D-9 in Practice: One Pada of a Nakshatra

One division of the Navamsha spans 3 degrees 20 minutes, and that figure is the reason the chart occupies the place it does. It is exactly one quarter of a nakshatra, so the 108 navamshas of the zodiac and the 108 padas of the twenty seven nakshatras are the same set of arcs seen from two directions. The nakshatra scheme and the sign scheme meet here and nowhere else.

The ascendant crosses 3 degrees 20 minutes in about thirteen minutes and twenty seconds. A birth time in error by a quarter of an hour will therefore usually move the navamsha ascendant, which is a sharp change of tolerance from the D-1 and worth stating to anyone whose recorded time came from memory rather than a record.

Vargottama is the term for the case where a planet occupies the same sign in the D-9 as in the D-1. Because of the counting rule the first navamsha of a movable sign, the fifth of a fixed sign and the ninth of a dual sign are the vargottama arcs, so every sign has exactly one span of 3 degrees 20 minutes in which a planet is vargottama. The tradition reads that as a placement confirmed at two levels rather than merely repeated.

The Navamsha belongs to all four classical groupings and is weighted second only to the Rashi in each.