K. N. Rao's mnemonic · analysis and yogas

PAC-DARES

Placement · Aspect · Conjunction — Dhana · Ariṣṭa · Rāja · Exchanges · Special yogas

PAC is not a list of yogas but the method by which yogas are found. Every combination in the classical literature reduces to grahas related by one of three means: sitting in a bhāva, casting an aspect into it, or joining another graha there. Work through placement, aspect and conjunction systematically and the yogas surface on their own — which is the point of the mnemonic. DARES then sorts what surfaced into five families.

The half most often dropped is the last step. A yoga describes a promise; it does not describe a date, and a yoga whose grahas never receive a daśā in the lifetime is a promise never called in.

Now look at this and synthesize the whole thing by doing PAC. Out of this emerges DARES. This framework you keep in your mind. Now look at the dasha system and you see when a particular event is to take place according to these yogas. Hindu astrology is a dasha and yoga approach.K. N. Rao
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Reading the diagrams. Each card carries a North Indian kuṇḍalī with the houses involved in the combination shaded, and the caption states what they are counted from — the lagna in most cases, the Moon in the lunar yogas, the Sun in the solar ones. Houses that must be empty for the yoga to form are drawn with a dashed outline instead of a fill; Kemadruma is the clearest case. Cards without a diagram are ones whose formation is defined by graha condition rather than by house position.

On scope and sourcing. The structural rules follow Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra, with Phaladīpikā for the parivartana classes and the nābhasa list. This is a working set, not a census: Parāśara alone names several hundred yogas and the later literature many more. I have kept the ones that recur in practice and the rules that let you derive the rest, on the view that the generating rule is worth more than the catalogue.

Two cautions carried from the sources. Kāla Sarpa is included because software reports it constantly, but it does not appear in Parāśara and has no classical pedigree — treat it as a modern addition. And Kuja Doṣa is the single most socially consequential yoga in contemporary use; the classical cancellations are numerous and widely ignored, which is worth knowing before repeating a verdict to anyone.

The exchanges. I have given the three parivartana classes structurally rather than enumerating the pairs. The counts differ between Phaladīpikā and later texts, and the rule is simple enough to apply directly to the chart in front of you — identify the two lords, note which houses they own, and the class follows.