Shodasha Varga (十六分盤)

The Sixteen Divisional Charts — One Birth, Sixteen Lenses on a Life

Overview

The Shodasha Varga (षोडशवर्ग, 'sixteen divisions') is the heart of Vedic chart analysis and the feature that most sets Jyotish apart from Western astrology. A birth chart, the Rasi or D1, shows where the planets sit across the twelve signs — but Vedic astrology never reads it alone. Each sign is subdivided again and again, and every subdivision is rebuilt into a whole new chart that governs one slice of life: the Navamsa (D9) for marriage, dharma and inner strength; the Dasamsa (D10) for career and public standing; the Saptamsa (D7) for children; the Chaturthamsa (D4) for home and property; the Dwadasamsa (D12) for parents and ancestry; the Trimsamsa (D30) for adversity and character; the Shashtiamsa (D60) for the karma carried from past lives. Where the Rasi tells you a planet is in Pisces, the divisional charts tell you what that placement actually delivers in each department of life — a planet brilliant in the body-chart can collapse in the Navamsa, or a quiet planet can reveal hidden strength in the D10. askTIAN computes all sixteen classical vargas for every body with exact sidereal astronomy and the canonical Parashara rules, surfaces them honestly as a symbolic framework, and pins every contested convention to the de-facto standard.

Origin & history

The divisional charts are set out in Parashara's 'Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra' (BPHS), the encyclopedic root-text of Vedic astrology, in its sixth chapter on the Shodasavarga. Parashara names the sixteen divisions — Rasi (D1), Hora (D2), Drekkana (D3), Chaturthamsa (D4), Saptamsa (D7), Navamsa (D9), Dasamsa (D10), Dwadasamsa (D12), Shodasamsa (D16), Vimsamsa (D20), Chaturvimsamsa (D24), Bhamsa (D27), Trimsamsa (D30), Khavedamsa (D40), Akshavedamsa (D45) and Shashtiamsa (D60) — and gives, for each, the exact rule that maps a degree of a sign to a sign in the divisional chart. Most divisions split a 30° sign into equal parts and count from a starting sign that depends on whether the sign is movable, fixed or dual (or odd or even); a few are special — the Trimsamsa divides a sign into five unequal arcs ruled by the five non-luminary planets, and the Shashtiamsa cuts it into sixty half-degree portions. The Navamsa is treated as second in importance only to the Rasi itself, so central that a planet holding the same sign in both is given its own name — Vargottama, 'best in division'.

For well over a millennium the varga charts have been the working core of Indian horoscopy. A traditional astrologer judges any matter — a marriage, a career move, the fortunes of children — not from the Rasi alone but from the relevant divisional chart and the strength a planet carries across many vargas at once. That cross-chart strength was formalised as Vimshopaka Bala, a weighted score (each scheme summing to twenty) that grades how well a planet holds dignity as the chart is magnified, and as the Parijata-to-Sridhama ladder of dignity tiers. The deeper one divides, the more the chart depends on an exact birth time: the Shashtiamsa changes sign every two minutes of clock time, which is why classical authors prized it yet warned it demands a rectified birth moment. The sixteen rules themselves are remarkably stable across sources, though a handful of genuine school-differences survive — the start-sign of the D24, the seed of the D60, and the order of the sixty Shashtiamsa deity-names for even signs. askTIAN ships the exact, agreed sign-placements, pins the few contested conventions to the BPHS and Jagannatha Hora default, and leaves the source-divergent deity-name layer and the friendship-based Vimshopaka Bala explicitly out of scope rather than guess.

How it works

askTIAN converts the birth date, time, timezone and place to a single instant, computes the seven classical planets, the two lunar nodes and the Lagna with its own Meeus-precision ephemeris, and applies the Lahiri ayanamsa to place each on the sidereal zodiac — exactly the path the Jyotish and Ashtakavarga endpoints use, so all three agree on the base chart. For each body it then applies the sixteen Parashara division rules as closed-form arithmetic: a sign's degree determines which equal (or, for the Trimsamsa, unequal) part the body falls in, and a per-varga starting rule — keyed to the sign's modality or its odd/even parity — fixes the destination sign. The result is, for every body, its sign in all sixteen divisional charts, plus a per-chart 'layout' view showing where the whole set of bodies falls in each division. On top of the placements the engine detects Vargottama (a body in the same sign in D1 and D9), counts how many of the sixteen vargas echo a body's D1 sign (a recognised concentration-of-strength signal), and computes an own-or-exaltation dignity index for the seven planets across the four classical weighting schemes — Shadvarga, Saptavarga, Dashavarga and Shodashavarga — whose Vimshopaka weights each sum to twenty, an invariant the engine enforces. The placement formulas are not merely transcribed: they are cross-validated cell-for-cell against an independent external chart (Albert Einstein's, with sidereal longitudes from published software), and every D2, D3, D9 and D10 cell reproduces exactly. A transparent 0–100 emphasis score, computed in code, summarises the chart's mean Shadvarga dignity; it is a symbolic measure, not a probability.

Good for

Use cases

Navamsa & Career Reading

Send a birth chart and the API returns every body's sign in the D9 (marriage, dharma, inner strength) and D10 (career, status) charts, with Vargottama flags — the two divisional charts a Vedic astrologer reaches for first. A clean, fully deterministic spine for a marriage-and-vocation report, no LLM required.

Sixteen-Chart Dashboard

The full Shodasha Varga in one call: each of ten bodies (seven grahas, the Lagna and Rahu/Ketu) placed across all sixteen divisions, plus a per-chart layout view. An app can render the complete divisional set the way professional Jyotish software does, from one birth input.

Cross-Chart Strength Scoring

The own/exaltation dignity index grades each planet across the Shadvarga, Saptavarga, Dashavarga and Shodashavarga schemes (each weighting summing to the invariant 20), letting a product show which planets stay strong as the chart is magnified — the basis of the classical Vimshopaka Bala, shipped transparently as an own/exaltation index.

Layer Over Jyotish & Ashtakavarga

Because all three Vedic endpoints share the same sidereal chart, an app can show the natal snapshot (Jyotish), the bindu strength map (Ashtakavarga) and the sixteen divisional charts (Varga) together — 'where the planets are', 'how supported each house is' and 'what each placement delivers, department by department' — from a single birth input.

Key terms

Varga / Shodasha Varga
A 'varga' is a divisional chart, built by subdividing each sign and rebuilding the parts into a new chart. The Shodasha Varga is the canonical set of sixteen — D1, D2, D3, D4, D7, D9, D10, D12, D16, D20, D24, D27, D30, D40, D45 and D60 — each governing a specific department of life.
Navamsa (D9)
The ninth-division chart, dividing each sign into nine parts of 3°20'. Second in importance only to the Rasi, it governs marriage, the spouse, dharma and the inner strength a planet truly carries. A planet weak in the D1 but strong in the D9 ultimately delivers; the reverse promises early shine that fades.
Vargottama
Literally 'best in division' — a body that holds the same sign in the Rasi (D1) and the Navamsa (D9). A classically strong, stable placement: the planet's promise carries unbroken from the body-chart into the soul-chart, and its results tend to be reliable.
Trimsamsa (D30)
The thirty-division chart, governing adversity, health vulnerabilities and moral character. Unlike the equal divisions, it splits a sign into five UNEQUAL arcs (5-5-8-7-5 degrees in odd signs, reversed in even) ruled by Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury and Venus — the five non-luminary planets.
Shashtiamsa (D60)
The sixty-division chart of half-degree portions, governing the subtle totality of results and past-life karma. BPHS weights it most heavily of all divisions, yet because each portion is only 0.5° wide it changes sign every two minutes of birth time and demands a rectified birth moment.
Vimshopaka Bala
A 'twenty-point strength' grading how well a planet holds dignity across a set of vargas, with fixed weights for each scheme (Shadvarga, Saptavarga, Dashavarga, Shodashavarga) that always sum to twenty. askTIAN ships an own/exaltation-only version of this index and labels it as such; the full five-fold-relationship calculation is deferred.
The varga groupings
Classical sets of vargas read together: the Shadvarga (6 charts), Saptavarga (7), Dashavarga (10) and Shodashavarga (16). Each has its own published Vimshopaka weights. The dignity index reports a planet's strength within each grouping, the smaller sets being the most commonly used in practice.

API

The askTIAN Shodasha Varga API computes all sixteen Vedic divisional charts with exact, self-verifying astronomy: ten bodies (seven classical grahas, the Lagna and Rahu/Ketu) placed on the sidereal (Lahiri) zodiac, then mapped into every division by the canonical Parashara rules. It returns each body's sign across all sixteen vargas, a per-chart layout view, Vargottama detection, a varga-repetition count, and an own/exaltation dignity index across the four classical weighting schemes (each summing to the invariant 20), plus a transparent 0–100 emphasis score and a fixed-section LLM reading. The division formulas are locked against BPHS and Jagannatha Hora and cross-validated cell-for-cell against an external chart. The numeric Vimshopaka Bala, the source-divergent deity-name layers and the contested even-sign Shashtiamsa ordering are out of scope and surfaced honestly; the higher vargas are flagged as hyper-sensitive to birth time. Set interpretation:false for structured data only.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/varga.compute — 7 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.