Divisional Charts (Vargas) in Vedic Astrology

Divisional charts, called vargas in Sanskrit (the word means a division or a class), are the secondary charts Vedic astrology derives from the birth chart to examine one area of life at a time. Every varga is built the same way: each sign of the zodiac is divided into a fixed number of parts, each part is assigned to a sign of its own, and a new chart is assembled from those assignments. Divide each sign into ten parts and you get the D-10, the career chart. Divide into seven and you get the D-7, the chart of children. The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra describes sixteen such charts, a family known as the shodashavarga, the sixteen divisions.

This page is the map of the whole system: what a varga is, how one is built, all sixteen charts in one table, how the classics group and score them, and the two rules that keep a reading honest. Each of the working charts links to its own full guide.

What is a divisional chart?

A divisional chart is a magnifying glass trained on one corner of life. The birth chart, the rashi chart, gives the broad picture of a whole life. A varga takes a single theme, career, children, property, parents, and redraws the sky at a finer resolution tuned to that one question.

The reason for the whole family is practical. Life is not one question. Career is not marriage, and children are not property, yet in the birth chart a single house often has to carry several themes at once. The classics give each great theme its own finer lens, so that no one house bears the whole weight of an answer.

How a varga is built

A varga never recasts the planets. It asks one question of each planet: within your sign, which part of the division did you fall in? Every part belongs to a sign, assigned by a counting rule specific to that varga. Re-place each planet in its part's sign, mark the new ascendant, and the chart is done.

A worked example, using the D-10, where each part is 3 degrees wide. Take a planet at 17 degrees 20 minutes of Leo. That degree falls in the sixth part of the sign (15 to 18 degrees). Leo is an odd sign, and the D-10 rule counts from the sign itself for odd signs, so the sixth sign counted from Leo is Capricorn. In the D-10, that planet sits in Capricorn.

Each varga has its own counting rule, stated in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra; the individual guides below give the rule for each chart. Once built, a varga is read with the same tools as any chart: houses, house lords, planetary dignity, aspects, and karakas, the natural significators of each life theme.

The sixteen vargas at a glance

The table below lists the full shodashavarga in order, with each chart's division and the area of life the classics assign to it. The charts covered in depth on this site link to their full guides.

The navamsa, the D-9, is the most consulted varga of all and has a full guide of its own; these pages cover the rest of the working toolkit. If you want the short version of the whole table, the guide on which chart answers which question compresses it into a decision list.

The everyday toolkit: D-10, D-7, D-4, D-12

Four vargas come up in ordinary readings again and again, because they cover the questions people actually ask. The D-10 is drawn whenever the question is profession, rank, or life in the public eye. The D-7 refines the matter of children, read gently and always with timing. The D-4 and the D-12 form a natural pair: the ground beneath you, and the people before you. One is the place you stand, the other the people you stand upon.

In every case the pattern is the same. The birth chart speaks first, through the relevant house and karaka. The varga is then drawn to fill in detail the broad chart only hinted at. A planet weak in the birth chart but strong in the varga can lift that area of life, and the reverse can quietly hold it back.

The deeper charts: D-30 and D-60

Two charts go past the everyday questions into the subtler layers of a life. The D-30, the trimshamsha, is the chart of difficulties and of the strength of character that meets them. The D-60, the shashtiamsha, divides each sign into sixty half-degree parts and is treated by the classics as the imprint of accumulated karma, the oldest story a chart carries.

The D-60 deserves a special note. Because its parts are so small, the classical weighting schemes give it the largest single share of points among all the divisional charts, and for the same reason it is the most sensitive of all to an inaccurate birth time. The full guide covers both charts and the care each one asks for.

Vargottama: the same sign at every scale

When a planet occupies the same sign in the birth chart and in a divisional chart, it is called vargottama, meaning best in division. It is as if the planet keeps its footing as you zoom in, the same sign holding it at every resolution. The tradition reads a vargottama planet as markedly strengthened.

The term is used most often of the navamsa: a planet in the same sign in D-1 and D-9 is the classic vargottama. Finding one is a small joy in any reading, because it means the finer chart confirms rather than complicates what the birth chart already said.

The varga groups, from shadvarga to shodashavarga

The classics do not read the vargas at random. They gather them into named groups and weigh a planet across the whole group at once. The shadvarga is a set of six: D-1, D-2, D-3, D-9, D-12, and D-30. The saptavarga adds the D-7 to make seven.

Two larger groups extend the method. The dashavarga, ten charts, adds the D-10, D-16, and D-60 to the saptavarga. The shodashavarga is the complete family of sixteen listed in the table above. The names matter less than the takeaway: the more of these finer charts in which a planet sits well, the more genuinely strong it is.

Vimshopaka bala: the score out of twenty

The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra turns that idea into arithmetic with vimshopaka bala, a strength score out of twenty points. Within a chosen varga group, each chart carries a fixed weight, and a planet earns its share of each weight by sitting well in that chart. The weights always sum to twenty.

In the shadvarga scheme, for example, the birth chart carries 6 points, the hora 2, the drekkana 4, the navamsa 5, the dwadashamsha 2, and the trimshamsha 1. In the larger schemes the weights spread thinner, and the D-60 takes the largest single share, 5 points in the dashavarga and 4 in the shodashavarga, ahead of the birth chart itself. Good software computes the totals for you; the idea is what matters. A planet that shines in chart after chart is reliably strong. One that looks bright in the birth chart but falters across the finer charts has less to give than it appears.

Two rules that keep varga reading honest

First, a varga is only as trustworthy as the birth time it was cast on. The finer the division, the faster the divisional ascendant moves: a few minutes of clock error can shift a D-60 placement into the wrong sign entirely. When the recorded time is rough, lean on the coarser charts and treat the finest ones lightly. The page on why birth time matters covers how much error each kind of reading can absorb.

Second, never read a varga in isolation. A divisional chart confirms, refines, or qualifies the birth chart; it never overturns it on its own. If the two disagree, you hold both, weigh them, and let the dasha, the planetary periods, and the transits show when each speaks loudest. The vargas are a chorus, not a soloist.

Where to go next

Start with the question you actually have, and let it pick the chart: the which-chart-for-what guide maps common questions to their vargas in one table. Then read the full guide for that chart, beginning with the D-10 for career if your question is work. To see your own divisional charts calculated from your birth details, run a free birth chart; every varga on this page is derived from the same three inputs of date, time, and place.