Origin 500 to 600 CE
The Drekkana (D-3) divides each sign into three equal parts of ten degrees, ruled by the 1st, 5th, and 9th signs from it in turn. It is the divisional chart of siblings, courage, initiative, and self-effort, examining brothers and sisters, valor, and the drive to act. The three drekkanas of a sign are associated with the head, trunk, and limbs of the body and with different qualities of temperament. It is also consulted in matters of longevity and character, and forms part of the classical Shodashavarga scheme of sixteen divisions.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period500 to 600 CE 1Tradition: Brihat Jataka (Varahamihira) 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 divisional chart appears in Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka; Pingree's survey of jyotihsastra literature situates that text within the sixth century CE of classical Sanskrit horoscopy. 1Tradition: Brihat Jataka (Varahamihira) Origin PeriodThis divisional chart is also 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, alongside its earlier attestation in Varahamihira's Brihat Jataka. 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Origin of the Name"Drekkana" is a Greek loanword, from dekanos, the decan, the third part of a sign, which Greek astrology inherited from Egypt. The name carries its own transmission history: an Egyptian device, named in Greek, divided in Sanskrit. 2 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 As Attributions
GovernsSiblings, courage, initiative 1 Learn More
D-3 Drekkana, the Chart of Siblings
The Drekkana chart, D-3, is the third divisional chart, formed by dividing each sign into three parts of ten degrees, the same ten-degree segments the Western tradition calls decans. It signifies siblings, courage, and personal initiative, and is also consulted for questions of the body and longevity. The three drekkanas of each sign are assigned to the rulers of the signs of its element, a scheme distinct from the Western planetary faces. The Drekkana is one of the sixteen divisional charts (shodashavarga) of jyotisha, each magnifying a particular area of life. These are the interpretive conventions of the tradition; the divisional charts are a mathematical method for extracting focused readings from the single set of planetary positions recorded at birth.
The rule is a trine construction: the first ten-degree drekkana of a sign belongs to the sign itself, the second to the fifth sign from it, and the third to the ninth, so that all three drekkanas of any sign fall among signs sharing its own element, fire, earth, air or water, which is the basis for the "rulers of the signs of its element" description above stated concretely. Some classical sources also attach a presiding sage to each of the three positions in the trine, though the specific attributions vary somewhat between texts and are less consistently transmitted than the sign-based rule itself, which is the part of the Drekkana construction on which the tradition is genuinely unanimous.
D-3 in Practice: Ten Degrees and the Trinal Count
One division of the Drekkana spans 10 degrees, three to a sign and thirty six in the zodiac. The ascendant crosses ten degrees in roughly forty minutes, which puts the D-3 among the tolerant charts: a birth time good to the quarter hour will usually place the rising drekkana correctly.
The counting rule is the most elegant in the scheme. The three divisions of any sign are assigned to that sign, to the fifth from it and to the ninth from it, which is to say to the three signs of its own trine. A planet in the first ten degrees of Aries falls in the Aries drekkana, in the second in Leo, in the third in Sagittarius, and the same pattern of self, fifth and ninth repeats from every sign. Because a trine shares an element, the drekkana of any planet is always in the element of the sign it occupies.
The Drekkana belongs to all four classical groupings. More than one drekkana scheme is in circulation, and the assignments above are the Parashari one that the shodashavarga presumes; where a text or a program uses another, the chart it produces is a different object and should be labelled as such rather than compared directly.
Its subject is the sibling, and beyond that the courage and initiative the tradition reads as belonging to the same part 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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