Jaimini

The Jaimini Sūtras are attributed to Maharṣi Jaimini, a student of the sage Vyāsa. They survive as a compact set of aphorisms, usually in four chapters (pādas), written in a style so terse that every line needs a commentary to be understood. The best-known commentaries come from the Kerala and Andhra traditions, and most modern readers rely on the commentary of Neelakantha or on later textbooks.

Jaimini’s methods differ from Parashari enough that the two are sometimes called separate systems. They share the same zodiac and grahas, but they weigh them differently, so they are normally used together as cross-checks.

The Jaimini Sutras are famously terse — single-line aphorisms that generations of commentators have unpacked into a complete system. Where Parashari astrology assigns meaning to planets, Jaimini assigns it to signs: whole-sign degrees, not planetary nature, drive both character and timing.

The result reads strikingly differently in practice. Two charts identical under Parashari rules can diverge sharply under Jaimini — which is why serious Jyotishi cross-check predictions between the two systems.

The central idea is to read the sign more than the planet. A sign looks at other signs by a fixed pattern, regardless of which grahas sit in them. Movable signs aspect fixed signs except the one adjacent to them, fixed signs aspect movable signs except the adjacent one, and dual signs aspect other dual signs. This is rāśi dṛṣṭi.

The second idea is the karaka by degree. The graha with the highest degree within its sign becomes the Ātmakāraka, the significator of the soul. The next one down becomes the Amātyakāraka (career and counsel), and so on down the list. This ranking, the chara karakas, changes with each chart, unlike the fixed karakas of the Parashari scheme.

The third idea is the Ārūḍha. For each house, the system counts as many signs forward from the house lord as the lord is from the house, then counts the same distance again. The resulting sign shows how that house appears to others, as a reflection. The Ārūḍha Lagna is the image of the self in the world.

The Jaimini Sūtras are cryptic, and different commentators arrive at different readings of the same line. Practitioners disagree on aspects, on the counting of the periods and on how to handle the nodes in the karaka ranking. This is a living and argued tradition, and not a closed one.

The method is also demanding in what it needs. It uses degrees to the minute, so an inexact birth time makes the ranking unstable. When two planets are close in degree, the order of the karakas can flip with a few minutes of error.