South, North and East Indian charts: one sky, three drawings

Same data, different drawings

A birth chart, the rashi chakra, records two things: which of the twelve signs was rising on the eastern horizon, the Lagna, and which sign each of the nine grahas occupied. Every regional style holds exactly that information and nothing more. What differs is the drawing: whether the signs or the houses stay fixed on the page, and which way the count runs.

Three square styles are in common use in India, alongside the circular wheel of Western practice. Our charts can be drawn in all three.

The North Indian chart: houses fixed

The North Indian chart is a square crossed by its two diagonals and by a diamond joining the midpoints of its sides. That makes twelve compartments: four diamonds and eight triangles.

• The houses are fixed. The top central diamond is always the first house, the lagna. The count runs anticlockwise: the second house is the triangle to its upper left, the fourth the left diamond, the seventh the bottom diamond and the tenth the right diamond.
• The signs move. Each compartment carries a number from 1 (Mesha) to 12 (Meena) showing which sign falls in that house.

The four diamonds are the four Kendras, houses 1, 4, 7 and 10, so the angular structure of a chart is visible at a glance. It is the usual style in North India and Nepal.

The South Indian chart: signs fixed

The South Indian chart is a four-by-four grid with the centre four cells left empty, leaving twelve boxes around the edge.

• The signs are fixed. Meena is the top-left box; Mesha is next to it, second from the left on the top row; the count runs clockwise, so Karka and Simha go down the right side, Kanya to Dhanu run along the bottom from right to left, and Makara and Kumbha climb the left side.
• The lagna is marked in its sign, by a diagonal stroke or the abbreviation "La", and the houses are counted from there.

Because the signs never move, two charts can be compared at a glance, and the grahas of the current sky can be laid over a birth chart without redrawing anything. It is the usual style in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and in Sri Lanka.

The East Indian chart: signs fixed, the other way round

The East Indian chart, used in Bengal, Odisha and Assam, is a three-by-three grid. Each of the four corner squares is cut by a diagonal into two triangles, and the centre square is left empty, again leaving twelve places.

• The signs are fixed. Mesha is in the top middle square, and the count runs anticlockwise: Vrishabha and Mithuna in the two triangles of the top-left corner, Karka in the left middle square, Simha and Kanya in the bottom-left corner, Tula at the bottom middle, Vrishchika and Dhanu in the bottom-right corner, Makara at the right middle, and Kumbha and Meena in the top-right corner.
• The lagna is marked in its sign.

A worked conversion

Take a chart with Simha rising and the Moon in Vrishchika.

• North: the top diamond, the first house, carries the number 5, for Simha. Vrishchika is the fourth sign counted from Simha (Simha, Kanya, Tula, Vrishchika), so the Moon sits in the fourth house, the left diamond, labelled 8.
• South: "La" is marked in the Simha box, the lower of the two middle boxes on the right side. The Moon is written in the Vrishchika box, second from the left on the bottom row.
• East: "La" is marked in the upper triangle of the bottom-left corner, the place of Simha, and the Moon in the lower triangle of the bottom-right corner, the place of Vrishchika.

The three drawings look nothing alike, but a reader who knows the conventions recovers the same statement from each: Simha lagna, Moon in the fourth house, in Vrishchika.

What the drawings make easy

Each style makes a different reading easier. The North Indian drawing puts the houses first, so the kendras, the Trikoṇas (houses 1, 5 and 9) and the Duḥsthānas (houses 6, 8 and 12) have fixed places on the page. The South and East Indian drawings put the signs first, so the sign of each graha, the relationships between signs and an overlay of transits sit in fixed places. Readers trained in one style often find another slow at first. None of them changes what the chart says.

Divisional charts and the chalit

The same three drawings are used for every derived chart. A Varga, or divisional chart, such as the Navāṃśa, is drawn exactly like the birth chart, with its own lagna and its own placements. The Bhāva calita, which assigns grahas to houses by house cusps rather than whole signs, is usually drawn in the North Indian form, since it is a chart of houses.

A note on history

When each drawing became standard in its region is not well documented. Manuscript horoscopes from the last few centuries already show the North and South Indian forms†. The technique of horoscopy itself came into Sanskrit in the early centuries CE, a transmission David Pingree studied through the Yavanajataka of Sphujidhvaja, whose date and text have since been reconsidered by Bill Mak†.

Try it

The Kundli tool draws any birth chart in the North, South and East Indian styles, so the same chart can be compared across the three. The Yogas tool shows the classical combinations it contains.

Taught in

The Rasi chart is the subject of Module 2 (Rasi Chart and Sutras of Rasi) of our Certificate Programme in Predictive Astrology, offered as FORE × Deepanshu Giri Ji, and Module 7 of the same programme covers the Bhav Chalit and Rasi charts. The programme has 60 hours of learning engagement: 30 hours of live teaching on weekends and 30 hours of self-paced research. The fee is ₹35,000 + applicable GST.

† Marked dates or readings are debated among scholars or still being confirmed by our faculty.