D4 Chaturthamsa Chart: The Four Quarters of Every Sign

The D4 Chart’s Name and What It Divides

The D4 is the Chaturthamsha (चतुर्थांश), from chaturtha, fourth, and amsha, a part: the chart of quarters. It cuts each 30° sign of the birth chart into four equal pieces of 7°30′ and gives every piece a sign of its own. A graha’s D4 sign is the sign of the quarter its degree falls in, and the D4 lagna is found the same way from the lagna’s degree. In the order of the sixteen divisional charts set out in Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra it is the fourth, after the rashi, the hora and the drekkana; where it sits among the others is laid out on the shodashvarga hub, D1 to D60. This page is the arithmetic of the Parashari D4 only.

Four Quarters, Four Kendra Signs

The rule is short. The first quarter of a sign is that sign itself; the second is the 4th sign from it, the third the 7th and the fourth the 10th. Each step jumps three signs forward instead of one, so the four quarters land on the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th signs counted from the sign being divided. Those four places are the kendras, the angles, and the result holds for all twelve rows of the table below: whatever sign a graha occupies, its D4 sign is one of the four kendra signs from it. Unlike the navamsa, the rule does not change with the kind of sign. Odd or even, movable or fixed, every sign starts from itself.

Each cell gives the D4 sign and its lord. Read down any column and all twelve signs turn up once; read the whole grid and each sign appears four times, once in each column.

A Sign’s D4 Never Leaves Its Mobility Group

The four kendras from any sign are all of one kind. Count the 4th, 7th and 10th from a movable sign and each is movable; the same holds for fixed and dual signs. So the D4 keeps a graha inside its own mobility group. A graha in a movable sign has a movable D4 sign, one in a fixed sign a fixed one, one in a dual sign a dual one, and the table never crosses between them.

One consequence is that the twelve rows hold only three different sets of signs. The four movable signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, share one set and simply start it at different points; the fixed signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, share a second; the dual signs, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, a third. The lords follow. The movable rows are owned by Mars, Moon, Venus and Saturn; the fixed rows by Venus, Sun, Mars and Saturn. The dual rows have only two lords between them, Mercury and Jupiter, because those two rule all four dual signs. The Moon owns a D4 sign only in movable rows and the Sun only in fixed ones.

The terms rashi and lagna themselves are set out in the rashi and lagna guide. For the D4 the point is narrow: a graha’s D4 sign is always its own rashi or one of the three other signs of the same type, never a sign of another type.

The Opening 7°30′ Repeats the Sign

Because every sign begins from itself, a graha in the first 7°30′ of any sign has the same sign in the birth chart and in the D4, and nowhere else in the sign does that happen. It is the D4’s counterpart of the navamsa’s single repeating arc, but the two land in different places: the navamsa arc moves to the start, middle or end of a sign by its type, as the vargottama page shows, while the D4 repeat is always the opening quarter. A graha at 2° of Leo, for instance, repeats Leo in the D4 but not in the D9. The name vargottama is normally kept for the D1–D9 match, and this page does not stretch it to the D4.

Finding a Graha’s D4 Sign: One Worked Example

Take a graha at 10° of Taurus. Divide the degree by 7°30′: it is past the first quarter and short of the third, so it sits in the 2nd quarter, from 7°30′ to 15°00′. The 2nd quarter is the 4th sign from Taurus, which is Leo, so the graha’s D4 sign is Leo, ruled by the Sun. The table row for Taurus gives the same answer without counting. To build a whole D4 chart, do this for the lagna and each graha, then place them in a chart with the D4 lagna sign as its first house. The free kundli gives the lagna degree; the Kundli report lists the degree of every graha as well.

The lagna is the delicate one. A quarter is 7°30′ wide, so a D4 lagna close to a quarter’s edge depends on the birth time being right, and a chart cast with a different ayanamsa moves every degree a little. A graha within a fraction of a degree of 7°30′, 15°00′ or 22°30′ has a D4 sign that can differ between two software packages.

What the D4 Is Consulted For

The Parashari list of the sixteen vargas gives each chart one area of life, and against the D4 it puts fortune (bhagya), beside the spouse for the D9. In later Parashari practice the D4 is also read for property and residence. Some writers go further and tie it to settling abroad.

This page does not forecast any of those. It does not say whether a reader will own property, move house or settle in another country, and nothing in the table above answers that. A sign in a quarter is a fact of degrees; what an astrologer makes of it depends on the D4 lagna, the houses each graha rules and occupies there, and the birth chart it is read against, none of which a sign table holds.