Guna Milan: what the 36 points measure, and what they leave out

When families in India compare two horoscopes for marriage, the first number they usually hear is the Guna Milan score, out of 36. It is often treated as a pass mark. It is worth knowing what that number is made of before giving it that much weight.

One test, built entirely from the Moon

Guna Milan — also called Ashtakoota, "eight points" — compares two charts on eight separate kootas. Every one of the eight is worked out from the Moon: its sign (rashi) and its nakshatra at each person's birth. The lagna, the houses and the other planets play no part in the score.

That makes it quick to calculate and possible to work out even without an exact birth time. It also means it looks at one corner of each chart and none of the rest.

The eight kootas and what each is worth

The kootas carry different weights, and they rise from 1 to 8:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36.

Because the weights are so uneven, the total is dominated by the last three. Bhakoot and Nadi alone are worth 15 of the 36 gunas, and both are all-or-nothing: they score either full marks or zero. A single one of them can move a total by seven or eight points.

Where "18 out of 36" comes from

The widely quoted convention is that 18 gunas — half — is the minimum usually looked for, with higher scores described as better matched. It is a convention of practice rather than a rule set out in one authoritative text, and different traditions draw the bands differently.

Many astrologers also do not read the total on its own. A common example is Nadi: when both people share the same nadi the koota scores nothing, which costs a match its largest single block of gunas. Astrologers often look at the rest of both charts before deciding how much weight that zero deserves, and several traditional exceptions exist. The same is true of Bhakoot.

Why two websites can give different totals

If you have checked a match on two sites and got two numbers, that does not mean one of them made a mistake. Classical sources genuinely disagree on some kootas — for example, on how to score two Yoni animals that are neither the same nor one of the recognised enemy pairs, and on the partial scores between different Vashya groups. Each calculator has to pick a rule, and most do so without telling you.

Two kootas, Varna and Gana, are also asymmetric in the classical rules: the score depends on which chart is read as the bride's and which as the groom's. Swap them and the total can change.

JeevanDrishti's Guna Milan shows the working for every koota — both nakshatras, both signs, the rule applied and the points it gives — and marks the kootas where the sources differ, so you can see exactly why a total came out the way it did rather than being handed a number.

What the score does not cover

Because the score is built only from the Moon, it says nothing about several things that astrologers normally look at when they compare two charts:

• the 7th house and its lord, traditionally the house of partnership;
• the placement of Venus and, in a woman's chart, Jupiter;
• Mangal Dosha (Manglik), which is checked separately from the Moon, the lagna and Venus;
• the Dasha periods each person will be running in the years after marriage.

None of these appear in the 36. A high score with these left unread is an incomplete comparison; so is a low score.

If a birth time is missing

The Moon changes nakshatra roughly once a day, and one nakshatra can be worth around six gunas across the kootas. So if either person's birth time is unknown and the Moon changed nakshatra that day, the honest answer is more than one possible score.

The Kundli Milan by date page handles this case: give the nearest part of the day you know, or say you do not know, and it shows every score the date allows instead of quietly picking one.

Using the score well

Guna Milan is one traditional test, and the tradition itself does not treat it as a verdict on whether two people will be happy together. It is most useful as a starting point for a fuller reading of both charts — and, as with any reading, as one input alongside everything the two people and their families already know about each other.

You can compare two charts with the full working shown, or check Mangal Dosha separately.