Bhakoot dosha and the Bhakoot koota

Bhakoot speaks for love, family welfare and prosperity in the home, and carries 7 of the 36 gunas.

Bhakoot looks at where the two Moon rashis sit from each other. Three placements score 0 of 7, and that 0 is what pandits call Bhakoot dosha; every other pair of rashis takes the full 7.

Each placement is named by its count: 6/8 means one Moon rashi is 6th from the other, and so the other is 8th from it. Tradition links each to a different part of married life:

• Shadashtaka (6/8) - quarrels and estrangement, illness, and sudden hardship; the older texts count it the most serious of the three.
• Navapancham (5/9) - children - delay in having them, or worry over them - and the couple’s shared fortune.
• Dwirdwadash (2/12) - money: spending that outruns income, and losses for the household.

Where the idea comes from

Bha is an old word for the stars and signs of the zodiac, and Bhakoot is also called Rashi koota: it is the koota that reads the two Moon signs by the distance between them. It rests on the oldest habit of a kundali, counting houses. Counted from any sign, every other sign holds a place, and each place speaks for a part of life - the 2nd for family and wealth, the 5th for children, the 6th for quarrels, debts and illness, the 8th for longevity and sudden hardship, the 9th for fortune, and the 12th for spending and loss, and for sleep and the couple’s physical intimacy.

The Moon stands for the mind. When two Moons sit in such places from each other, each person’s mind was thought to fall in the other’s house of quarrels and illness, of hardship, of children or of loss, and to bring that worry into the marriage. So the rule is about the distance, not the signs: any two rashis at an easy distance take the full points.

Find your pair

Find one person's Moon rashi on the left. The rashis beside it score 0 of 7 with it; every other rashi scores 7.

What the result shows

The 7 points, or the 0, are part of the total. A 0 can be what takes a couple under 18 gunas, and then the answer is "Low guna score". With 18 or more, a 0 in Bhakoot adds no note and does not change the colour of the answer.

If your family weighs Bhakoot on its own, your pandit ji has the final word.

Related guides

• How kundali matching worksWhere the gunas and Manglik come from, and how to read the result
• How many gunas should match?The 18-guna mark, what a total means, and the four answers the Gun Milan app gives
• Manglik doshaWhat being Manglik means, and which pairings suit
• The 27 nakshatrasThe nature and story of the people of each birth star, and the partner they suit
• The 12 rashisWhat the people of each Moon sign are like, at home and in marriage