Jaimini Sutras and Modern Practice

The Founder Archives are Dr. Armaan Sharma's own papers, written for Astro River from 2008 and restored here in his words, with modern tools used for structure and editing.

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Abstract

This paper sets out the part of Jaimini's system that I use beside Parashari practice, and the rules by which I use it. Jaimini's Upadesa Sutras are terse, their commentaries disagree, and modern schools have built competing edifices on them; the paper does not attempt a commentary or a settlement. It isolates six tools that recur in consultative work — the movable significators (chara karakas), the sign-based aspect (rashi drishti), the doctrine of intervention (argala), the sign-based period system (chara dasha), the arudha lagna, and the karakamsa — and states each with its rule, the convention followed where conventions differ, and the use to which it is put. A section on how Jaimini and Parashari readings are kept apart in the same chart, and on where the Jaimini reading is allowed to decide, precedes two worked examples. Links to the pages that hang from this paper, sources, and a glossary follow.

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Why Jaimini at all

Parashara's system reads a chart by planets: their lordships, dignities, aspects and periods. Jaimini's reads it by signs. The aspect is from sign to sign; the dasha runs through signs; the significators are chosen not by nature but by degree. A chart read both ways is read twice, and the second reading catches what the first assumed.

I do not run Jaimini on every chart. I run it when the Parashari reading is clear on the theme and unclear on the person — when I need to know who in the chart the native actually is, which the atmakaraka tells me faster than anything else — and when a career or a marriage needs a second timing that does not come from the Moon's nakshatra. The chara dasha is the only period system in wide use that does not depend on the Moon's degree, and for a chart with an uncertain birth time that is worth a great deal.

What follows is the working core.

The chara karakas

Parashara's karakas are fixed: Venus for marriage, Jupiter for children, the Sun for the father. Jaimini's are movable. Each chart assigns its own, by degree.

The rule. Take the longitude of each planet within its sign — the degrees, minutes and seconds past the sign's beginning, disregarding the sign itself. Rank the planets from highest to lowest. The highest is the atmakaraka; the next the amatyakaraka; and so on down the list. Two conventions exist: the seven-karaka scheme, which ranks the seven classical planets, and the eight-karaka scheme, which adds Rahu, counted as 30° minus his degree since he moves backward. I use the seven-karaka scheme as primary and note the eight where Rahu would take a role; the paper follows the seven.

In the eight-karaka scheme Rahu takes a place by his degree and the list gains a pitrikaraka for the father between MK and PK; the seven-scheme folds the father into the Sun's natural signification.

Ties. When two planets are within a minute or so of the same degree the ranking is unstable, and a small birth-time error swaps them. The rule I follow is to rank by minutes and seconds as calculated, note the tie in the basis, and treat any claim that depends on the swap as A-grade uncertainty under Paper A's rules.

→ Paper A, First Principles

Reading the atmakaraka. The AK is the planet with the most to say about who the native is, and its condition is the first thing looked at. An AK in a kendra or trikona from the lagna, in good dignity, gives a life with a clear centre. An AK in the sixth, eighth or twelfth, or debilitated, gives a life whose centre is found through difficulty — which is not the same as a bad life. The planet's nature colours the purpose: Sun AK, authority and its lessons; Moon AK, care and the emotions; Mars AK, courage and its costs; Mercury AK, speech and learning; Jupiter AK, wisdom and the children; Venus AK, love and its disciplines; Saturn AK, endurance and the acceptance of limit. Each of these is a page of its own.

Reading the others. The AmK is read for the career as the tenth lord is in Parashari, and a claim about vocation names both. The DK is read for the spouse beside the seventh lord and Venus. The relation between AK and AmK — conjunction, mutual aspect, or placement in each other's signs — shows whether the self and its work are one thing or two. The GK is the karaka most often overlooked and most often at the root of a chronic trouble.

What is not done. The karakas do not replace the house lords. A DK is not a seventh lord. In a claim, the karaka is one factor in the basis beside the house, the lord, the dasha and the nakshatra, and the paper does not license "Venus is DK, therefore marriage" any more than Paper C licenses a nakshatra as an event.

Rashi drishti — the sign aspect

Parashara's aspects are planetary: every planet sees the seventh from itself, and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have their special aspects. Jaimini's aspects are of signs, and every planet in a sign aspects with that sign.

The rule. A movable sign aspects the three fixed signs except the one adjacent to it. A fixed sign aspects the three movable signs except the one adjacent to it. The dual signs aspect each other.

The aspect is mutual: if Aries aspects Leo, Leo aspects Aries. Every sign aspects three others, and every planet in a sign carries that sign's aspects.

The use. Three things. First, in reading a house: the signs aspecting a house-sign bring their occupants into that house's affairs, and a planet that has no Parashari aspect on the seventh may have a full sign aspect on it. Second, in reading a karaka: the planets whose signs aspect the AK's sign shape the self. Third, in the chara dasha: the signs aspecting the running dasha sign bring their themes into the period.

→ Paper B, Dasha Systems

Kept apart. A claim's basis says which aspect it means. "Saturn aspects the seventh" is ambiguous in a chart where Saturn's Parashari aspect and his sign's aspect differ, and most charts are such charts. I write drishti (P) and drishti (J) in the basis and never mix them in one sentence.

Argala — intervention

Argala is a bolt, a bar on a door. In Jaimini it names the intervention of one sign in the affairs of another: support that speeds, or obstruction that holds.

The rule. For any sign under consideration, the planets in the second, fourth and eleventh signs from it exert argala — an intervention that supports. The planets in the twelfth, tenth and third respectively exert virodha argala — a counter-intervention that obstructs the first. The second is opposed by the twelfth, the fourth by the tenth, the eleventh by the third. The intervention prevails if the planets exerting it are more or stronger than those opposing it. Malefics in the third exert argala in their own right rather than obstruction; and some commentaries add the fifth as a further argala, opposed by the ninth. I use the three primary pairs and note the fifth where it is decisive.

The use. Argala answers a question the house reading leaves open: given that this house promises the thing, what is helping and what is holding it? A tenth house with strong argala from the eleventh and no counter from the third is a career that others push forward. The same tenth with the third full of planets and the eleventh empty is a career the native must drag. Applied to the AK's sign, argala shows what intervenes in the self. Applied to the chara dasha sign, it shows what intervenes in the period.

Kept in its place. The commentaries, and the modern teaching that follows them, are prone to gloss argala as workplace politics, the boss, the promotion. That is a use, not a meaning. The concept is structural — a bolt on a door — and the reading names the sign and the planet, not the office. A claim that cites argala names the intervening sign, its occupants, and the opposing sign's, so that a reader can count.

Chara dasha — the sign period

Jaimini gives several rashi dashas; chara dasha is the one in general use and the one this paper treats. It runs through the twelve signs, each for a number of years fixed by the chart, and it does not use the Moon's nakshatra at all.

The footed signs. Jaimini divides the signs not by odd and even but by feet. The odd-footed (vishama-pada) signs are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius. The even-footed (sama-pada) are Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Everything in chara dasha turns on this division, and confusing it with the ordinary odd–even split — which puts Taurus and Scorpio on the other side — is the commonest error in the calculation.

Starting sign. The lagna. The first period is the lagna sign's.

Direction of the sequence. Two conventions are in use and they belong to two living schools. In the line of K. N. Rao the direction is set by the lagna itself: an odd-footed lagna gives a direct sequence (Aries, Taurus, Gemini …), an even-footed lagna a reverse one (Cancer, Gemini, Taurus …). In the line of Sanjay Rath, following Raghava Bhatta, the direction is set by the footing of the ninth sign from the lagna. For a lagna whose ninth is of the same footing the two agree; for the others they give mirror-image sequences, and the difference is the whole dasha. I follow the lagna, and the convention is stated in the basis of every chara dasha claim.

Length of each period. Count from the sign to the sign its lord occupies — forward if the sign is odd-footed, backward if it is even-footed, by the sign's own footing regardless of the sequence direction — and subtract one. That count in years is the period. If the lord is in its own sign, the period is twelve years. If the lord is exalted, add one year; if debilitated, subtract one. A result of zero is read as twelve by most commentators.

So Aries, odd-footed, with Mars in Cancer: count forward Aries one, Taurus two, Gemini three, Cancer four; four minus one, three; Mars debilitated in Cancer, minus one: two years. Cancer, even-footed, with the Moon in Scorpio: count backward Cancer one, Gemini two, Taurus three, Aries four, Pisces five, Aquarius six, Capricorn seven, Sagittarius eight, Scorpio nine; nine minus one: eight years.

Scorpio and Aquarius. Each has two lords — Mars and Ketu, Saturn and Rahu — and the count is made from the stronger. The rules of strength, in order: a lord placed in the sign itself is taken; otherwise the lord conjoined with more planets; otherwise the exalted lord over the debilitated; otherwise the lord in the stronger sign — a sign being stronger when it holds more planets, or failing that when it is aspected by Jupiter, Mercury or its own lord, or failing that when its lord is in a kendra or of higher degree; and if still equal, the one that is a higher chara karaka. Some lines simply exclude the nodes and count from Mars and Saturn alone. I apply the rules of strength, and the basis names the lord used.

Sub-periods. Each sign period is divided into twelve sub-periods of equal length, running through the signs in the sequence direction, beginning from the sign next to the period sign and ending with the period sign itself. In a twelve-year period each sub-period is a year; in a two-year period, two months. Some lines begin the sub-periods from the period sign itself, or from the twelfth; I begin from the next.

The second cycle. The twelve periods rarely sum to a lifetime. When the twelfth has run, the dasha begins again from the lagna, and each sign's second period is twelve years less its first. A sign that ran four years in the first cycle runs eight in the second; one that ran twelve does not recur.

Reading the period sign as a lagna. This is the technique on which the modern use of chara dasha rests, and it comes chiefly from K. N. Rao's work. During a sign's period, that sign is treated as the lagna and the houses are counted from it. The planets in the seventh from the period sign are the period's partners and its opponents; the tenth from it, the period's work; the sixth and eighth from it, its troubles. The chara karakas are placed from it: a period sign with the AK in it, or in a kendra from it, is a period about the self; with the AmK in the tenth from it, a period of work; with the DK in the seventh from it, a period of marriage; with the GK in the sixth, of dispute or illness. The signs aspecting the period sign by rashi drishti bring their occupants in, and the karakas among those occupants bring their themes. Argala on the period sign shows what intervenes.

→ Paper B, Dasha Systems

Reading a period, in order. The sign's lord and its occupants, for the period's character. The karakas in and from the period sign, for whose period it is. The rashi drishti onto it, for what enters. The argala on it, for what helps and holds. Then the sub-period sign read the same way against the period sign. And the position of the period sign from the arudha lagna, below, for the worldly result.

Where it is strong. For career, and for the timing of changes of station, chara dasha is often clearer than Vimshottari, because the tenth from the period sign is a fixed thing and the AmK's sign comes round on a known date. For a chart with an uncertain birth time it is the only dasha I trust past the first decade: a time error of an hour moves the lagna one sign and the whole chara sequence with it — but that is one error, visible, and correctable, where a Vimshottari error is buried in the Moon's minutes.

Where it is weak. Its conventions are unsettled, and the paper has named the points: the direction, the two-lord signs, the sub-period start, the zero-length period. A claim that does not state its convention set cannot be checked. The book therefore records the set for each chara dasha claim, exactly as it records the ayanamsa and the year-length.

→ Paper A, First Principles

Arudha lagna

The lagna is what the native is. The arudha lagna is what the native appears to be — the image, the standing, the thing the world sees and the native must live inside.

The rule. Count from the lagna to the sign its lord occupies. Count the same number again from that sign. The sign arrived at is the arudha lagna, with one exception: if the count lands on the lagna itself or on the seventh from it, take the tenth from where it landed. The same procedure applied to any house gives that house's arudha, and the arudha of the twelfth — the upapada — is the one most used, being the image of the marriage.

Worked quickly. Lagna Aries; its lord Mars in Cancer, the fourth. Count four from Cancer: Libra. The arudha lagna is Libra. — Lagna Leo; its lord the Sun in Leo, the first. Count one from Leo: Leo, which is the lagna itself; so take the tenth from Leo, Taurus. The arudha lagna is Taurus.

The use. Planets in the arudha lagna, and in the houses counted from it, give the worldly fortune — what the native is seen to have, whether or not the lagna promises it. The second and eleventh from the arudha are read for wealth and gain as they are seen; the third and sixth for the native's visible enemies and efforts; the seventh from the arudha for the visible partner; and the twelfth from the arudha for what the world sees the native lose. The upapada and its second house are read for the marriage's standing and its endurance. A chara dasha period is read from the arudha as well as from the lagna, and where the two disagree the lagna reading gives the inner and the arudha the outer.

Karakamsa

The karakamsa is the navamsa sign occupied by the atmakaraka. It is the sign in which the soul's purpose is set, and Jaimini devotes a long stretch of the sutras to what its occupants and aspects show — the profession, the ishta devata, the direction of the spiritual life.

The rule. Find the AK's navamsa by the pada table (Paper C, Nakshatras). That navamsa sign is the karakamsa. Some lines then read it in the navamsa chart itself; others transfer it to the birth chart and read that sign there. I read it in the navamsa first and check the birth chart.

The use in brief. Planets in the karakamsa and in the signs aspecting it by rashi drishti give the profession and the temperament as the soul, rather than the world, would have them. The twelfth from the karakamsa is read for the deity toward whom the native turns. The sutras give results by planet, condensed here; the full treatment, with the aspects and the second and third houses from the karakamsa, is a page of its own.

A benefic in the karakamsa, or aspecting it, gives the results with ease; a malefic gives them through struggle. The sutras are older than every profession a modern client asks about, and the reading translates the direction, not the trade.

Keeping the two systems apart

A chart read by Parashara and by Jaimini is one chart and two readings, and the danger is that they blur into one reading with the worst of both. Four rules keep them apart in my practice.

Name the system in every sentence that needs it. This is the Astro River rule for any reading that uses two systems, and the book enforces it. Aspect (P) or (J). Karaka: natural or chara. Dasha: Vimshottari or chara. The basis of a claim in the book carries these labels and the claim inherits them.

The Parashari reading is primary. Where the two disagree on a theme, the house-and-lord reading holds and the Jaimini reading is noted as dissenting. This is my order, stated; another practitioner may reverse it, but must state it.

The Jaimini reading may decide in three places. On the self — the AK and karakamsa say who the native is, and I let them override a lagna reading that says otherwise. On the appearance — the arudha decides what the world sees, and the lagna does not. On timing where the birth time is doubtful — chara dasha is used as primary when the Moon's degree cannot be trusted, and the basis says so.

No hybrid rules. A Parashari aspect is never widened by a sign aspect to make it reach; a chara karaka is never used as a house lord; a chara dasha period is never rescued by a Vimshottari antardasha found afterward. The retrospective patch condemned in Paper B is condemned here.

A worked example

Invented for teaching; nobody's chart.

Given. Lagna Aries 5°. Sun 22° Leo. Moon 8° Scorpio. Mars 27° Cancer. Mercury 16° Virgo. Jupiter 3° Leo. Venus 19° Libra. Saturn 25° Capricorn. (Rahu 11° Gemini, for the eight-scheme note.)

Karakas. By degree within sign, highest first: Mars 27°, Saturn 25°, Sun 22°, Venus 19°, Mercury 16°, Moon 8°, Jupiter 3°. So AK Mars, AmK Saturn, BK Sun, MK Venus, PK Mercury, GK Moon, DK Jupiter. (Under the eight-scheme Rahu counts as 30 − 11 = 19°, tying Venus, and the basis would note it.)

Reading the AK. Mars, the lagna lord, is atmakaraka — self and lagna are one planet, which gives a life with a clear centre — but Mars is in Cancer, debilitated, in the fourth. The centre is found through the home, and through difficulty there. Karakamsa: Mars at 27° Cancer is in Ashlesha, fourth pada, which is the Pisces navamsa; the karakamsa is Pisces, Jupiter's sign, and the PK Mercury aspects it from Virgo by rashi drishti, dual sign to dual sign. The soul's purpose is set in a sign of Jupiter's, and the children — or the disciples — enter it.

Arudha. Lagna Aries, lord Mars in Cancer, fourth. Four from Cancer is Libra. Arudha lagna Libra, holding Venus. The native is seen as a Venus figure — pleasant, partnered, comfortable — whatever the debilitated Mars in the fourth is doing inside.

Aspects. Aries, the lagna, is movable and aspects Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius: the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Scorpio see the lagna by sign. Saturn in Capricorn, movable, aspects Taurus, Leo, Scorpio — Saturn as AmK sees both luminaries by sign though he has no Parashari aspect on either.

Argala on the tenth. The tenth house is Capricorn, holding Saturn. Argala from the second (Aquarius, empty), fourth (Aries, empty), eleventh (Scorpio, Moon). Virodha from the twelfth (Sagittarius, empty), tenth (Libra, Venus), third (Pisces, empty). The eleventh's argala from the Moon is unopposed by the third; the second's and fourth's are empty, and the only occupied opposing sign, Libra, opposes the empty fourth. Net: the career is supported by the Moon's argala from the eleventh — gains and the public — with no obstruction on that line.

Chara dasha. Lagna Aries, odd-footed: direct sequence by the lagna convention. Lengths, each sign counted by its own footing: Aries, forward to Mars in Cancer, four minus one, minus one for debilitation, two years. Taurus, odd-footed, forward to Venus in Libra, six minus one, five. Gemini, odd-footed, forward to Mercury in Virgo, four minus one, three — Mercury at 16° is past its exaltation degree of 15°, so no year is added. Cancer, even-footed, backward to the Moon in Scorpio, nine minus one, eight. Leo, Sun in own sign, twelve. Virgo, Mercury in own sign, twelve. Libra, Venus in own sign, twelve. Then Scorpio, and the two-lord rule applies. So: Aries 0–2, Taurus 2–7, Gemini 7–10, Cancer 10–18, Leo 18–30, Virgo 30–42, Libra 42–54.

Reading the Leo period as a lagna. Leo holds the Sun, its own lord and the BK, and Jupiter, the DK — so this is a period of the self's standing and of the partner both. The tenth from Leo is Taurus, empty; the seventh is Aquarius, empty; the sixth is Capricorn, holding Saturn, the AmK. The AmK in the sixth from the period sign is the work reached through service, competition and effort. Leo, a fixed sign, aspects the three movable signs except Cancer: Aries, the lagna — the self enters the period — Libra, the arudha, holding Venus, the MK, and Capricorn, holding Saturn, the AmK. Argala on Leo: from the second, Virgo, Mercury; from the fourth, Scorpio, the Moon; from the eleventh, Gemini, empty in the seven-scheme. Virodha from the twelfth, Cancer, Mars; from the tenth, Taurus, empty; from the third, Libra, Venus. The second's argala from Mercury is opposed by Mars in the twelfth, one against one; the fourth's from the Moon is unopposed. Net: a period in which the home and the mother, the Moon's fourth, push the self forward, and the work is found through effort.

The claim. "Entry into a position of authority in the public service during the Leo chara dasha, 18 to 30, in the sub-period of Capricorn or of Scorpio — the sign holding the AmK, sixth from the period sign, and the sign holding the Moon's argala." Basis: AmK Saturn in the tenth from the lagna and sixth from the period sign, and aspected (J) by the period sign; Sun, BK, in Leo, own sign, aspecting the lagna (J); argala on the tenth from the Moon in the eleventh, and on Leo from the Moon in its fourth; the Leo period is the Sun's own, and the Sun is the natural karaka of authority and of the father. Convention set: seven karakas, direction from the lagna, lengths by each sign's footing, sub-periods from the next sign. Domain livelihood; window the Leo dasha with the two sub-periods named.

A second example — a miss. Same chart. A later claim: "Marriage during the Libra chara dasha, 42 to 54, since Libra is the arudha and holds Venus." The native married at 24, in the Leo period, in its Aquarius sub-period — the seventh from the period sign. N on timing under this system. The note records what the astrologer did not weigh: Jaimini's own marriage points. The darakaraka, Jupiter, sits in Leo, so Leo's period was the partner's period before it was anything else, and the sub-period of the seventh from it is exactly where the tradition would look. And the upapada — the twelfth house is Pisces; its lord Jupiter is in Leo, the sixth from Pisces; six on from Leo is Capricorn — is Capricorn, holding Saturn, which Leo aspects by rashi drishti: the marriage's image was inside the Leo period's line of sight the whole time. The claim had looked at Libra because Venus was there — the Parashari habit of reading Venus as marriage, smuggled into a Jaimini claim — and had never asked where the DK or the upapada stood. The system was not wrong; the hybrid was. That is the error the four rules above exist to catch, and the book caught it.

Limits

Coverage. Six tools out of a system that has many more — the other rashi dashas, the longevity methods, the special yogas of the second and third chapters. This paper is a working surface, not a commentary.

Conventions. Every one of the six has variants, named above, and in chara dasha the variants belong to living schools — Rao's and Rath's above all — whose results differ. The paper states the ones I use and does not argue that others are wrong. A claim in the book is checkable only against the conventions it names.

Translation. The sutras are aphorisms and the commentaries disagree on their sense. Where I have stated a rule plainly, a reader should assume that a commentator somewhere states it otherwise.

The career gloss. Modern clients ask about vocation and the temptation to make every Jaimini tool a career tool is strong. Argala especially suffers. The rules above are structural; the applications are the reader's.

Closing

Jaimini's system is not a rival to Parashara's; it is a second pair of eyes. It sees the chart by sign where Parashara sees it by planet, chooses its significators by degree where Parashara fixes them by nature, and times the life from the lagna where Parashara times it from the Moon. Used beside the first reading, with the two kept apart and the conventions stated, it catches what the first reading assumed — above all who the native is, and what the world takes them for.

Used instead of the first reading, or blended with it, it produces the false precision the sutras never claimed. The book's rules hold here as everywhere: name the system, name the convention, freeze the claim, and let the outcome teach.

Pages that hang from this paper

• The chara karakas, and one page per atmakaraka planet.
• Rashi drishti: the table and its uses.
• Argala, with the fifth-and-ninth variant treated.
• Chara dasha: the calculation in full, with the Scorpio and Aquarius rules, the second cycle, and the Rao and Rath conventions side by side.
• Arudha lagna and the arudhas of the houses; the upapada.
• Karakamsa: the sutras' results by planet.
• Papers A, B and C of this series.

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Sources

The rules stated here are from Jaimini's Upadesa Sutras, chiefly the first two chapters, as received through the classical commentaries — Neelakantha's above all, with Raghava Bhatta and Krishna Mishra where they differ — and as taught in the two modern schools whose manuals are the usual English-language orientation: K. N. Rao's, in Predicting through Jaimini's Chara Dasha and the work of his students, from which the reading of the period sign as a lagna is taken; and Sanjay Rath's, in Jaimini Maharishi's Upadesa Sutra and Crux of Vedic Astrology, from which the ninth-house direction rule and the rules of sign strength are cited. The seven-karaka scheme, the rashi drishti table, the primary argala pairs, the direct-and-reverse rule for chara dasha, the arudha procedure with its first-and-seventh exception, and the karakamsa are common to these sources; where the sources differ, the convention followed is stated in the text. The pada-to-navamsa correspondence used for the karakamsa is as in Paper C.

No study, dataset, or accuracy figure is cited, because none is advanced.

Glossary

Amatyakaraka (AmK) — the second chara karaka; career and counsel. Argala — intervention of one sign in another's affairs; virodha argala, its opposition. Arudha lagna — the image or worldly standing of the native, derived from the lagna and its lord. Atmakaraka (AK) — the planet of highest degree within its sign; the self. Chara dasha — Jaimini's sign-based period system. Chara karaka — a movable significator, assigned by degree. Darakaraka (DK) — the seventh chara karaka; the spouse. Gnatikaraka (GK) — the sixth chara karaka; relatives, rivals, disease. Karakamsa — the navamsa sign of the atmakaraka. Odd-footed, even-footed (vishama-pada, sama-pada) — Jaimini's two groups of signs: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius; and Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Rashi drishti — sign-to-sign aspect. Upapada — the arudha of the twelfth house; the image of the marriage.