What the ten poruthams measure

The ten poruthams are ten separate comparisons made between two birth stars. Nine of them need nothing but the two stars and the two moon signs. None of them needs a birth time, a name, a photograph or a meeting.

Each comparison is a table lookup or a count, and each returns one of three grades: uttama (a full match), madhyama (a partial one) or adhama (no match). A full match scores one, a partial one scores a half, and the ten are added up. That is where a number out of ten comes from.

Because every step is arithmetic on the same two stars, the same two stars always give the same answer. Two calculators that disagree are using different tables, not seeing different things.

Dina compares the two stars by counting forward from the bride’s star to the groom’s, inclusive, which gives a number from 1 to 27. The Tamil almanacs accept 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 24 and 26. When both have the same star the count says nothing, so the almanacs’ own list of stars a couple may share decides instead.

Gana compares temperament classes. Every star belongs to one of three ganas — deva, manushya or rakshasa. The same gana is a full match. A deva groom with a manushya bride is also full, and a manushya groom with a deva bride partial — the asymmetry the point tables record as six against five. Rakshasa on one side only is read as a clash.

Mahendra is the same count again, read against a different list: it matches only on 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 or 25 — every third star from the fourth.

Stree Deergha is the same count once more, this time as a distance. Above 13 is a full match, 8 to 13 partial, 7 or less no match.

Yoni compares animals. Each star is assigned one of fourteen animals and a sex. In the Tamil reading only the seven born-enemy pairs fail — cow and tiger, elephant and lion, horse and buffalo, dog and deer, rat and cat, sheep and monkey, serpent and mongoose.

Rasi compares the two moon signs by counting from the bride’s to the groom’s. The 7th is the best placement, the 9th, 10th and 11th are good, the same sign passes, the 3rd and 5th are middling, and the 6th is the shashtashtaka objection unless the pair is one of the six the Tamil sources exempt.

Rasi Adhipathi compares the two ruling planets. Mutual friends, or a friend with a neutral, is a full match; two neutrals or a friend with an enemy is partial; anything with an enemy and a neutral is not.

Vasya compares two published lists. Each sign draws one or two others, and the groom’s sign should be in the bride’s list. The other direction alone is read here as a partial match.

Rajju compares body-part groupings. The 27 stars are divided into five groups named for the head, the neck, the navel, the thigh and the foot, and the two must fall in different groups. The same group is the strongest objection Tamil matching makes.

Vedha compares a list of fifteen pairs of stars held to obstruct each other. The pair is on the list or it is not.

Dina is graded here by the published list of counts. An older reading keeps the tara instead — the remainder when the count is divided by nine — and accepts remainders 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9. The app offers both and defaults to the almanac list.

Yoni fails here only for the seven born-enemy pairs. The North Indian koota tables grade the same animals on a fourteen-by-fourteen scale out of four instead, which fails far more pairs. Both are available; the Tamil reading is the default.

Rasi is graded here by the detailed Tamil rule with its exceptions. The older and simpler reading is "the 7th place or beyond, or the same sign", and it is offered as an option.

Vasya has two published lists of drawn signs, and they differ for several rasis. The Tamil table is the default here and the other is an option.

None of these four is wrong. They are different traditions, and a family whose astrologer uses one of them should set the app to it rather than argue with the default.

Every one of the ten comes back with its own sentence of reasoning: the count that was made, the rule that count was measured against, and the result. If Dina fails, the page says which count it got and which list that count was not in. If Rajju fails, it names the body-part group both stars fell in.

This matters more than the total. A family sitting with two astrologers who reach different totals can usually find the exact line they part on in under a minute, because both lines are printed. Without them there is nothing to compare but two numbers.

The Ashta Koota total out of 36 is computed alongside as a second opinion, from the North Indian tables: Varna 1, Vashya 2, Tara 3, Yoni 4, Graha Maitri 5, Gana 6, Bhakoot 7 and Nadi 8. Every cell of both systems, across all 36 by 36 star-and-rasi pairs, was checked against an independent reimplementation written from the source texts rather than from this app’s own code.

In the Tamil ten, this app labels a total of 8 or more an excellent match, 6 or more a good one, and 5 borderline. Rajju or Vedha failing is treated as a rejection whatever the total, which is how most Tamil astrologers read them.

In Ashta Koota, 18 of 36 is the conventional minimum, 25 and above is treated as good, and 33 and above as excellent.

Those are conventions, not findings. Families differ on where the line falls, and so do astrologers: some will not look at a match below seven of ten, some accept five if the rasi and the rajju are clean, and some weigh the full horoscope so heavily that the star count is only a first sieve. The app prints the number and the rule; it does not hold an opinion about where your family’s line should be.

A porutham count is evidence of exactly one thing: that a stated classical procedure, applied faithfully to two birth stars, produced that number. That claim is narrow and completely true. The arithmetic is checkable, and it has been checked.

It is not a measurement of two people. Nothing in the procedure has touched either of them. Two well-matched charts have ended badly and two badly matched ones well, many times, within every family reading this page.

So the count belongs in the conversation as one input among several, beside what the two people are actually like, what the families want, and what your own astrologer says with the whole chart in front of them. This site computes the number exactly and prints the rule beside it. It will not tell you to go ahead with a marriage, and it will not tell you to call one off. That is not a question arithmetic can reach.

Check a match by star or by full horoscope.

Porutham →