Baladi Avastha and Jagradadi Avastha of the Grahas

The same graha can be described in two quite different ways by the avastha schemes on this page. One looks only at how many degrees it has travelled into its sign and whether that sign is odd or even. The other ignores the degree completely and asks whose sign the graha is in. Both are short rules, and both can be worked out in full from the site’s sign and planet tables, which is what follows, including the handful of cells where the second rule’s clauses point in two directions at once.

Avastha Meaning: What the Word Names (अवस्था किसे कहते हैं)

Avastha (अवस्था) is the ordinary Sanskrit and Hindi word for a state or condition. In jyotish it names a set of labels for the condition of a graha. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra has a chapter on avasthas that gives several such sets; the two taken here are the baladi set, named after its first member bala, and the jagradadi set, named after jagrat. Each set divides the possible positions of a graha into a few named states. What a reader of charts makes of a state is a further step, and this page stops before it.

Baladi Avastha: Five Bands of 6° (ग्रहों की बालादि अवस्था)

The baladi scheme in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra cuts each sign into five equal bands of 6° and gives each band one of five Sanskrit names, glossed in the table below. In an odd sign (Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius) the order runs forward from Bala; in an even sign (Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn and Pisces) it runs backward from Mrita. Odd and even are read from the gender column of the site’s sign table, where the odd signs are the ones marked male.

The page counts each band from its lower edge, so a graha at exactly 6°00′ of an odd sign is in Kumara, not Bala. Two consequences of the reversal are easy to miss. Yuva is the middle band, 12–18°, in every one of the twelve signs. And because odd and even signs alternate, the band name never changes at a sign boundary: an odd sign ends in Mrita and the even sign after it opens in Mrita, and an even sign ends in Bala and the odd sign after it opens in Bala. Followed round the zodiac, Bala and Mrita therefore cover 12° at a stretch, straddling a sign boundary, while Kumara, Yuva and Vriddha come in single runs of 6° inside a sign.

Mrita Is the Name of a Degree Band

The five names are glossed above with their dictionary meanings because they are the words the scheme uses, and the last of them, Mrita (मृत), literally means dead. On this page it is only the label of a 6° band: the last 6° of an odd sign or the first 6° of an even one. It says nothing about anyone’s life, health or death. A graha moves into a Mrita band and out of it just as it does with Yuva; by the boundary rule above, every crossing between an odd sign and the even sign after it runs through one.

Jagradadi Avastha: Awake, Dreaming, Deep Sleep

The second scheme from the same chapter of Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra has three states. A graha in its own sign or its exaltation sign is Jagrat (जाग्रत), awake. In the sign of a friend or a neutral it is Swapna (स्वप्न), dreaming. In the sign of an enemy, or in its debilitation sign, it is Sushupti (सुषुप्ति), deep sleep. Friend, neutral and enemy are the natural (naisargika) relations, and the relation that counts is the one in the graha’s own row towards the lord of the sign it occupies. These are the seven rows the grid below is built from, as the site’s planet table gives them; the planet friendship table sets out the same relations pair by pair.

The Jagradadi Grid for Seven Grahas

Applying the rule to every sign gives a grid of 84 cells. Jagrat is in gold, Sushupti in grey italics.

Across the grid there are 18 Jagrat cells, 44 Swapna and 22 Sushupti. Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn are awake in three signs each, two own signs and an exaltation; the Sun and the Moon own one sign and are exalted in another, and Mercury has two own signs, one of which is also its exaltation, so those three are awake in two. Jupiter has the most Sushupti cells, 5, because its row lists two enemies with two signs each. The Moon has only one, Scorpio, its debilitation: the Moon’s row in the planet table names no enemy at all, so no other sign can put it in Sushupti.

Where the Two Clauses Collide, and How the Page Resolves It

The rule has a dignity clause (own, exaltation, debilitation) and a friendship clause (friend, neutral, enemy), and some signs satisfy both with different answers. The obvious worry is an exaltation in an enemy’s sign, which would set Jagrat against Sushupti. It does not occur: checked against the planet table, no graha is exalted in the sign of one of its own enemies. The Sun is exalted in Aries, Mars’s sign, and Mars is in the Sun’s friend list; Saturn is exalted in Libra, and Venus is Saturn’s friend; Venus is exalted in Pisces, and Jupiter sits in Venus’s neutral list, not its enemy list.

The collisions that do occur are milder, and there are 11 of them, every one against Swapna. In six cells a graha is exalted in a friend’s or a neutral’s sign (the Sun in Aries, the Moon in Taurus, Mars in Capricorn, Jupiter in Cancer, Venus in Pisces and Saturn in Libra), so the friendship clause alone would give Swapna. In five cells a graha is debilitated in a friend’s or a neutral’s sign (the Moon in Scorpio, Mars in Cancer, Mercury in Pisces, Jupiter in Capricorn and Venus in Virgo), and again the friendship clause would give Swapna. The grid follows the order in which the rule is stated, dignity first: own sign or exaltation settles a cell as Jagrat, debilitation settles it as Sushupti, and the lord’s relation is consulted only when neither applies. Read the other way round, those six exaltation cells and five debilitation cells would all turn to Swapna. The remaining dignity cells need no ruling: the Sun in Libra and Saturn in Aries are debilitated in an enemy’s sign, so both clauses give Sushupti, and Mercury’s exaltation in Virgo is in its own sign. How exaltation and debilitation are treated elsewhere on the site is on the exalted planets page and the neecha bhanga rules page.

Why Rahu and Ketu Are Not in the Grid

The jagradadi rule starts from a graha’s own signs, and the site’s planet table records none for either node: both rows begin “None”, with Rahu noted as co-lord of Aquarius and Ketu of Scorpio. The same table gives two different reckonings for each node’s exaltation and debilitation. With no own sign and no single exaltation, the dignity clauses of the rule have nothing fixed to apply to, so the grid keeps to the seven grahas from the Sun to Saturn. The baladi bands, which use only a degree and a sign, could be applied to a node’s position like any other.

A Worked Example: Both Avasthas for One Position

Take Mars at 21°40′ Cancer, a position chosen for the example. Cancer is an even sign, so its bands run in reverse, and 21°40′ falls in the 18–24° band, which in an even sign is Kumara (कुमार). For the jagradadi state, Cancer is Mars’s debilitation sign, and its lord, the Moon, is in Mars’s friend list: this is one of the colliding cells. Dignity is applied first, so the state is Sushupti. The same 21°40′ in Leo, an odd sign, would be in Vriddha instead, and Leo’s lord is also a friend of Mars with no dignity clause in play, so the state there is Swapna. To run both schemes on a real chart you need each graha’s degree, which the Kundli report lists for each graha.

The Fractions of Result Left Out

Some manuals attach a fraction to each baladi state, a share of a graha’s results that those manuals assign to that band. The fractions are not the same from one source to the next, and the site has no single list it can attribute and check, so none is printed here. The page gives the bands and the states, which the rules fix, and nothing scaled from them.

What This Page Does Not Do

It does not say what any avastha brings in a life, does not rank a person’s chart by the states of its grahas, and does not connect Mrita, Vriddha or any other band to age, health or death. It gives no date or time at which a graha enters a band. Avasthas are one input among many for someone reading a whole chart, and a label from either table above is a description of where a graha stands, not a verdict.

In Hindi: ग्रहों की बालादि अवस्था और जाग्रदादि अवस्था.