Rashi Drishti (Sign Aspects)

What is Rashi Drishti?

Rashi drishti — “sign aspect” — is the Jaimini school’s answer to a question Parashari astrology answers differently: which parts of the chart see one another?

In the Parashari scheme a planet casts an aspect, counted in houses from where it sits. In the Jaimini scheme a sign casts the aspect, and which signs it reaches is decided by nothing more than the sign’s mode — whether it is movable (chara), fixed (sthira) or dual (dvisvabhava). Planets come into it only second-hand: a planet takes on the aspect of the sign it occupies.

This matters because Jaimini’s own tools — the karakas, the arudha padas, the Argala intervention rules, the Jaimini yoga catalogue — all read “aspect” as rashi drishti. Get the sign matrix right and the rest of the Jaimini layer lines up; read it as graha drishti and every downstream result shifts.

The three modes

Every sign belongs to exactly one mode, in a repeating 1-2-3 cycle around the zodiac:

The whole aspect scheme is stated in terms of these three groups.

The rule

AstroShruti computes rashi drishti from three lines, exactly as the classical scheme gives them:

• A movable sign aspects the three fixed signs except the one adjacent to it — the fixed sign that comes immediately after it (its 2nd).
• A fixed sign aspects the three movable signs except the one adjacent to it — the movable sign immediately before it (its 12th).
• A dual sign aspects the other three dual signs.

Each sign therefore aspects exactly three signs. The one exclusion — the adjacent sign of the opposite-but-linked mode — is the whole subtlety, and it is why the movable/fixed relationship is not a plain “all four of the other mode”.

The full matrix

Working the rule for all twelve signs gives this table. It is fixed for every chart:

Reading a row

Take Cancer (movable). Its fixed signs are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius; the one immediately after Cancer is Leo, so Leo drops out and Cancer aspects Taurus, Scorpio and Aquarius. Now check the reverse: Leo (fixed) aspects the movable signs except the one just before it — that excluded sign is Cancer. So Leo does not aspect Cancer, and Cancer does not aspect Leo. The exclusion works from both ends, which is exactly why the matrix stays mutual.

Mutuality — built in, not coincidental

Rashi drishti is mutual by construction: whenever a sign aspects another, the aspect is returned. AstroShruti derives the “who aspects me” set directly from the “whom do I aspect” table, so the two can never disagree.

This is a deliberate contrast with the Maitri Chakra friendship table, which is asymmetric on purpose — the Moon counts Mercury a friend while Mercury counts the Moon an enemy. Sign aspect has no such one-sidedness: if Aries sees Aquarius, Aquarius sees Aries.

Rashi drishti vs. Parashari graha drishti

It is worth laying the two schemes side by side, because mixing them is the most common mistake made with Jaimini charts.

A planet “aspects” a sign in the Jaimini sense when it sits in a sign that casts rashi drishti on the target. So to know what aspects, say, your 7th sign, you look at which signs aspect it in the matrix above, then see which planets occupy those signs. That is precisely how AstroShruti lifts the sign table onto your actual placements.

How to use it

• To judge a pada or a karaka’s sign, list the signs that aspect it from the matrix, then read who sits in those signs. Occupation and rashi aspect are treated as one influence in the Jaimini rules — the sutras’ “joined or aspected” is a single predicate.
• Because the matrix never changes, you can memorise it by mode: movable and fixed signs aspect each other across the zodiac (minus one adjacent skip), and dual signs form their own closed group of four.
• When you see “aspect” anywhere in AstroShruti’s Jaimini output — argala, Karakamsha yogas, arudha analysis — read it as this aspect, not the planetary one.

Honest notes

• This is the sign-aspect scheme only. AstroShruti also computes ordinary Parashari planetary aspects elsewhere; the two are kept separate on purpose and are not blended into a single “aspect” figure.
• A graha-drishti reading of the Jaimini rules exists in the tradition. Some schools read the Karakamsha and pada rules with planetary aspect instead of sign aspect, which would change many results. AstroShruti follows the sign-aspect reading throughout, consistent with the Jaimini school’s own usage — a school choice, not the only possible one.
• The matrix carries no strength or degree. Rashi drishti is present or absent; it does not weaken with distance or vary within a sign. Where you need a graded influence, that comes from other tools, not from this table.