Bhava and the Whole Sign house system

A bhava (house) is one of the twelve divisions of the natal chart, each associated with a domain of life — self, finances, siblings, home, children, health, partnerships, and so on. The twelve bhavas together cover the full surface of human experience.

Different astrological traditions divide the sky into houses differently. The major systems are:

• Whole Sign — each zodiac sign is exactly one house. If your Lagna is Scorpio, Scorpio is your 1st house entirely, Sagittarius is your 2nd, and so on. House cusps coincide with sign cusps.
• Placidus — house cusps are calculated from time-based divisions of the diurnal arc. House sizes vary and rarely align with sign boundaries. Most Western astrology apps default to Placidus.
• Equal House, Koch, Porphyry, Campanus — other mathematical schemes, each with adherents.

SahiKundli uses the Whole Sign house system across all charts.

1. Classical alignment. Whole Sign is the system Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra and other classical Jyotisha texts implicitly use. Most of the shlokas SahiKundli cites are written about Whole Sign houses; using a different system would create a quiet mismatch between citation and interpretation.
2. Robustness at extreme latitudes. Placidus and similar systems break down or produce distorted houses near the polar circles. Whole Sign is mathematically well-defined at all latitudes — relevant for NRIs in northern Europe, Canada, and Alaska.
3. Interpretive simplicity. Whole Sign aligns house and sign meanings without overlap or ambiguity, which keeps the lagna interpretation card on /chart directly readable.

A planet's house number on SahiKundli may differ from the house number the same planet had in your Placidus-based Western chart. This is not an error in either system — it is the consequence of a different mathematical convention. The planet's sign position is the same; only the house assignment differs.

Used on SahiKundli for: the twelve-house layout displayed on /chart, all house-based interpretations, and the structural reading of every dasha and transit.