Eight kootas scored from both birth charts — the 36-point total, each koota with the group it came from, and the doshas named separately instead of folded into the score.
Sidereal Moons, Lahiri ayanamsha · koota tables checked against two independent implementations over 37,440 chart pairs
Guna Milan reads both charts from one point each: the Moon. Its sidereal position gives a sign and a nakshatra, and every one of the eight kootas is a lookup on those two values. That is why a birth time matters here. The Moon covers about thirteen degrees a day, so it can cross into the next nakshatra inside a single afternoon, and a missing time can move the score by several points.
The eight carry fixed classical weights that add to 36: Varna 1, Vashya 2, Tara 3, Yoni 4, Graha Maitri 5, Gana 6, Bhakoot 7, Nadi 8. The weights are not decoration. Nadi and Bhakoot together are 15 of the 36, which means a pair can score well on six factors and still land in the low twenties.
The roles are not interchangeable. Varna, Vashya and Gana are directional in the classical rule: swapping who is the bride and who is the groom genuinely changes the total, usually by a point or two. Calculators that quietly average the two directions are hiding a real feature of the method. This one scores the direction you enter.
The koota tables here were transcribed from the Saravali/Maitreya documentation, and then written a second time, independently, in a separate module. Both versions were run over every chart pair on a one-degree grid — 37,440 comparisons — and they agree on all of them. That is a check on transcription, not on the tradition: where the classical sources themselves disagree, we say so rather than pick silently.
Two such disagreements are worth naming. Some tables score Janma Tara (counting the same star in both directions) as zero rather than favourable, which moves Tara by 1.5 points; when your pair hits that case, the result says so. And Sagittarius is missing entirely from the Saravali Vashya list, so the split used here — first half human, second half quadruped — comes from two other sources that agree with each other.
Eighteen out of 36 is the number usually quoted as a threshold, and it has done a great deal of damage. It is a rule of thumb from a matchmaking practice that also looked at the whole chart, the family, and the two people. A total tells you which of eight specific factors line up between two Moons. It does not know whether either person is kind, and it cannot tell you what a marriage will be like.
The more useful reading is the breakdown. A pair at 24 with Nadi and Bhakoot both full is in a different position from a pair at 24 that scored those two at zero and made the points up elsewhere — which is exactly why this page shows every koota rather than a single number.
Traditional practice treats 18 and above as workable, 21 and above as good, and 31 and above as rare. Below 18 the texts ask for a closer look rather than a refusal. Read the eight rows before the total: which kootas the points came from matters more than the sum.
Usually one of three reasons. The bride and groom may be scored in the opposite direction, which changes Varna, Vashya and Gana. The site may use a different Yoni or Gana table — several circulate, and they disagree in a handful of cells. Or it may use a different ayanamsha, which can move a Moon near a nakshatra boundary into the neighbouring star.
No. Every koota is read from the Moon, and the Moon needs a date, a time and a place. Matching by name uses a name-to-nakshatra convention that has nothing to do with where the Moon actually was.
Nadi dosha means both Moons fall in the same nadi group, which costs all 8 of its points at once. Classical sources treat it as the gravest of the eight, and also list cancellations for it — same Moon sign with different nakshatras, or the same nakshatra with different padas, among others. Those cancellations depend on details beyond the 36 points, which is why this page names the dosha instead of quietly deleting it.
No, and nothing that scores eight table lookups could. This is a description of how two charts relate in a specific classical scheme, offered for reflection.