Arudha Pada

AH-roo-dha PAH-da

sanskrit: आरूढ पद (Ārūḍha Pada)

Definition

An Arudha Pada — often just the Pada — is the reflected, or "arisen," image of a house. You find it by noting how far the house's lord sits from its house, then counting that same number of signs onward from the lord. The sign you land on is the Pada: how that house's matters show up in the world, rather than the house itself. The Pada of the ascendant, the Arudha Lagna, matters most and anchors many predictive rules. Each house has its own Pada, A1 through A12, and planets get one too — the graha arudha.

In Tradition

Both the classical and the modern Jyotish texts find the Pada the same way — the lord-distance rule. You count how far a house's lord lies from its house, then count that same distance onward from the lord, and the sign you reach is the Pada. The sources agree this reflected point shows how the world perceives a house's matters, the outward image rather than the inner reality. Where they part ways is how to handle a few awkward placements.

In Practice

Jyotishis work out a Pada for every house, not just the ascendant, and read each one as the visible image of that house's affairs, judged from the Arudha Lagna. The fourth-house Matru Arudha (A4) speaks to mother, home and property; the fifth-house Mantra pada (A5) guides which mantra to choose; the seventh-house Darapada (A7) is read for spouse, partners, business and the kind of people you deal with; the eleventh-house Labhapada (A11) shows real gains and income, and the house it sits in is one you tend to favour. Rath judges these padas by where they fall from the Arudha Lagna — quadrants and trines bring blessings, the difficult dusthana houses bring affliction. Narasimha Rao treats the arudha as the maya, the illusion, around a house, with the graha arudha showing how you see yourself; he notes its meaning can shift by divisional chart.

Historical Origin

The system appears in the Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra (Chapter 29), which Santhanam attributes largely to Maharshi Jaimini with Parasara as its source, and in the Uttara Kalamrita (Chapter IV), where Kalidasa fixes eight Arudhas for houses 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12. Rao treats it as a distinctive feature of Jaimini astrology, and Raman, Rath, Cole and Narasimha Rao all elaborate it. A separately named Arudha — a supplementary ascendant for Prasna, or horary — appears in the Prasna Marga.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading