Also called: Samudrika criteria · Marks of a fortunate hand · Brihat Samhita hand signs
Where on the hand: Read across the whole hand — palm colour and surface, wrists, fingers, nails, veins and lines together.
What it looks like: The classical fortunate hand is red or rosy, soft, smooth, warm, glossy and unperspiring, with a high full palm, invisible firm wrists, straight close-set fingers, red smooth nails, no visible veins, and glossy deep lines.
Drawn from the Brihat Samhita (Ch. 68, puruṣa-lakṣaṇa), the Garuda Purana's Samudrikam chapter (Ch. LXV) and the derived Hindi tradition, these are the verse-level criteria by which a hand is judged fortunate or unfortunate — the oldest layer of the whole system.
Auspicious signs
- **Red / rosy palms and hands** — those who have red hands and palms become very rich.
- **Soft, smooth, warm, glossy, unperspiring palms** — unperspiring palms are specifically named as a mark of kingship.
- **Well-formed, thick-set, firm, sweet-scented wrists with the joints invisible** — invisible, firm wrists signal kingship.
- **A high, full palm** — high palms suggest generosity; and round, hollow palms indicate wealth.
- **Fingers that lie close together with no gaps** — fingers adjoining one another mark a ruler; close fingers earn money.
- **Straight fingers**, long, without folds of skin over the joints, with long finger-joints — giving popularity and longevity.
- **Red, smooth, soft nails** — nails must be red for kingship.
- **Lines glossy and deep** — if the lines in the palm of the hand be glossy and deep, the man will be rich; if otherwise, he will be poor.
- **Three lines rising from the wrist and reaching the middle of the palm** — a royal sign.
- **No visible veins** — features without visible veins predict a life of comfort and fulfilment.
- **The auspicious figured marks** — conch shell (शंख), wheel/discus (चक्र), lotus (कमल), umbrella (छत्र), flag (ध्वज), fish (मत्स्य), pitcher/pot (कलश), goad (अंकुश), swastika, palanquin, elephant, horse, altar (वेदी), crocodile.
Inauspicious signs
- **Yellow palms** — yellow palms suggest prohibited relations.
- **Rough palms and dry palms** — indigence, infidelity, poverty.
- **Hollow palms** — hollow palms mean losing paternal inheritance.
- **Fingers set apart with visible gaps** — separated fingers indicate poverty; distantly placed fingers indicate poverty; disjoined fingers suggest hardship.
- **Flat, crooked or bent fingers** — servitude and poverty. Fingers bent upwards — death by weapons.
- **Very large fingers** — if the fingers of the hand be large, the person will be poor.
- **Loose joints** — sword-cuts; **cracked wrists** — poverty.
- **Fingers that crack or make a sound when handled** — those whose fingers make a sound when handled become degraded and poor.
- **Flat, split nails, or nails of a bad colour** — poverty and wrong views; a nail resembling the husk of paddy — a hermaphrodite.
- **Too many lines, or no lines at all** — poverty in both cases.
- **Broken lines** — falls and accidents.
- **Tiger-like hands** — wickedness. Monkey-like hands, by contrast, indicate wealth.
Read with care: These verses carry frank moral and social judgements — poverty, servitude, infidelity, wickedness, and a verse about a nail shape indicating a hermaphrodite — and they equate physical features with worth. They are presented here as the text of a classical tradition, not as claims about any person. The Brihat Samhita also contradicts itself on the hollow palm, praising a round hollow palm as wealth in one verse and condemning hollow palms as loss of inheritance in another.
those who have red hands and palms become very richBrihat Samhita
if the lines in the palm of the hand be glossy and deep, the man will be rich; if otherwise, he will be poorBrihat Samhita
those whose fingers make a sound when handled become degraded and poorGaruda Purana, Samudrikam
hollow palms mean losing paternal inheritanceBrihat Samhita
Palmistry is a traditional interpretive art, not a science. Offered for reflection and self-understanding — not medical, legal or financial advice.