Is everything in a birth chart fixed? Or can a person change what the planets show? Jyotish has always had to answer this question. One of the clearest classical answers comes from the Prasna Marga, a great work of Kerala astrology, which divides karma into two kinds: dridha and adridha.
The Prasna Marga
The Prasna Marga was written in 1649 CE by a Namboodiri scholar at Edakkad, near Thalassery in northern Kerala. Its title means "the path of the question", because its main subject is prasna, or horary astrology: reading the chart cast for the moment a question is asked.
But the work reaches far beyond horary. It covers natal astrology, the choosing of auspicious times (muhurta), omens, and the remedies for suffering (parihara). Its author drew on many older sources. His favourite works, according to its translator B. V. Raman, were Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka and the Krishneeya. In Kerala, the Prasna Marga has long been studied alongside the Brihat Jataka as an essential text.
What a chart shows: the fruit of past action
Before it speaks of dridha and adridha, the Prasna Marga sets out what astrology is for. Its first chapter places astrology firmly within the law of karma.
A person, it says, is born in this world to enjoy or suffer the consequences of deeds done in past lives. Part of that account is settled in heaven or hell, and for the rest a new birth must be taken. The text names two kinds of karma here. Sanchita, the stored account, is exhausted in those other worlds. Prarabdha, the portion that has begun to bear fruit in this life, can be lessened only by being lived through. The cycle of births goes on until liberation (moksha).
The text then gives an image for the role of astrology: "Just as a lamp illumines objects in darkness", astrology reveals the effects of our past karma, good or bad. The planets show whether we are enjoying or suffering now because of our earlier actions. The reading of the prarabdha carried forward from the previous birth, it says, is what is called jataka, or astrology.
In his notes, Raman draws out an important point. The planets do not cause events; they indicate them. "Planets are only an index of things to happen." Astrology, in this view, does not impose a fate. It lights up a pattern that our own actions have already set in motion.
Is it past karma or present karma?
The Prasna Marga then raises a subtle question. If the birth chart shows the karma of past lives, what use is a horary chart? Its answer is that the horary chart helps to show whether a person is now reaping the fruit of a past life or of actions done in this life.
The method is to compare the two charts. If the birth chart shows a good period but the horary chart shows a difficult one, the person is experiencing the results of wrong actions done in this life. If the birth chart is difficult but the horary chart is favourable, they are enjoying the fruit of good actions done in this life. If both charts agree, the person is living out the karma of a previous birth.
This matters because it shows that, for the Prasna Marga, karma is not only something brought from the past. It is being made all the time, and its results can appear within the same life.
Dridha and adridha: the two kinds of karma
In its fourteenth chapter, the Prasna Marga says that the results of the planetary periods (dashas) arise from karma, and that this karma is of two kinds: dridha and adridha.
Dridha karma means firm or fixed karma. According to the text, it arises from conscious action: deeds done knowingly and deliberately, whether in thought, in speech or in body.
Adridha karma means non-firm karma. It arises from unintentional action: deeds done without full awareness or intent.
The distinction is not about whether an action was good or bad. Both kinds can be either. It is about the intention behind the action. What is done with full awareness leaves a firm imprint. What is done without intent leaves a lighter one.
Thought, word and deed in the chart
The Prasna Marga goes on to show how the chart reveals through which channel a karma was created. Whether dridha or adridha, karma may arise from the mind, from speech or from the body.
The text links each of these to a house of the chart. A malefic planet in the fifth house points to karma created through thought. A malefic in the second house points to karma created through speech. A malefic in the tenth house points to karma created through action.
This follows the natural meanings of those houses: the fifth is the house of the mind and intelligence, the second the house of speech, and the tenth the house of deeds and work in the world.
Remedies and their limits
The Prasna Marga is also one of the great texts on remedies. It does not treat suffering as something to be accepted blindly. In its chapters on illness, it says that the deeper cause of affliction is wrongdoing in the past, shown by planets in unfavourable places. It then prescribes atonement through repentance, charitable gifts, feeding others, prayer and fire offerings (homa), following the Karma Vipaka tradition.
In its fifteenth chapter, it explains how to judge whether the karma about to unfold in a person's life is favourable or unfavourable, with Jupiter's condition as a key guide. Different kinds of wrong action, it says, fall under the governance of different deities. By propitiating the deity concerned, the misery can be reduced to a certain degree.
The wording is careful. Remedies are said to ease suffering, not to erase karma at will. This fits the logic of dridha and adridha. Karma that was formed lightly, without intent, is the more open to change. Karma that was formed knowingly and deliberately holds firm.
The text also points beyond remedies. In the chapter on longevity, Raman's summary notes that the karma revealed by the horoscope can be overcome through atma-jnana, self-realisation. Ritual may soften karma, but self-knowledge goes to its root.
What this teaching offers
The Prasna Marga gives jyotish a balanced view of fate and freedom. A birth chart is not a sentence passed by the planets. It is a lamp showing the shape of a person's own past actions.
Some of that shape is firm, because it was made with full awareness. Some is soft, because it was made without intent.
A note on later teaching: many modern teachers of jyotish describe a third, mixed category, dridha-adridha, between the two. This three-fold scheme is a later way of teaching the idea. The Prasna Marga itself speaks of only two kinds of karma.
Sources
- Prasna Marga, Part I, English translation with notes by B. V. Raman (Chapter I, stanzas 33 to 44; Chapters XIII to XV).
- Wikipedia, "Prasna Marga".