship, i.e. when two planets are situated in 5th and 9th position from each other, is considered auspicious. Similarly, a 2/12 or 6/8 relationship between the planets is not considered good when the dasha period operates.

All the planets that may influence a house will give their effect as main dasha period rulers or one of antardasha rulers. Per Dr. Raman, antardasha rulers are more important in giving result. When both rulers affect a house, the results should be considered complete. When main dasha ruler does not affect the house in any way but inner dasha ruler does, the results are less and limited. When only the outer dasha ruler is concerned with the house and antardasha ruler is not, the results will be extremely limited.

The horoscope of Lord Rama is presented in the article on Rama and Krishna. According to Ramayana, the date of birth of Rama is the Shukla Paksha Navami of Chaitra Masa. Unfortunately, there is no mention of any year or a reference to a date in present time through which an unambiguous claim can be made. Even more unfortunately, unambiguous in Kaliyuga means a reference to dates within the western calendar.

What is mentioned in the epic is the planetary combination and location of planets in various signs and houses at the moment the Lord was born. I came across a website http://www.historicalrama.org/, which attempts to solve this puzzle of finding out a date where this planetary combination was possible. It uses a planetarium software (but does not mention which specific one) and arrives at 12:30 PM on 10th of January, 5114 BCE as the date and time of birth. Precession of Equinoxes takes care of moving the Ram Navami, which usually falls in April in present times, to January, in about 7000 years in the past.

It is a good attempt and I hope it helps to put an end to the discussion raging in our country on Rama and His existence. I was hoping it would clarify the position of Mercury in His chart - where I maintain that it is in eleventh house and some of the readers are of the opinion that there is a Budhaditya Yoga in the chart.

It would have been wonderful if it had some way of putting an end to the controversy of the place of birth as well.

Based on my email exchanges with Basab over the last few days, I realized that there is still a lot of confusion over how to enter values in the birth chart application to generate janma kundli and it is especially true for folks living outside India and those who live in places with daylight savings during a certain part of the year. Horoscope applications throughout the world (for either Western or Vedic Astrology) can programmatically determine if daylight savings is in effect for a place of birth at the time of birth. This programming, however, is not entirely foolproof. Moreover, the laws governing daylight savings can be changed by the government of the day. I have therefore chosen not to incorporate such a logic in the birth chart application on this website and prefer to take this input from the user.

The most important side effect of getting DST wrong is incorrect lagna both for rashi and other amsha (divisional) charts. The degrees of planets are not affected to that big an extent by mistakes in DST. If some margin of error is acceptable, one could potentially still look at all planetary positions from Moon rashi for general predictions. IMHO, two horoscopes should be cast, one with DST and one without it, and some sort of preliminary chart rectification techniques should be used to select one of them.

The three points that should be remembered while entering timezone and daylight savings time values in any horoscope application are:

1. Timezone never changes
All through the year, whether or not DST is in affect, the timezone of a place remains the same.

2. DST
One more parameter DST is taken into account during period of daylight savings or summer time, as it is known in countries within European Union. Clocks are moved forward by an hour during summer time. Therefore, in California, USA, the timezone will always be 8:00 W, and DST is either “Yes” or “No” depending on the time of the year.

3. How do we find out what the timezone is?
Assuming that you want to find out the local time zone, the easiest way is to look at the system clock in your Windows machine. Double click on the clock on your computer’s system tray and click on the timezone tab on the popup. Please refer to the image below, where it is shown that IST is 5:30 ahead of GMT (GMT+5:30) and Pacific time is 8:00 behind GMT (GMT-8:00).

Figure 1: Finding out current timezone

Sorry MAC fans, this is a screen shot from a Windows machine. Well, I don’t dig macs and I a’int gonna get swindled by overpriced products and then waiting for in store credit coupon to show up

To generate a janma kundli, we then need to ascertain if DST is indeed in affect during the time of birth of the individual. The safest bet is to always ask the individual’s family about this parameter. If this option is not available and if the DST status has to be figured out from the date, here is a wikipedia article that could be referred to.

In United States, from 1987 to 2006, DST began on first Sunday in April and ended on last Sunday in October. Starting in 2007, daylight time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. This is a good website explaining history of daylight time in the US. In countries belonging to European Union, summer time starts on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October. The shift in time happens at 1.00 AM GMT. Here is a site explaining the rules for clock change in EU. DST has never been used in independent India, although we do see an example of DST being used during the second world war.

Once there is clarity about the DST status, the input screen of the janma kundli application should look like-

Figure 2: Input screen of horoscope application with DST in effect

During World War II, all over pre-independence India, i.e. present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, clocks were moved forward by one hour to make Indian time 6 hours and 30 minutes ahead of GMT. The exact dates for this change are from September 1, 1942 to October 14, 1945. ¹

For any charts prepared for births during this period, simply move the clock back for an hour -OR- fill 6 30 E in the timezone column. E.g. for a chart prepared for Jan 01, 1944, Bombay at 9:00 AM, both of the following are valid inputs for making a birth chart:

Figure 1: Vedic Astrology Chart for 9 AM, time zone as 6:30 hours ahead of GMT.

Figure 2: Vedic Astrology Chart for 8 AM, time zone as 5:30 hours ahead of GMT.

Both these inputs in the birth chart generation application essentially give us the same Vedic Astrology birth chart -

Figure 3: Vedic Astrology birth chart for 1-1-44, same with both the inputs.

¹As suggested by Basab, I did some research on astro.com website. If I take a date of 15^th August, 1947 and cast a chart for 12:00 AM at New Delhi, the software on the site automatically suggests IST, i.e. GMT+5:30. If the city is changed to Calcutta, the software suggests IDT, which is GMT+6:30. This is indeed confusing. IMHO, in case of a confusion, two horoscopes with GMT+6:30 and GMT+5:30 should be cast and basic chart rectification techniques should be used.