KP and the Parashari school

Two schools of one tradition

The Parashari reading is the classical one, described in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra: a chart is read by signs and houses counted from the lagna, planetary dignity, aspects, yogas, the divisional charts and the dashas. KP, "Krishnamurti Paddhati", is a 20th-century system by K. S. Krishnamurti. It keeps the sidereal zodiac and the Vimshottari dasha but changes the machinery of judgement: it asks for short, testable answers (will it happen, when) and replaces much of the classical toolkit with one rule about sub-lords.

What KP changes in the chart

Houses. Parashari houses are whole signs: the lagna sign is the 1st house, the next sign the 2nd, and so on. KP draws Placidus cusps, so houses are unequal and a cusp can fall in a different sign from the lagna. Ayanamsha. KP uses the Krishnamurti ayanamsha, about 6′ smaller than Lahiri in 2026 (the engine gives a Sun position 5.8′ further on): a small shift, but enough to move a planet across a sub-lord boundary (see ayanamsha). Node. KP practice takes the mean lunar node, while JyotiSoft's canon uses the true node. Tools. KP leans on house cusps, significators and sub-lords; the divisional charts and many yogas of the Parashari toolkit play a small part.

The 249 sub-lords

This is the core of KP. Each of the 27 nakshatras (13°20′) is divided into nine unequal parts, one per planet, in the proportions of the Vimshottari years (7, 20, 6, 10, 7, 18, 16, 19, 17 out of 120). That gives 27 × 9 = 243 parts; sign borders cut some of them in two, which makes 249 divisions of the zodiac (the engine counts exactly 249 by stepping through the zodiac). Every longitude therefore has three lords: the lord of its sign, of its nakshatra (the star lord) and of its part (the sub-lord). For the sample chart (1 January 1990, 12:00, Delhi):

How KP judges a matter

KP looks at the house cusp that stands for the matter (the 7th for marriage, the 10th for work) and at the sub-lord of that cusp: it decides whether the matter happens. The sub-lord's own star lord shows which houses it links to — if they are the houses that support the matter, the answer is yes. Planets act as significators of houses through their star lords, their sub-lords and the houses they occupy and rule. Timing is read from the Vimshottari dasha and transits: the event comes in a period whose lords are significators of the right houses. For questions without a birth chart, KP has horary astrology: a number from 1 to 249 chosen by the client picks a point of the zodiac and a chart is cast for the moment of the question.

Where the two schools read differently

The same birth data can give different answers, for honest reasons: different houses, a different ayanamsha, different tools. A Parashari reading is broad — character, strengths, periods of life, the interplay of many factors — and leaves room for interpretation. KP is narrow and testable — it answers a specific question with a yes or no and a window — but depends heavily on the exact birth time, because the sub-lord of a cusp changes within minutes. Neither school disproves the other: they answer different questions with different tools, and mixing them without saying so makes the answers hard to check.

What JyotiSoft does

JyotiSoft reads charts in the Parashari tradition: Lahiri ayanamsha, whole-sign houses, the true node, Vimshottari and the divisional charts, as stated in the technical data of every report. It does not mix in KP sub-lord judgements. A reader who works in KP should expect different house numbers and a slightly different Moon position from JyotiSoft (see why charts differ), and should not compare a cusp-based KP verdict with a whole-sign reading as if they were the same thing.

Questions

See also

• Ayanamsha
• Why programs show different charts
• North and South Indian chart styles
• Vimshottari dasha
• Birth chart without a birth time

Positions and tables: sidereal zodiac, Lahiri ayanamsha — the same as professional Jyotish astrologers use, and the same calculation as the charts in JyotiSoft. Updated 2026-10-14.