Graha Maitri Koota in Guna Milan: Points, Friendship Table, Meaning

Graha Maitri Koota checks one thing. It asks whether the ruling planets of the two Moon signs are friends. It carries up to 5 of the 36 points in Guna Milan, the classical system for matching two birth charts.

What Graha Maitri means

The words are simple. Graha means planet. Maitri means friendship. A koota is any one of the eight tests, and this is the fifth of them.

Every Moon sign has a ruling planet, called its lord. Aries and Scorpio belong to Mars. Taurus and Libra belong to Venus. Gemini and Virgo belong to Mercury. Cancer belongs to the Moon. Leo belongs to the Sun. Sagittarius and Pisces belong to Jupiter. Capricorn and Aquarius belong to Saturn.

Graha Maitri asks how the two lords treat each other. The classical texts keep a fixed table of planet friendships. It lists who each planet counts as a friend, an enemy, or neutral. This table is permanent. It is the same in every chart. There is also a second kind of friendship that changes from chart to chart, called temporary friendship. This test does not use it. The classical texts use only the permanent table here.

Why does this matter for marriage? In the classical view, the Moon stands for the mind. The lord of the Moon sign sets the mind's basic style. It shapes how a person thinks, reacts, and calms down. When the two lords are friends, the two minds understand each other easily. When they are enemies, each partner has to work harder to be understood.

How the points are scored

There are three steps. First, find each partner's Moon sign and its lord. Second, read the friendship table in both directions. How does the boy's lord treat the girl's lord? How does her lord treat his? Third, grade the pair.

Here is the permanent friendship table from the classical texts:

Planet	Counts as friends	Counts as enemies	Neutral toward
Sun	Moon, Mars, Jupiter	Venus, Saturn	Mercury
Moon	Sun, Mercury	none	Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn
Mars	Sun, Moon, Jupiter	Mercury	Venus, Saturn
Mercury	Sun, Venus	Moon	Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
Jupiter	Sun, Moon, Mars	Mercury, Venus	Saturn
Venus	Mercury, Saturn	Sun, Moon	Mars, Jupiter
Saturn	Mercury, Venus	Sun, Moon, Mars	Jupiter

Notice one thing. The table is not always equal both ways. The Moon counts no planet as an enemy. But Mercury counts the Moon as an enemy. So a friendship can run one way and not the other. The grading below allows for exactly that.

Relationship between the two lords	Points
Same planet rules both Moon signs	5
Friends both ways	5
Friend one way, neutral the other	4
Neutral both ways	3
Enemy one way, neutral the other	1
Friend one way, enemy the other	0.5
Enemies both ways	0

Two quick examples. Take a Taurus Moon (lord Venus) with a Capricorn Moon (lord Saturn). Venus calls Saturn a friend. Saturn calls Venus a friend. Friends both ways, so the full 5 points. Now take a Cancer Moon (lord Moon) with a Virgo Moon (lord Mercury). The Moon calls Mercury a friend. But Mercury calls the Moon an enemy. Friend one way, enemy the other, so 0.5 points.

What a high score means

A score of 4 or 5 says the two minds get along easily. Daily decisions about money, food, festivals, and in-laws get settled by talking, not by contest. Disagreements come, as in every home. But they pass without leaving marks. The classical texts treat friendship between the two lords as one of the strongest signs of mental harmony in a match.

A 3 is genuinely fine. Neutral lords neither help nor block. The couple builds its own understanding, and nothing in the chart works against it.

Families sometimes ask why this test uses the Moon signs and not the rising signs. The reason is simple. The rising sign shapes how a person meets the outside world. The Moon shapes how they live inside the home: moods, comfort, and reactions at the end of a long day. Married life happens at home. So matching weighs the Moon.

What a low score means

A score of 1, 0.5, or 0 says the two minds work in different ways. One partner may want to settle a matter directly. The other may want to soften it first. One may follow principle where the other seeks comfort. Neither way is wrong. They simply ask different things of the day. The couple needs more patience in the first years, while each learns to read the other.

A low score is not a verdict. Graha Maitri is 5 points out of 36. A pair can lose all 5 here and still get a strong total on the full count.

How grading replaces cancellation here

Bhakoot, Gana, and Nadi work as pass-or-fail tests. So the classical texts attach cancellation rules to them — conditions that turn a fail back into a pass. Graha Maitri does not need that. Its seven-step scale already grades every level between friends-both-ways and enemies-both-ways. A middling pair simply gets a middling score, not a flagged defect.

This test also plays a second role, and families often miss it. The same lord friendship measured here is used to cancel defects elsewhere in the match. The classical texts say that when the two Moon-sign lords are friends of each other, Bhakoot dosha — the defect that test can flag — is cancelled. One accepted route to cancelling Gana dosha runs through the same friendship. So a strong Graha Maitri does double duty. It earns its own points, and it repairs damage in the heavier tests.

If your score is low

First, read all eight tests, not one. The heavier tests move the total far more than this one — Nadi carries 8 points and Bhakoot carries 7. Second, check whether the low pair still shares a one-way friendship or a common sign lord. Those details soften how the rest of the match reads. Third, remember what this test measures. It measures how easily two minds understand each other. It does not measure love, and it does not decide fate.

The practical step is to run the full 36-point count and see where the pair actually lands — our kundli matching tool computes all eight from both birth charts, applies the classical cancellation rules automatically, and shows the complete picture. You can also read each partner's full chart with the kundli report. One friendship table is a start. The full picture is what the decision deserves.