D-40 Khavedamsha, the Chart of Maternal Legacy

The Khavedamsha chart, D-40, is the fourteenth of the sixteen divisional charts, formed by dividing each sign into forty parts. It signifies auspicious and inauspicious effects in general and, in particular, the legacy inherited through the maternal line, the good and ill fortune passed down from the mother's side. It is also called the Swavedamsha. An astrologer consults the D-40 for the overall balance of favourable and unfavourable indications and for matrilineal inheritance. The chart is one of the shodashavarga, the finer harmonic subdivisions through which jyotisha magnifies each department of a single nativity. These are the interpretive conventions of the tradition; the divisional charts are a mathematical method for extracting focused readings from the same planetary positions recorded at the moment of birth.

The classical rule governing the forty divisions of the Khavedamsha is one of the least consistently transmitted in the sixteen-fold set, and modern manuals differ on its precise construction more than they do for the D-1 through D-12; what is agreed across sources is its place in the vimshopaka bala weighting as one of the finer, lower-weighted charts, consulted as a supplementary check on general fortune and specifically on the maternal line rather than as a chart with the settled, heavily cross-referenced status of the Navamsha or Dashamsha.