Origin 600 to 800 CE
The Shodashamsha (D-16), also called Kalamsha, divides each sign into sixteen parts. It is the divisional chart of vehicles, comforts, and luxuries, examining conveyances, material pleasures, and the happiness or trouble one derives from possessions and comforts. It is read for the acquisition and enjoyment of vehicles and luxuries and for general contentment and the pleasures of life, and it can also indicate mental peace or disturbance. It forms part of the Shodashavarga scheme of sixteen divisions taught 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 name is the Sanskrit ordinal of its divisor: shodashamsha, the sixteenth part. 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 As Attributions
GovernsVehicles, comforts, luxuries 1 Learn More
D-16 Shodashamsha, the Chart of Vehicles and Comforts
The Shodashamsha chart, D-16, is the ninth of the sixteen divisional charts, formed by dividing each sign into sixteen parts. It signifies vehicles, comforts, and luxuries, the conveyances a person owns and the material pleasures and ease of life, together with the happiness or trouble these bring. It is also called the Kalamsha. An astrologer consults the D-16 for questions of moveable property, conveyances, and the enjoyment of comfort. 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 mathematical technique for drawing focused readings from the same planetary positions recorded at the moment of birth.
The finer vargas from the D-16 onward receive comparatively little elaboration in the surviving classical sources compared with the detailed, named rules given for the Hora, Drekkana, Saptamsha, Navamsha, Dashamsha and Dwadashamsha, and modern Jyotisha software packages do not always agree with one another on the exact starting-point convention for these later charts, a genuine and acknowledged point of technical disagreement among contemporary practitioners rather than a settled classical rule. The Shodashamsha's association with vehicles has broadened in modern practice, given the sign's original agrarian and animal-drawn conveyances, to cover motor vehicles and other mechanised transport, an extension of the classical category rather than a change to the chart's underlying construction.
D-16 in Practice: Under Two Degrees a Division
One division of the Shodashamsha spans 1 degree 52 minutes 30 seconds, sixteen to a sign and 192 in the zodiac. The ascendant crosses that arc in about seven and a half minutes, which is the point at which a divisional chart stops tolerating a remembered birth time.
That threshold is the honest headline for this chart. A time recorded to the minute from a register supports a D-16 reading. A time given as about half past eight does not, and an astrologer who reads a D-16 ascendant from such a time is reading an arbitrary one of four or five possible divisions.
The starting point for the sixteen-fold count is fixed by the modality of the sign, a rule stated in the classical texts. It is not reproduced here, because the starting rules differ from one varga to the next and a rule quoted from memory is worth nothing to a reader who needs to cast the chart; it should be taken from the text or the software being used, and the two should be checked against each other.
The Shodashamsha enters the scheme at the dashavarga of ten and continues into the shodashavarga of sixteen. Its subject is vehicles, comforts and the pleasures that come from possessions, a department the tradition treats as distinct from wealth itself, which belongs to the D-2.
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.
Sources
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