The Book of Akbar 22: NOTE I. (from page 78.)

22

darijan, Vullers describes this as an astrological rule according to which a Sign is divided into three parts and a planet assigned to each. The original Persian form is darigan. It is the dreshkana or drekkana of the Hindus. Albiruni (II. 222) says, “Further, there are the triangles, called drekkana. There is no use in enlarging on them, as they are simply identical with the so-called draijanat of our system.” Unfortunately Albiruni did not foresee a time when Arabian and Persian astrology would be forgotten and his Canon Masudicus a sealed book. Sachau speaks of it (there are four copies in Europe and one in the Mulla Firoz Library at Bombay) as awaiting the combination of two editors a scholar and an astronomer, but probably, a third, an astrologer, would also be required. Colebrooke says (Asiatic Researches IX. 367) that the dreshkana, answer to the decani of European astrologers. The decani also correspond to the wajh of Arabian astrologers and according to the Lucknow editor of the Akbarnama, are called by Hindus surat, face. Decanus, according to Scaliger's notes on Manilius, (329) comes from the Latin and not from the Greek. The Luck. ed. gives an explanation of the word darijan (27) and the corresponding term drekkana is explained in Bengali books on astrology. It seems that every sign is divided into three parts each of 10°, that the planet who presides over the sign, is lord of the first 10°, that the next 10° are ruled by the planet who presides over the Fifth Sign from that under division, and that the third 10° or drekkana is ruled by the planet presiding over the Ninth Sign from that under division.
(With reference to the “triangles” in the above quotation from Sachau, it should be observed that the word in the original is alaslas, the plural of salis and should be translated thirds and not triangles. The drekkana are not triangles but ten degrees or thirds of a Sign.)