Recently, we have received a couple of requests to add support for additional ayanāṃśas and the choice of mean nodes for calculating Rāhu and Ketu. This release adds both of these options and polishes features introduced last month in the previous version.

Two new settings were introduced in “Calculation settings” section for choosing the preferred ayanāṃśa (default is “Traditional Lahiri”) and for choosing between true and mean nodes (default is true nodes):

At this point, the following ayanāṃśas are supported: Traditional Lahiri, J. N. Bhasin, K. S. Krishnamurti, B. V. Raman, Sri Yukteswar. Support for ayanāṃśas that are based on fixed stars (e.g., True Chitrapaksha ayanāṃśa) is a work in progress.

Version 2.1.0 added bhāva indexes to South Indian charts. However, sometimes it may be useful to omit these indexes (for instance, when calculating bhāvas from a graha or rāśi different from lagna). Therefore, there is now a new setting in “Display settings” section for taking these indexes off:

Finally, if you noticed an issue with transit notifications into Aśvinī nakṣatra around March 1 after upgrading to version 2.1.0 (these notifications were missing), this issue should now be fixed.

Version 2.1.0 brings good news to those of us who use the free version: it is now possible to calculate horoscopes for past dates! Both free and full versions have gained several new cell types (three for relationships between grahas and one for sarvatobhadra cakra), as well as some useful polishing and enhancements.

Previously, the free version of Chakra Darshana was restricted to dates in the current month, allowing to work with praśna, follow the current gocara, and do some short-term planning. However, as Chakra Darshana keeps developing, more cell types are added and so it was possible to relax this restriction and redesign the free version concept a bit.

Now, the full date range is available for the free version and the concept of premium cells was introduced. For current dates (two weeks before and two weeks after), all cell types are available, similar to how it was before, allowing to test the correctness of all calculations. For past and future dates, cells containing essential information for analysis are provided, allowing to calculate real horoscopes, but cells containing additional or advanced information are marked as premium (note the stars in the screenshot below) and will be available in the full version:

Three new cell types that show relationships between grahas have been added: “Naisargikā maitrī” (natural relationships), “Tātkālikā maitrī” (temporary relationships), and “Pañcadhā maitrī” (compound relationships):

Please note that classic texts (e.g., Bṛhat Pārāśara Horā Śāstra 3.55) only describe relationships between the seven visible grahas, excluding Rāhu and Ketu. Relationship data for Rāhu and Ketu in these cells is provided for completeness and is taken from the commentaries to Bṛhat Pārāśara Horā Śāstra 3.55 by R. Santhanam (1984) and Girish Chand Sharma (1999), representing one of the commonly accepted opinions on the matter.

The next major feature of this release is sarvatobhadra cakra. Even if you do not intend to use this cakra for its main purpose, it is still useful to get a graphical depiction of how grahas are positioned in nakṣatras. Note that in this cakra 28 nakṣatras are used, including Abhijit, which is assumed to be in the last pāda of Uttarā Aṣāḍhā and the first 1/15th part of Śravaṇa, spanning from 6°40’ to 10°53’20” in Makara:

Finally, as seen in the screenshot above, we have also added bhāva indexes for South Indian charts in response to the South Indian style poll on Facebook. Thanks to everyone who responded and gave feedback on this question!

The first version of Chakra Darshana was released around one year ago on December 23, 2015. Since then Chakra Darshana has come a long way and gained a lot of useful features and functionality, with 11 subsequent releases coming out in 2016. We would like to thank everybody who supported and contributed to this project in one way or another, including downloading and using the application, rating and leaving reviews, telling friends and students, sharing the information online, and contacting us with kind words and useful suggestions!

During this time there was one thing about Chakra Darshana that left something to be desired - it was black-and-white. Still, there were quite a few courageous astrologers who used the application despite these ascetic conditions, and we would like to thank them for their infinite patience! Miracles happen at Christmas and it is about time we remedy this situation, so Chakra Darshana 2.0.0 (a new major release) comes with a colorful interface:

As seen in the screenshot above, there are three kinds of entities that are colored: (1) lagna and grahas, (2) rāśis, according to the color of the graha that owns the respective rāśi, and (3) nakṣatras, according to the color of the graha that owns the respective nakṣatra.

In addition to the colors above, things that are generally auspicious are highlighted with green and those that are generally inauspicious are highlighted with red:

Since cells may have different sizes since version 1.6.0, cells now have a border drawn around them to help visually identify their size. In case you would like to omit the border (this may be reasonable with a small 2x3 grid on a phone), there is now a corresponding setting in “Display settings” section:

We have also updated atlas data with the newest one. During the process we learned that Czech Republic should now be called Czechia, so if you are searching the atlas for a city in the Czech Republic, you should now look in Czechia.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

We hope that students of Shri K. N. Rao will be glad to know that this version adds a new cell type, “Cara daśās”, which provides cara daśā calculations as explained in the teacher’s profound books. We would like to thank Gabi Satori, the author of vedica.ru, for expressing his interest in this feature and kindly contributing to its development!

This version introduces one new cell type, “Current gocara”, and several enhancements for the user interface. One of these enhancements is the ability for cells to span multiple rows. This is useful for cells that provide long lists of information, like “Kāla horās” and “Viṃśottarī daśās”. The following screenshot illustrates the “Current gocara” cell type and row spanning for “Viṃśottarī daśās”:

Inside the Chakra Darshana application, there are many useful facilities that might be of interest on their own, not just within the very specialized area of Vedic astrology. We would like to make these facilities available for everyone over the Web and today we are launching a new part of this website, called “Chakra Darshana tools”, which is dedicated specifically to these facilities: tools.chakra.lv.

In response to feedback from our dear users, this minor version adds two new features: the ability to select ārūḍha pada calculation method without exceptions and three special lagnas: varṇada, indu, and śrī. For the first feature, there is now a new setting in the calculation section that allows to choose whether exceptions should be performed or not (note that the default is with exceptions):

A significant part of our users use their Android phones and tablets in Russian. We hope that Russian users will be happy about this new release, which adds the Russian translation of the application. If you use your Android device in Russian, Chakra Darshana will now have its user interface in the Russian language automatically, just like most of the other applications on Google Play. If you use your phone or tablet in any other language, it will keep the English language, as before:

This long-awaited release adds two important features that take Chakra Darshana to a whole new level: a built-in atlas with over 45,000 cities in 245 countries and support for automatic time zone detection for a particular date, time, and place. If previously one had to use a third-party application or website to find the coordinates of a given city and its historic time zone offset, then from version 1.4.0 both tasks can be accomplished within Chakra Darshana.

Continuing the notification theme from the previous release, this application update introduces another useful feature: notifications about direct and retrograde motion. In addition to notifications now being more efficient and reliable, you will now be notified when a graha changes direction and starts moving forward or backward:

Today we would like to share a new feature with you, one that we personally like very much and one that we find very useful in the day-to-day activities - it is the notifications about rāśi and nakṣatra transits. Instead of taking a regular look at the praśna chart to follow the current gocara, you now have the possibility to receive transit notifications automatically:

This version is purely a maintenance release without new features. Among the visible improvements, the download size of the application has been reduced by about 30 KB. At runtime, this results in savings of around 200 KB of RAM, providing the same functionality:

Three new features have been added in this release: two of them provide improvements for working with muhūrta by adding two new cell types, “Vāra lagnas” and “Kāla horās”, and another adds a missing cara kāraka scheme with 7 grahas.

This is a minor release which adds a small, but useful feature: it is now possible to add notes to archive records. It allows to write down facts, record observations, and save other important information in free-form text during horoscope reading:

The new release is available on Google Play with two significant features:

• support for files in Parashara’s Light XML format;
• archive search.

The first version of Chakra Darshana is available on Google Play in the European Union!

There is a full version, providing the complete feature set, and a free version for working with praśna and current gocara.