What Graha Maitri measures

Kundli matching (comparing two birth charts before a marriage) in North India usually means Ashtakoot, the “eight-part” match. It scores a couple on eight kootas (tests), and the eight add up to a total out of 36 points, also called gunas. Graha Maitri is the fifth of the eight in the usual order, and it carries 5 of the 36 points.

Graha means planet and maitri means friendship. Our app describes this koota as “mental and intellectual compatibility — whether the couple’s thinking styles and communication align.” It reads that from one fact in each chart: the Moon sign (rashi), the sign the Moon was in at birth.

The Moon sign is not read on its own here. Each sign has a ruling planet, its lord. Graha Maitri takes the two Moon signs, finds the two lords, and asks how those two planets regard each other. Two signs can be far apart in the zodiac and still score the full 5, because their lords are friends.

Graha Maitri is one of the kootas read from the Moon sign rather than the birth star. Our guides to Gana (temperament) and Yoni (instinct, pictured as animals), the earlier posts in this series, cover two that are read from the birth star.

The twelve signs and their seven lords

Seven planets rule the twelve signs. Five of them rule two signs each. The Sun and the Moon rule one each. Rahu and Ketu, the two lunar nodes, rule no sign in this table and play no part in Graha Maitri.

Find each person’s Moon sign, then its lord. Those two planets are all that Graha Maitri reads. If you do not know your Moon sign, our free sign check finds it from a birth date, time and place. The Moon sign is not the Sun sign that newspaper horoscopes use; our Moon sign guide explains the difference.

• Mars: Mesha (Aries) and Vrishchika (Scorpio)
• Venus: Vrishabha (Taurus) and Tula (Libra)
• Mercury: Mithuna (Gemini) and Kanya (Virgo)
• Moon: Karka (Cancer)
• Sun: Simha (Leo)
• Jupiter: Dhanu (Sagittarius) and Meena (Pisces)
• Saturn: Makara (Capricorn) and Kumbha (Aquarius)

The friendship table

Jyotisha (Vedic astrology) gives each planet a natural (naisargika) view of the other six: friend, neutral or enemy. This is the table our engine uses:

• Sun: friends Moon, Mars, Jupiter · neutral Mercury · enemies Venus, Saturn
• Moon: friends Sun, Mercury · neutral Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn · no enemies
• Mars: friends Sun, Moon, Jupiter · neutral Venus, Saturn · enemy Mercury
• Mercury: friends Sun, Venus · neutral Mars, Jupiter, Saturn · enemy Moon
• Jupiter: friends Sun, Moon, Mars · neutral Saturn · enemies Mercury, Venus
• Venus: friends Mercury, Saturn · neutral Mars, Jupiter · enemies Sun, Moon
• Saturn: friends Mercury, Venus · neutral Jupiter · enemies Sun, Moon, Mars

Friendship is one-way

Read the table slowly, because it is one-way. The Moon counts Mercury a friend, but Mercury counts the Moon an enemy. The Sun counts Mercury neutral, but Mercury counts the Sun a friend. Each planet has its own view, and the two views of a pair can differ.

That is why Graha Maitri always reads both directions: what the groom’s lord thinks of the bride’s, and what the bride’s lord thinks of the groom’s.

How the five points are scored

Our engine puts the two views together on six rungs, listed below from the highest score to the lowest.

The scale uses both views, so swapping the two people never changes the score. A Simha groom with a Makara bride scores what a Makara groom with a Simha bride scores. Gana is different: there, a Deva (divine) groom with a Manushya (human) bride scores 6, and the reverse scores 5. In Graha Maitri the order never matters.

• 5 points: the same lord, or two lords that count each other friends
• 4 points: one counts the other a friend, and the other is neutral
• 3 points: both are neutral to each other
• 1 point: one counts the other a friend, and the other counts it an enemy
• 0.5 points: one is neutral, and the other counts it an enemy
• 0 points: both count each other enemies

Six pairs, worked through

Here is one pair of Moon signs for each rung, with the two views that decide it.

• Simha with Karka: the Sun and the Moon count each other friends. 5 points.
• Simha with Mithuna: the Sun is neutral to Mercury, and Mercury counts the Sun a friend. 4 points.
• Mesha with Vrishabha: Mars and Venus are neutral to each other. 3 points.
• Karka with Mithuna: the Moon counts Mercury a friend, and Mercury counts the Moon an enemy. 1 point.
• Mesha with Mithuna: Mars counts Mercury an enemy, and Mercury is neutral to Mars. 0.5 points.
• Simha with Makara: the Sun and Saturn count each other enemies. 0 points.

The only pairs that score 0

Only four pairs of Moon signs score 0 out of 5; the list is below. Every one has Simha on one side. The Sun and Venus count each other enemies, and so do the Sun and Saturn. No other two planets in the table count each other enemies.

So if neither of you has the Moon in Simha, Graha Maitri cannot be 0. If one of you does, it is 0 only when the other’s Moon sign is ruled by Venus or Saturn.

The Moon has no enemies at all. So a Karka Moon never scores 0 with any sign; its lowest is 0.5.

• Simha and Vrishabha (the Sun and Venus)
• Simha and Tula (the Sun and Venus)
• Simha and Makara (the Sun and Saturn)
• Simha and Kumbha (the Sun and Saturn)

How often each score comes up

There are 12 × 12 = 144 ways to pair a groom’s Moon sign with a bride’s. We call each of these a pairing. Each pair of different signs counts twice in the 144, once for each order: Simha groom with Makara bride, and Makara groom with Simha bride. So the four zero pairs above make 8 of the 144 pairings. Take each sign as equally likely. Then the Graha Maitri scores fall as the list below shows.

The full 5 is the most common result, in more than 1 pairing in 3. A 0 comes up in about 1 pairing in 18. Across all 144 pairings the average is exactly 3 out of 5.

• 5 points: 56 of the 144 pairings, about 39 in 100
• 4 points: 20, about 14 in 100
• 3 points: 16, about 11 in 100
• 1 point: 4, about 3 in 100
• 0.5 points: 40, about 28 in 100
• 0 points: 8, about 6 in 100

The common 0.5 and the rare 1

The score that surprises families most is 0.5. It is the second most common result, in more than 1 pairing in 4. It means one lord is neutral to the other, and the other counts it an enemy. Many couples see it, and on its own it lowers the total by 4.5 points, no more.

The 1-point rung is the rarest: 4 pairings. Only a Karka Moon with a Mithuna or Kanya Moon gives it, in either order, because only the Moon and Mercury hold a friend-and-enemy view of each other.

Two signs, one lord

Two signs with the same lord always score 5. Five pairs of different signs share a lord; the list is below. And two people with the same Moon sign always share its lord, so they score 5 too.

• Mesha and Vrishchika (Mars)
• Vrishabha and Tula (Venus)
• Mithuna and Kanya (Mercury)
• Dhanu and Meena (Jupiter)
• Makara and Kumbha (Saturn)

Where Graha Maitri meets Bhakoot

Bhakoot (7 points) compares how far apart the two Moon signs sit. Three distances score 0 on it: 2 and 12, 5 and 9, and 6 and 8 signs apart. That 0 is the Bhakoot dosha (a dosha is a flaw that a match is said to carry). Bhakoot and Nadi (8 points) are the two heaviest kootas; Nadi sorts the birth stars into three groups and asks whether the two stars share one.

Our engine cancels a Bhakoot dosha in one case: when the two Moon-sign lords are the same planet or count each other friends. Those are exactly the pairs that score 5 on Graha Maitri. When a Bhakoot 0 is cancelled, Bhakoot scores the full 7 instead.

A 4 is not enough. Karka with Dhanu, for example, sits 6 and 8 apart. The Moon is neutral to Jupiter, and Jupiter counts the Moon a friend, so Graha Maitri scores 4. The Bhakoot dosha stays.

Of the 36 pairs of different Moon signs that carry a Bhakoot dosha, 17 are cancelled this way and 19 keep it. So when your sheet shows Bhakoot 0, look at the Graha Maitri line next to it. Our Nadi and Bhakoot guide explains both of the heaviest kootas and their exceptions.

What a low Graha Maitri decides, and what it does not

Graha Maitri is 5 of 36 points. It is one reading of two planets, taken from one fact in each chart. It cannot see how two people actually talk to each other.

Our engine applies no exception to Graha Maitri itself, and it raises no “graha maitri dosha”. A 0 only lowers the total by 5. Our matching flags three doshas. Two are a 0 on Nadi or Bhakoot, the two heaviest kootas. The third is Mangal dosha (a dosha read from where Mars sits in each chart), which needs both full charts.

Some sheets print “maitri dosha” beside a low score. Treat it as a label for a low score on one koota, not as a warning about the marriage. We do not know of a text we can quote that makes a Graha Maitri 0 a dosha on its own, so we do not call it one. Nothing in this score calls for a remedy, a fee or a fear. If you think differently about money, family or work, talk it through together. Two people can do that; a table of planets cannot.

Why two calculators can print different Graha Maitri scores

If two matching reports give the same couple different Graha Maitri scores, there are two usual reasons.

The first is a different Moon sign. The Moon changes sign about every two and a quarter days. A birth near the change can fall in one sign on one calculator and the next sign on another, if the two use a different ayanamsa (the correction between the star-based zodiac and the Western one) or a slightly different birth time. Neighbouring signs have different lords, except Makara and Kumbha, which share Saturn. So the score can move.

The second is a different table. Reports can use different Graha Maitri tables, and the fractional rungs are where they differ most. Our engine’s table is the one shown above. We show it as our table, rather than call it the only correct one. Our guide to why calculators give different guna scores shows how these differences add up.

Rasi Adhipathi Porutham in the Tamil tradition

In the Tamil tradition, matching often uses Dasa Porutham, a set of ten poruthams (tests), instead of the eight kootas. One of the ten is Rasi Adhipathi Porutham: rasi means the Moon sign and adhipathi means its lord. Like Graha Maitri, it reads the friendship between the planets that rule the two Moon signs. Our Dasa Porutham guide explains the ten tests and how they compare with the eight kootas.

Check your own Graha Maitri in a minute

You need the two birth stars and their padas (the four quarters of each star); the star and pada fix the Moon sign. Our kundali shows your own birth star. Open our star-based calculator, enter both, and it scores all eight kootas, Graha Maitri among them. There is nothing to sign up for.

If your sheet already lists all eight koota scores, enter them in the koota score reader. It reads them back one by one and tells you what they add up to. It does not re-score anything, and nothing is saved.

Then ask Jyothshi with the score in hand. Jyothshi can name the two lords, explain the rung, and say what the other seven kootas add.

• Rebuild all eight scores from two birth stars: the star-based calculator.
• Read the eight scores from your sheet: the koota score reader.
• The earlier guides in this series: Gana and Yoni.
• The whole 36-point system: our guide to the 36 gunas.