D12 Dwadashamsa Chart: Name, Meaning and the 12×12 Table

Of the sixteen Parashari divisional charts, the D12 is the only one in which each sign’s parts pass through every one of the twelve signs exactly once. Every sign is cut into twelve parts of 2°30′, the first part takes the sign itself, and each part after that takes the next sign. There is no split between odd and even signs and none between movable, fixed and dual: one rule serves all twelve. The result is that each sign of 30° holds a complete zodiac in miniature, and a graha’s D12 sign can be found with one line of arithmetic.

The D12 Chart Name: Dwadashamsha (द्वादशांश)

Dvadasha means twelve and amsha a part. The name turns up in several spellings, Dwadashamsha, Dwadasamsa and Dvadashamsha among them, and in Hindi as द्वादशांश कुंडली; all of them name the same twelfth-part chart. Its place among the other fifteen is set out on the divisional charts hub.

The Shortcut: Rashi Sign Plus the Number of Whole Parts

Because the count always starts at the sign itself, the D12 sign of any degree is the rashi sign moved forward by the number of complete 2°30′ steps already passed. Take the degree within the sign, divide by 2.5 and drop the fraction; count that many signs on from the rashi sign. At 11°15′ Scorpio, four whole parts have gone by, and four signs on from Scorpio is Pisces. The page checks this shortcut against the full Parashari table at 1,440 sample degrees, and it agrees at every one.

Put the other way round, the part number is the house count. The 1st part is the sign itself, the 4th part (from 7°30′) is the 4th sign from it, the 9th part (from 20°00′) is the 9th, and the 12th part, 27°30′–30°00′, is the 12th, the sign just behind it. That is true of every sign without exception, which is not the case in charts such as the D10, where odd and even signs count from different starting points.

The 12×12 Table, Read Part by Part

Here the table is laid out with the twelve parts down the side and the twelve rashi signs across the top, so each column is one sign’s run through the zodiac.

A Grid That Only Shifts

Read down any column of the grid and the signs are in zodiac order; move from one rashi sign to the next and the whole run has moved along by one. Taurus’s parts are Aries’s parts with the first one taken off the front and put on the end: Aries runs Aries, Taurus, Gemini and on to Pisces, Taurus runs Taurus, Gemini and on to Aries. The rows behave the same way, each one the row above moved one sign along. So every column holds all twelve signs, every row holds all twelve, and across the 144 cells each sign turns up exactly twelve times. A grid of this kind is what mathematicians call a Latin square; the D12 is a cyclic one, a single run of the zodiac written out twelve times from twelve starting points.

The gold cells mark where a sign gives back its own name. They sit only in the first row: every sign is its own D12 sign in its opening 2°30′ and nowhere else in its 30°. A graha in that opening arc holds the same sign in the rashi and the D12, the twelfth-part counterpart of the rashi–navamsa agreement described on the vargottama page.

A Two-Sign Step at Every Sign Boundary

Inside a sign the D12 sign moves on one sign every 2°30′. At the boundary between two signs it moves on two. The last part of Aries is Pisces; the first part of Taurus is Taurus, the 3rd sign from Pisces. The sign stepped over is always the one being left, here Aries, which had its turn in the opening part of its own sign. The same step happens at all twelve joins of the zodiac, so a graha or lagna near the end of a sign can change its D12 sign by two with a slight change of degree. With parts this short, the lagna’s D12 sign depends on an accurately recorded birth time.

What the D12 Chart Is Used For in the Parashari List

The list of sixteen vargas in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra gives the D12 to the parents. The site’s houses table carries the same pair in the main chart: it lists the mother’s influence among the keys of the 4th house and the father’s among those of the 9th, with the Moon as karaka for the mother and the Sun for the father. How a reader combines those houses and karakas with the D12 is a matter for the whole chart and is not attempted here. For the way a divisional chart is cast and set beside the rashi chart, the navamsa (D9) guide works through the ninth division.

No Reading of a Parent’s Health, Life Span or Death

Because the D12 belongs to the parents in the Parashari list, it is sometimes approached with questions about what it shows about a mother’s or father’s health, how long a parent will live, or when a parent might die. This page answers none of those, and the site does not give such readings from any chart. A parent is a separate person with a birth chart of their own, and a forecast of their body, their safety or their death read off someone else’s chart is a claim about a third party that the site does not make. Questions about a parent’s health belong with that parent and their doctor. The page also does not say what a D12 placement means for the relationship between a person and their parents, or rate any cell of the table as good or bad.

What it does give is the arithmetic: for any graha or lagna degree, which D12 sign it falls in. A free kundli gives the lagna degree, the Kundli report gives every graha’s, and the shortcut or the table above does the rest. In Hindi: द्वादशांश कुंडली (D12) क्या है: नाम, नियम और 12×12 तालिका.