The D4 Chart (Chaturthamsha): Property and Home in Vedic Astrology

The D4, called the chaturthamsha (the fourth division) and in some texts the turyamsha, is the divisional chart Vedic astrology assigns to property and home: land, houses, fixed assets, and the deep comfort of having a roof and a ground of one's own. It is built by dividing each sign into four parts of 7 degrees 30 minutes, following the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra. The fourth house of the birth chart already speaks of home, land, and inner contentment; when the question turns specifically to property, whether it will come, whether it will last, and whether it will bring peace, the D4 is drawn to look closer.

This page covers the D4 on its own. For the system behind all divisional charts, the counting logic and the rules for weighing them, start with the divisional charts. The D4 also pairs naturally with the D12, the chart of parents, and the pairing is covered below.

The D4 at a glance

How the D4 is calculated

Each sign's 30 degrees divide into four parts of 7 degrees 30 minutes, and the parts map to the four angles. The first quarter of a sign belongs to that sign itself, the second quarter to the fourth sign from it, the third to the seventh, and the last to the tenth. The same rule serves every sign, odd or even.

A worked example. Say the Moon sits at 20 degrees of Cancer. Twenty degrees falls in the third part of the sign, the band from 15 to 22 degrees 30 minutes, and the third part belongs to the seventh sign from Cancer, which is Capricorn. In the D4, the Moon occupies Capricorn. Convert every planet and the ascendant the same way and the chaturthamsha is complete, ready to be read with the ordinary tools of houses, lords, and dignity.

What the D4 shows

The D4 reads the ground beneath a life: whether land and home come easily or with effort, whether what is acquired stays, and what kind of place a person ends up calling their own. Property questions that the birth chart's fourth house can only sketch get a full chart's resolution here.

There is a sweetness in this chart that reaches past bricks and acres. The fourth house is also the house of the heart's contentment, of feeling settled, held, and at home in one's own life, and the D4 carries that side of the theme too. A strong chaturthamsha speaks of owning a house, and it speaks just as clearly of the deeper peace that good ground can bring. The chart is read for both.

How to read a D4

Begin at the D4's own fourth house: its sign, the planets standing in it, and the condition of its lord. A dignified fourth lord in a good house of the D4 is the core of a strong property reading, and affliction there describes effort or delay rather than refusal, with its management read alongside.

The D4's own ascendant and its lord are read alongside, as the person in their role as householder: how naturally they put down roots, and how much of their sense of self is tied to place. A strong D4 ascendant lord describes someone for whom settling comes easily, wherever the settling happens.

Two significators come next. Mars is the classical karaka (natural significator) of land and immovable property, so its dignity in the D4 colors acquisitions of ground and buildings. The Moon stands for home as a felt place, the settled hearth rather than the deed of sale. Then the cross-chart move: track where the lord of the birth chart's fourth house has landed in the D4. When it arrives well-placed, the promise of the broad chart carries into the fine one, and the two charts tell one story.

One boundary worth knowing: within the divisional charts the classics give vehicles and comforts their own finer lens, the D16 or shodashamsha. The D4 concentrates on land, home, and fixed assets, and questions of conveyance sit better with the D16 and the birth chart's fourth house together.

The D4 and the D12: ground and lineage

Keep the D4 and the D12 as a natural pair. The chaturthamsha looks to the ground beneath you, your land and your home. The dwadashamsha looks to those who came before you, your parents and your line. One is the place you stand; the other, the people you stand upon.

The pairing is practical as well as poetic. Property so often arrives through family, by inheritance, gift, or the family home itself, that the two charts get read in sequence when the question touches inherited ground. Both are read, always, alongside their houses in the birth chart, never instead of them.

When the D4 looks strained

An afflicted chaturthamsha reads as effort, delay, or churn in matters of property, and each of those is workable once it is named. The classical method pairs every strained point with its support in the same reading: the benefic aspecting the fourth house, the dignity of the lord that carries it, the easier promise in the birth chart above it.

Two habits turn a strained D4 from a worry into a plan. First, weigh it against the birth chart's fourth house, because a varga qualifies the broad chart and never overrules it; a sound birth-chart fourth beneath a strained D4 reads as a good outcome reached by a longer road. Second, lean on timing, since difficult indications are bounded by their periods, and the same timeline that marks the slow years marks the seasons when ground is gained. A vargottama fourth lord, holding the same sign in both charts, settles the question further in the chart's favor.

The D4 and timing

The D4 describes what a life holds in property; the dasha, the planetary period system, says when it arrives. The classic seasons for acquiring a home are the periods of the fourth lord in either chart, of Mars as the land significator, and of planets occupying the fourth house of the D4.

So the working method runs in two passes: read the chaturthamsha for the shape of the matter, then lay the period timeline beside it. A strong D4 whose key periods arrive in mid-life describes a later but lasting home; the same chart with early periods describes ground gained young. Each D4 part spans 7 degrees 30 minutes, a wide band as vargas go, so the chart tolerates ordinary birth-time uncertainty better than the finer divisions; the birth time guide covers the limits. For where the D4 sits among its siblings, see the which-chart-for-what guide, and to see your own chaturthamsha calculated, run a free birth chart.