Nakshatra Porutham — matching by birth star

Every porutham in the South Indian system, and five of the eight kootas in the North Indian one, are scored from the Moon: the nakshatra it occupied at birth and the sign that nakshatra falls in. The Sun sign plays no part in either.

That is why matching is described as nakshatra matching rather than chart matching. Two charts that differ in every other respect but share both birth stars score identically here.

The birth star is a 13°20' segment of the zodiac, so the Moon crosses one in about twenty-one to twenty-seven hours. On most days it changes star at some point, which is why a birth time matters even for a rule that only needs a star.

The South Indian reckoning scores ten poruthams out of a combined 28. The North Indian reckoning scores eight kootas out of 36. They weigh different things and their totals are not comparable — a 20 in one is not a 20 in the other.

Both are computed here from the same two charts, because both read the same two facts. Where the two disagree, the disagreement is itself informative: it usually means one system is weighting a check the other does not have.

Each porutham, what it weighs, its maximum score, and how many of the possible star pairs earn that maximum. Every number below is read off the scorer that produced your result, not from a book.

Everything the ten poruthams and the eight kootas read off a birth star, in one table: its lord, its gana, its yoni animal, its rajju group, its nadi and the star it is obstructed by.

The 27 stars divide into five rajju groups named for parts of the body. Two stars in the same group fail rajju porutham, and the tradition treats that as the single check most worth pausing on — even though it is worth only one point of the 28.

The groups are not equal in size. The sequence rises from the feet to the head and falls back, three times over 27 stars, which leaves the middle group with three members and the other four with six.

Vedha is the shortest rule in the system: a small table of star pairs that obstruct each other. If your two stars are not one of those pairs, vedha porutham holds.

One star is its own partner. Twenty-seven is odd, so the pairing cannot be complete, and the tradition pairs the leftover star with itself rather than leaving it unpaired.

In the 36-guna reckoning, above 18 is treated as acceptable, above 24 as good and above 28 as excellent. Below 18 the tradition asks for a closer look rather than a refusal.

The ten-porutham system has no fixed threshold. The common rule of thumb is that more than five should hold, but which five matters more than how many — rajju and vedha are read on their own terms.

No total decides anything by itself. The seventh house of both charts, the position of Mars and the running dasha all belong to the same question.

Matching compares two Moon positions. It does not read either chart's seventh house, either person's history, or anything the two of them have actually agreed about.

A low score does not predict a failed marriage and a high one does not predict a happy one. The tradition uses the number to open a conversation, not to close one.

• Dina porutham
• Gana porutham
• Mahendra porutham
• Yoni porutham
• Rajju porutham
• Vedha porutham
• Nakshatra calculator
• Kundli matching (36 guna)
• Gun Milan
• Matching by name
• Kundli without birth time