Origin 600 to 800 CE
The Bhamsha (D-27), also called Nakshatramsha or Saptavimshamsha, divides each sign into twenty-seven parts, echoing the twenty-seven nakshatras. It is the divisional chart of strengths and weaknesses, examining overall physical and inner strength, stamina, resilience, and vulnerabilities. It reveals the constitutional robustness of the native and the areas of latent frailty, and is consulted to assess general vitality and the capacity to withstand difficulty. It belongs to the sixteen vargas expounded by Parashara.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period600 to 800 CE 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra One of the shodashavarga, the sixteen divisional charts set out in the extant Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra. Nine of the sixteen appear only in this later layer; the graded schemes of six, seven, ten and sixteen divisions are the text's own, and the sixteen-fold set is not attested in the earlier literature. Origin PeriodThis finer divisional chart is set out in the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, which Pingree's survey situates within the sixth to eighth century CE stratum of classical Sanskrit horoscopy, later than the handful of vargas Varahamihira's earlier Brihat Jataka already names. 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Origin of the NameThe one name in the set that is not an ordinal. "Bha" is a star or a nakshatra, and the Bhamsha is the "star-part": one division for each of the twenty-seven nakshatras, which is why it is also called the saptavimshamsha. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerParashara, to whom the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra ascribes itself. The ascription is pseudepigraphic: Parashara is a sage of the epic and puranic literature, the extant text is a compilation of roughly the seventh to eighth century with later interpolation, and its surviving manuscripts are of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The system is "Parashari" by convention, not by authorship. 1 Identity
Also Known AsSaptavimshamsha, one division for each of the twenty seven nakshatras 1 Attributions
GovernsStrengths and weaknesses 1 Learn More
D-27 Bhamsha, the Chart of Strengths and Weaknesses
The Bhamsha chart, D-27, is the twelfth of the sixteen divisional charts, formed by dividing each sign into twenty-seven parts, the number of the nakshatras, from which it takes its alternate name, the Nakshatramsha. It signifies inner strengths and weaknesses, the underlying constitution and stamina, and the resilience with which a person meets life. An astrologer consults the D-27 for questions of vitality, endurance, and the balance of a nativity's powers and vulnerabilities. The chart is one of the shodashavarga, the 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 method for extracting focused readings from the same planetary longitudes recorded at birth.
Sharing its division count with the twenty-seven nakshatras gives the Bhamsha, unlike most of the finer vargas, a natural and unambiguous mapping onto an existing twenty-seven-fold classification already used throughout Jyotisha, which some commentators suggest is part of why its alternate name Nakshatramsha stuck as firmly as it has. Because strength and weakness are read here in terms of raw constitutional stamina rather than of any particular life department, the D-27 is sometimes consulted alongside medical astrology and questions of a native's basic resilience, a use that sets it apart from the family, career and property vargas that dominate the sixteen-fold set.
D-27 in Practice: One Division for Each Nakshatra
One division of the Bhamsha spans 30 degrees divided by twenty seven, which is 1 degree 6 minutes and 40 seconds of arc, 324 divisions in the zodiac. The name carries the reason for the number: bha is the nakshatra, and the twenty seven divisions of a sign answer to the twenty seven nakshatras.
Like the D-7 the division does not come out to a whole number of minutes, so boundaries fall on fractions of a second of arc and two programs can disagree about a planet sitting on a cusp. The ascendant crosses the arc in about four and a half minutes.
The starting sign for the twenty seven-fold count is set by the element of the sign being divided, a rule the classical texts give explicitly. It is not restated here from memory; anyone casting the chart should take it from the text or software in use and confirm the two agree, because the starting rules are not uniform across the sixteen vargas and an error in one produces a chart that looks entirely plausible and is wrong throughout.
The Bhamsha belongs only to the shodashavarga. Its subject is strength and weakness in a general sense, the constitutional resilience of the native, which is why it is sometimes consulted on questions of stamina and vulnerability rather than on any single department of life.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Originates in Language
The term is Sanskrit, and the technical vocabulary of the Panchanga and of jyotisha more widely is Sanskrit throughout, whatever the vernacular in which a given almanac is printed. The name is a Sanskrit term. Regional almanacs render it in the local script and pronunciation, so a reader will meet the same term in several transliterations without any difference of reference.
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