Pitra Dosha Calculator — Sun, Rahu and the 9th House

The calculator treats four combinations as forming the dosha. Any one is enough. Everything else it finds is reported as a supporting factor, which can make a formed dosha heavier but cannot create one on its own.

Conjunction here means the two grahas occupy the same sign. The engine also measures the degree gap, because a Sun within five degrees of Rahu is the eclipse-like pattern the tradition describes, while a Sun at 2° and Rahu at 27° of the same sign share little more than an address.

Many online checkers list ten or fifteen conditions and return a positive result for almost everyone. The following are real afflictions and worth knowing about, but on their own they describe strain, not the dosha: Saturn in the same sign as the Sun, Ketu in the 9th house, a debilitated Sun in Libra, and the 9th lord placed in the 6th, 8th or 12th house.

There is also Parashara's pitru shapa pattern, an afflicted Sun in the 5th house with Mars, Saturn or a node, which the texts read specifically for delays around children. The calculator lists it when present, because it is the closest thing to a classical source the modern idea has.

Lal Kitab has a separate concept called Pitra Rin (ancestral debt) with its own rules, mostly about Venus, Mercury and Rahu in particular houses. It is a different system. This calculator follows Parashari rules only, so the two will not always agree.

More common than the warnings suggest. The Sun shares a sign with Rahu or Ketu in roughly one chart in six, Rahu occupies the 9th house in about one in twelve, and the 9th lord meets a node in a few more. Put together, roughly two charts in five form the dosha by these rules, most of them at a mild level once protections are counted.

That is the reason this page grades the result instead of stopping at "present". A formed but mild Pitra Dosha, with Jupiter aspecting the Sun, is a very different chart from a Sun two degrees from Rahu in the 9th house with no support at all.

Traditional texts associate it with delays or worries around children, strain in the father relationship, obstacles that seem to repeat across generations, and unease about family duties that were left undone. Read in a modern way, it often shows up as a feeling of carrying the family's unfinished business: a career chosen to satisfy a parent, a distance from the father that is hard to explain, or responsibility for elders arriving early.

The house where the pattern falls tells you where it plays out. In the 10th it touches career and status inherited from the father; in the 4th, property and home; in the 7th, marriage and in-law pressure. The result above names the house in your chart.

None of this is fixed fate. The dosha describes a theme you are more likely to meet, and the traditional answer to it is service and remembrance, not fear.

The core remedy is Shraddha and Tarpan, offering water mixed with black sesame to the ancestors. It is done every year in Pitru Paksha, the dark fortnight of the ancestors that ends on Sarva Pitru Amavasya, and on the tithi on which a parent or grandparent passed away. Monthly offerings on Amavasya, feeding a person in need, a cow or crows in the ancestors' name, continue the practice through the year.

Offering water to the rising Sun from a copper vessel strengthens the Sun, which is the planet under pressure. For a strong dosha, families traditionally arrange Narayan Bali or Tripindi Shraddha at a tirtha such as Gaya, Trimbakeshwar or Haridwar.

The oldest remedy is also the cheapest: looking after your parents and elders while they are alive, and keeping the family's good customs going. Be wary of anyone who quotes a large fee as the only way out.

A natal pattern does not press evenly on every year of a life. It speaks loudest while one of its own grahas runs the Vimshottari dasha, so the Sun, Rahu and Ketu Mahadashas, and the Sun-Rahu or Rahu-Sun sub-periods, are the stretches to watch. If the 9th lord is involved, its periods count too.

The timeline in your result lists each of those periods with its dates, marked as past, running now or upcoming. It is often the most useful part of the reading, because it explains why the theme felt heavier at certain ages than others.

The planetary positions come from the Swiss Ephemeris with the Lahiri ayanamsa by default, the same standard used by Indian panchangs. The only input that can change the verdict is your birth time: the Sun-node conjunctions hold for the whole day, but whether Rahu sits in the 9th house depends on the ascendant, which changes sign roughly every two hours. If your time is uncertain, try it a little earlier and later and see whether the result moves.