Kundali Milan

What the 36 gunas actually are

Kundali Milan, also called Guna Milan or horoscope matching, compares two birth charts through the Ashtakoot system — eight kootas carrying 36 points between them. Every one of them is derived from a single fact in each chart: where the Moon stood at birth, expressed as its nakshatra and its rashi.

The weights are wildly uneven, and this is the most useful thing to understand about the score:

• Varna — 1 point. Work and temperament, from the varna class of the Moon sign.
• Vashya — 2 points. Which partner naturally influences the other.
• Tara — 3 points. Counted from each nakshatra to the other; remainders of 3, 5 and 7 are held inauspicious.
• Yoni — 4 points. Physical compatibility, through the animal assigned to each nakshatra.
• Graha Maitri — 5 points. Whether the two rashi lords are friends, neutral or enemies.
• Gana — 6 points. Deva, manushya or rakshasa temperament.
• Bhakoot — 7 points. The distance between the two Moon signs, counted both ways.
• Nadi — 8 points. Aadi, madhya or antya — constitution in the Ayurvedic sense.

Bhakoot and Nadi are worth 15 of the 36 between them, and both are all-or-nothing: you get the full points or none. That single fact explains most of the distress this system causes. Two charts can agree on all six of the other kootas and still total 14, which reads as a catastrophe and means something much narrower.

How many gunas are enough?

The conventional bands are these:

• Below 18 — traditionally not recommended.
• 18 to 24 — acceptable. Most matches land here, and so do most marriages.
• 25 to 32 — a good match.
• 33 to 36 — excellent, and uncommon.

Two caveats that rarely get printed alongside those numbers. Eighteen is a floor, not a target — a 19 is not a near miss. And a near-perfect score usually means the two Moons sit close together in the zodiac, which some astrologers read as too much similarity of temperament rather than as ideal complementarity. There is no arrangement of these eight rows that describes two people.

If the score came out low

This is the situation most people arrive at this page in, so it deserves a direct answer rather than a sales pitch for a consultation.

First, look at which rows lost the points, not just the total. If the loss is Bhakoot and Nadi, you have lost 15 points to two binary rules, and the other six kootas may be telling you the opposite story. Second, check the cancellations. The same texts that define these doshas define the conditions under which they lapse, and the calculator above lists every one that applies to your pair. Nadi dosha in particular is held to be cancelled when both share a nakshatra in different rashis, when both share a rashi in different nakshatras, when the nakshatra is shared but the padas differ, or when both rashi lords are the same planet. An astrologer who pronounces on a dosha without mentioning its parihar is doing half the job.

Third, and this is not an astrological point but it is a true one: there is no evidence that guna scores predict whether a marriage lasts or whether the people in it are happy. The classical texts themselves place Ashtakoot alongside the seventh house, the positions of Mars and Venus, the dashas running for both people, and the character of the two families — and are explicit that a weak koota score with an otherwise sound chart is not a bar to marriage.

Mangal dosha, and the tree marriages

Manglik or Mangal dosha is a separate calculation from the 36 gunas: it means Mars sits in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th or 12th house from the ascendant. Its severity depends on which of those houses, which sign Mars occupies, and what aspects it receives, and the classical texts list a long series of conditions under which it does not apply — including the well-known one that it is neutralised when both partners have it.

The kumbh vivah remedies — marrying a clay pot, a peepal or banana tree — are folk practice, not scriptural requirement, and several of them work by symbolically widowing the woman first. If you are being told a marriage is impossible without one, it is entirely reasonable to ask which specific cancellation has been ruled out, and why. Get a second opinion from someone who will answer that question with a chart rather than a warning.

Why two websites give different scores

If you have matched the same two charts twice and got different numbers, there are three likely reasons, and none of them is that one site is broken.

• Ayanamsa. Lahiri, Raman and Krishnamurti differ by fractions of a degree. A Moon near a nakshatra boundary lands on different sides of it, and then several kootas change at once. This page uses Lahiri, the standard for North Indian practice and the Indian government's official ayanamsa.
• Half-point conventions. Vashya and Tara are scored with fractions, and printed tables disagree on some cells. A difference of a point or two between two honest calculators is normal.
• Ashtakoot versus Dashakoot. South Indian practice often uses ten kootas, adding Rajju and Vedha. That is a different system with a different maximum, not a more accurate version of this one.

What we do not do

We do not offer name-only matching, because it cannot be done honestly. Ashtakoot needs the Moon's nakshatra, the Moon crosses a nakshatra roughly every two and a quarter days, and a name gives at best a guess through its first syllable. Any site presenting a name-only match as an exact figure is estimating and not saying so.

We also do not sell remedies, gemstones, puja packages or consultations, and we do not ask for your phone number. The calculation is free and complete, and there is nothing behind it to buy.

Your birth details never leave your browser

Both sets of birth details are used in memory and discarded when you close the tab. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is written to local storage, and there is no server that could receive them — the entire Ashtakoot calculation, including the Moon's position from a truncated ELP-2000 lunar series, runs in the page. When you share a result, the link carries the score only; the dates and names are never put into it.

Read the two charts as well

A match score is more useful when you know what is in each chart. Generate the full Janam Kundali for both people — Rashi chart, all sixteen divisional charts, the Vimshottari Dasha timeline, yoga detection and Ashtakvarga — and look at the seventh house and the position of Venus and Mars in each. That is closer to what an astrologer actually does than any single number.