Panchadha Maitri: The Five-Fold Planet Friendship, Worked

Two Tables Combined (पंचधा मैत्री)

The grahas’ natural friendship table, naisargika maitri, is fixed: the Sun’s row lists the Moon as a friend in every chart ever drawn. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra adds a second relationship that belongs to one chart only, tatkalika or temporary maitri, worked out from where two grahas happen to sit. Combining the two gives five grades instead of three, which is why the result is called panchadha, five-fold, maitri. A panchadha maitri chakra is simply that combined grid for one chart.

This page sets out the temporary rule and the combination as that text gives them, then works the full grid for one example chart from the site’s own ephemeris.

The Temporary Rule: Count the Houses Between Them

Count from the sign a graha occupies to the sign another occupies, counting the first sign as one. In the Parashari rule a graha in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th and 12th from it is its temporary friend. Every other position, the same sign and the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th, makes it a temporary enemy. There is no temporary neutral.

Two things follow from the arithmetic and hold in every chart. First, the temporary relation is always mutual: if B is in the 3rd from A, A is in the 11th from B, and the six friendly positions pair off the same way (2nd with 12th, 3rd with 11th, 4th with 10th). Second, two grahas in the same sign are always temporary enemies of each other, however friendly their natural rows are.

The Five Grades

The natural relation has three values and the temporary one two, so there are six combinations. Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra names five grades for them, because two different combinations both come out neutral.

A temporary friendship moves the natural grade one step up and a temporary enmity one step down. The two extremes need both tables to agree, and sama is where they cancel.

The Example Chart

The worked example is the birth the how to read your dasha guide uses, 1 January 2000 at 06:00 IST, chosen only because it is already on the site. The temporary rule needs signs alone, so neither the lagna nor the birthplace matters here. The sidereal signs of the seven grahas at that moment:

Two pairs share a sign: the Sun with Mercury, and Jupiter with Saturn. Of the 21 pairs, ten fall in friendly positions and eleven in unfriendly ones.

The Panchadha Maitri Grid for the Example

Read across: each cell gives the compound grade of the column graha as seen from the row graha. The natural half comes from the row graha’s list, so the grid, like the natural table, can read differently in its two directions.

AM = adhimitra, M = mitra, S = sama, Sh = shatru, AS = adhishatru. Totals over the 42 cells: 9 adhimitra, 5 mitra, 14 sama, 9 shatru, 5 adhishatru.

Reading the Grid, Pair by Pair

The Sun and the Moon. The Moon in Libra is in the 11th from the Sun in Sagittarius, a friendly position, and the Sun’s natural row lists the Moon as a friend. Both halves agree, so the grade is adhimitra.

The Sun and Saturn. Saturn in Aries is in the 5th from the Sun, an unfriendly position, and each natural row lists the other as an enemy. Adhishatru, both ways.

Jupiter and Saturn. They share Aries, so they are temporary enemies, and each one’s natural row lists the other as neutral. Neutral plus enmity gives shatru from both sides. The Sun and Mercury also share a sign, Sagittarius, and so are temporary enemies too, but their natural rows differ: the Sun’s lists Mercury as neutral, and Mercury’s lists the Sun as a friend. From the Sun the grade is therefore shatru; from Mercury it is sama.

The Moon and Mercury. Mercury in the 3rd from the Moon is a temporary friend. The Moon’s row lists Mercury as a friend, so from the Moon the grade is adhimitra; Mercury’s row lists the Moon as an enemy, so from Mercury the same pair is only sama.

Where the Two Directions Differ

Because the temporary half is always mutual, a compound pair can only read differently in its two directions where the natural table already does. The natural table has eleven such one-sided pairs among the seven grahas, and in this chart all eleven stay one-sided after combining; the ten pairs that agree by nature agree in the compound grid too. That holds for any chart: the temporary count can move a pair up or down, but it moves both directions together.

The Moon’s row carries no adhishatru here, and it cannot carry one in any chart: the natural table gives the Moon no enemy, so the lowest grade the Moon’s row can reach is shatru, through a natural neutral that is also a temporary enemy.

Where the Five-Fold Grade Is Used, and Where It Is Not

In the Parashari strength reckoning the compound grade is what grades a graha’s dignity in a sign held by another graha, inside the saptavargaja part of positional strength; the shadbala page sets out where that part sits. The site’s own pages do not use it. The friend’s-sign and enemy’s-sign wording on planet-in-sign pages such as Mars in Aquarius comes from the natural row alone, and the Graha Maitri koota in kundli matching scores the natural relation of the two Moon-sign lords. Neither changes from chart to chart, and neither is a five-fold grade.

Rahu and Ketu are left out of the grid. Their own natural rows list the seven grahas, but no graha’s row lists them, so a compound grade could be formed in one direction only. Counting houses from a graha’s sign is the same count used for houses from the lagna, which the how to read your kundli guide works through on its own example.

What This Page Does Not Say

A grade is a relationship between two grahas in one chart, not a verdict on the chart or on a person. Nothing here says what an adhimitra or an adhishatru brings, and the page gives no strength values for the grades. The example is the sky at one moment, used for the arithmetic, and is not read as anyone’s horoscope. In Hindi: पंचधा मैत्री: ग्रहों की पाँच प्रकार की मित्रता, उदाहरण सहित.