Origin 600 to 800 CE
The Dashamsha (D-10), also called Swamsha, divides each sign into ten parts of three degrees, counted from the sign itself in odd signs and from the ninth sign in even signs. It is the divisional chart of career, status, and worldly achievement, examining profession, reputation, power, authority, and success in the world. It elaborates the tenth-house matters of the birth chart, showing the nature of one work and public standing and the heights or setbacks of the career. It is among the most consulted vargas for professional life and accomplishment.
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: dashamsha, the tenth 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
GovernsCareer, status, achievement 1 Learn More
D-10 Dashamsha, the Chart of Career
The Dashamsha chart, D-10, is the seventh of the sixteen divisional charts, formed by dividing each sign into ten parts of three degrees. It signifies career, status, achievement, and one's action in the world, echoing the tenth house of the birth chart, which governs profession and public standing. An astrologer consults the D-10 for questions of vocation, success, reputation, and the shape of a working life. The chart is one of the shodashavarga, the set of 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 many focused readings from the one set of planetary positions recorded at the moment of birth.
The parity rule reappears here in its simplest form: in the six odd signs the ten dashamsha divisions are counted starting from the sign itself, and in the six even signs the count instead begins from the ninth sign onward. Because the tenth house of the birth chart is itself the classical seat of career and public standing, and the ninth sign from an even sign's own count of ten again touches on the trine relationship that runs through several of the vargas, commentators sometimes note the layered angular and trinal logic built into the Dashamsha's construction as part of why it is trusted for judging a working life's shape rather than treated as an arbitrary tenfold split.
D-10 in Practice: Three Degrees and the Question of Career
One division of the Dashamsha spans exactly 3 degrees, ten to a sign and 120 in the zodiac. The ascendant crosses three degrees in about twelve minutes, so a birth time uncertain by a quarter of an hour puts the rising dashamsha in doubt.
The counting rule is settled: in an odd sign the ten divisions are counted from that sign onward, and in an even sign from the ninth sign from it.
The D-10 does not appear in the shadvarga or the saptavarga. It enters at the dashavarga of ten and continues in the shodashavarga, which places it in the second rank of weighted charts: consulted routinely, but not part of the compact six that a classical strength estimate begins from.
That position suits its subject. Career, standing and public achievement are late-arriving departments of a life, and jyotisha treats them as a specialisation of the tenth house rather than as a general index of a nativity. An astrologer reading the D-10 is answering a question about work; the same astrologer estimating whether a planet is strong at all goes back to the D-1 and the D-9.
Because the division is a whole number of degrees, the D-10 has none of the rounding trouble that afflicts the D-7, and every boundary falls on a round figure that two programs will agree about.
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
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.