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.