Divisional Charts (Vargas) in Vedic Astrology

Three things determine a placement: how many parts the sign is cut into, which part the planet falls in, and which sign the counting starts from. The last one is where the sixteen rules differ. Some count from the sign itself, some from a sign fixed by the element of the D1 sign, some from a sign fixed by whether the sign is movable, fixed or dual, and some by whether it is odd or even.

The Trimshamsa (D30) is the exception that catches implementations out: its five parts are unequal — 5°, 5°, 8°, 7°, 5° — and Cancer and Leo never appear in it at all. Its ascendant is consequently far less time-sensitive than 120 ÷ 30 would suggest.

We compute all of them from raw sidereal longitudes in integer arc-seconds with half-open interval boundaries, because deriving a sixtieth-division placement from a longitude already rounded to arc-minutes is how you get a confidently wrong answer.

The rule of thumb is that a DN ascendant changes sign roughly every 120 ÷ N minutes. It is an average that varies with latitude by tens of percent, so we never print it without the hedge — and it does not apply to the D30, whose five parts are unequal, so the registry carries that chart's own figure instead of the formula.

Where a real chart exists we do better than the rule of thumb. We recompute the actual ascendant at the edges of a birth-time window and count the varga sign boundaries the arc between them crosses. That gives the exact set of signs the ascendant could occupy. One means stable. Seven means seven, and we say seven rather than printing the middle one in bold.

Every varga in the table above is computed by the same engine from the same rule registry. The table's last column says where each one appears on this site, and every surface qualifies the high divisions when birth-time precision cannot support their ascendant.

The high divisions — D40, D45 and D60 — are the ones where an unqualified lagna would be a claim we cannot back. They are gated like every other division, as the line under the table says. Charts are free here; the gate qualifies a reading, it never paywalls one.

The table separates what Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Chapter 7 assigns to a varga from what practitioner tradition later added. Both are listed; they are not merged. D3 in BPHS is siblings' happiness — 'courage' is a tradition. D40 in BPHS is favourable and unfavourable effects in general — reading it for the mother's side of the family is a tradition. D45 in BPHS is 'all indications' — reading it for the father's side of the family is a tradition.

This distinction costs us nothing and it is the difference between citing a text and repeating a forum post.