What are Divisional Charts in Vedic Astrology

Each rasi has many divisions. Divisions of rasis are again mapped to rasis. For example, a rasi may be divided into 4 parts and each part may be mapped to a different rasi. Ar may be divided into 4 parts and the 4 parts may be mapped to Ar, Cn, Li and Cp. Then the 4 parts of Ta may be mapped to Ta, Le, Sc and Aq. And so on. Like this, we may divide all rasis into 4 parts and map the 4 part to different rasis. We may also divide rasis to 9 parts and map each part into a rasi. We can have many different divisions.

Sage Parasara defined 16 different divisions of rasis. Jaimini and Tajaka writers mentioned 4 more divisions. It is possible that Parasara also dealt with these 4 special divisions in sections that are perhaps missing today. In addition, there are more higher and finer divisions that are normally not used.

Based on the rasis occupied by planets in various divisions, “divisional charts” are drawn. As we have seen before, we need to know the rasis occupied by planets, upagrahas, lagna and special lagnas to draw any chart. In every division, we divide the rasi into different parts, find the part containing each planet and see the rasi to which that part is mapped. Then we place the planet in that rasi in the chart corresponding to that division. We can draw a chart for each division. A planet can occupy different rasis in different divisions.

Chart of each division is called a divisional chart. Each divisional chart can be treated as a different chart and interpreted differently. Different aspects of life are seen in different divisional charts. Rasi chart is simply a special case of divisional charts. If we divide each rasi into just one part (i.e. in effect, no division), we get rasi chart.

In the rest of this website, everything we describe will be applicable to all divisional charts, unless we explicitly state a chart. We can apply all the principles to all the divisional charts, but we should see only specific matters in a divisional chart. The list of matters to be seen in each divisional chart will be given after the details of computation are presented.

In this website, D-n will denote the divisional chart based on the nth division of rasis, i.e. based on dividing rasis into n parts.