Ashtakavarga: The Scorecard You Did Not Know You Had

Ashtakavarga ('eight-fold scoring') is one of the cleanest predictive tools in classical Vedic. Every planet — and the lagna — gets a separate scoresheet. Each sign is given a bindu (point) for each beneficial reference. Add them all up and you have a sign-by-sign favourability map.

The two main scorecards

• Bhinna Ashtakavarga (BAV) — separate score for each planet. Used to judge a planet's strength sign by sign.
• Sarvashtakavarga (SAV) — sum of all 7 planets' BAVs (Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn). Each sign gets a single number out of a maximum of 56.

Reading the SAV at a glance

A typical SAV ranges from about 20 to 40 per sign. Think of it as a percentage favourability:

• Above 30 — strong sign for that house (and matters of that house's karaka)
• 25 to 30 — average
• Below 25 — weak sign; transit malefics here will bite harder

The most useful application

Use SAV to interpret transits. Saturn entering a sign with SAV 35 hits soft. Saturn entering a sign with SAV 22 hits hard. The transit is the same; the chart's preparation is different.

For Jupiter, the rule reverses for some readings — Jupiter prefers signs where it has a high BAV of its own, regardless of SAV. Most natives feel Jupiter's transit best when it crosses a sign with both Jupiter-BAV ≥ 5 and overall SAV ≥ 30.

What it does not tell you

Ashtakavarga is a quantity tool, not a quality tool. A high SAV in the 8th house does not turn the 8th into the 1st — it just makes the 8th's natural difficulties more endurable. Always interpret bindu-counts in the context of the house's natural meaning.