Chitra Nakshatra: Tvashta's star across Virgo and Libra, two Vargottama padas and the Mars dasha

Chitra is the fourteenth nakshatra and sits at the middle of the zodiac: its first two padas close Virgo, and its last two open Libra, so the halfway point of the 360-degree circle, Libra 0 degrees, is its midpoint. Its Vimshottari lord is Mars, its deity Tvashta, the divine craftsman, and two of its four padas are Vargottama. If your Moon was in Chitra at birth, it sets the 7-year Mars Mahadasha your life began in, gives you the Tiger yoni, Rakshasa gana and Madhya nadi, and places your Moon under a sub-lord. The nakshatra calculator shows yours.

This page sets out what the corpus books say about Chitra, by chapter, sloka or page, beside what the engine computes: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS), Kalyana Varma's Saravali, Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara and Advanced Predictive Astrology, all on the sources page. For Moon sign and nakshatra in general see Moon sign and nakshatra; for the two signs, Virgo and Libra.

Where Chitra sits: across the middle of the zodiac

Thirteen nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes reach Virgo 23 degrees 20 minutes (Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara, Ch. II, pp. 22-23, for the arithmetic), so Chitra runs from there to Libra 6 degrees 40 minutes: padas 1-2 in Virgo, ruled by Mercury, and padas 3-4 in Libra, ruled by Venus. Several BPHS dignity points meet here. Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50 make Virgo Venus's debilitation sign, deepest at 27 degrees, which is in Chitra's second pada, and make Libra both the Sun's debilitation and Saturn's exaltation sign, with their deepest points further on, at Libra 10 and 20 degrees. Sl. 51-54 give Mercury the last 10 degrees of Virgo as own sign, and give Venus "the first [half of Tula], as Mooltrikon".

Virgo is dual and counts its navamsas from Capricorn, so its 8th and 9th are Leo and Virgo; Libra is movable and counts from itself, so its first two are Libra and Scorpio. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 agrees: thirteen nakshatras have passed, 13 divided by 3 leaves 1, times 4 is 4, plus the pada gives the 5th to 8th signs from Mesh. Padas 2 and 3 return to their own signs, so a graha there is Vargottama, the same sign in the birth chart and the Navamsa (D9). Like Punarvasu, Chitra has two Vargottama padas, one on each side of the sign line. See Navamsa, the second chart.

Tvashta or Viswakarma, the pearl and the bilva tree

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names the fourteenth nakshatra deity Tvasht. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 101) names the deity Viswakarma and describes Chitra as like a pearl, with a single bright star. The two books use different names here; this page reports both and does not equate them on its own authority. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator uses the BPHS list.

The entry gives the sex as female, the tatthwa as Tejo (fire), the region as the South, the body part as the neck and the emblem as the bilva tree; the direction table (p. 90) and body-part table (p. 91) agree. It names a class for the nakshatra, not carried over. Its occupation list is the longest and most craft-centred in the chapter: writers, singers, artists, painters, vedic scholars, gold merchants, dealers in precious stones, jewels, utensils and fine clothes, manufacturers of perfumes, mathematicians, weavers and surgeons. One further occupation, a moral label, is left out here.

How Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classifies Chitra

The book ties nature to timing in one sentence (p. 91): during the period of a planet in a particular star, effects follow its characteristics, so in its terms the dasha of any graha placed in Chitra takes a soft quality. It says the body-part table, here the neck, helps locate disease when read with the 6th lord; that is its claim, not medical advice. The app uses neither. The month table puts Chaitra first and names it after Chittra, the star of its full Moon; the yoga list (pp. 28-29) says the seventh yoga, Sukarma, begins at Chittra.

What the texts say about a person born in Chitra

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's prose for Chitra (p. 101) is entirely about appearance, colourful clothes and flowers and fine eyes and limbs, which the engine's policy drops. The translated sloka is about temperament: the person born in Chitra can overcome enemies by valour, is efficient and diplomatic, loves to dress in a variety of ways, and has a versatile mind. As for every entry, the book says the effects come fully only if the Moon is powerful (p. 91).

The engine's NAKSHATRA_TRAITS line follows the sloka: you tend to be "resourceful and diplomatic, versatile-minded, drawn to variety and self-expression". The table's comment gives the standing rule for all 27 entries: caste dropped, appearance and spouse lines dropped, harsh verdicts softened. For Chitra the appearance rule removes the whole of the prose.

Saravali does not name Chitra as a nakshatra in the corpus copy; the only "Chitra" in it is Chitragupta, the recorder of deeds, in an unrelated passage. Bhrigu Sutras does not name it either. Advanced Predictive Astrology mentions it only in its humour table, in the Pitta column (Vol. II, p. 225), a modern grouping for health tendencies reported as such, not medical advice; the same book's general remark (p. 83) that an Ascendant and Moon in one constellation make its themes dominant uses Swati, Chitra's neighbour, as the example, and the app does not apply it. A Chitra Moon is a Virgo Moon in padas 1-2 and a Libra Moon in padas 3-4, so Saravali's sign chapter (Ch. 23) applies either way; it is covered on the Virgo page and the Libra page.

The Moon's Navamsa in each Chitra pada: Saravali Ch. 24

Saravali Ch. 24 reads the Moon by its Navamsa and the aspecting graha. A Chitra Moon is in the Sun's Navamsa in pada 1 (Leo, Sl. 13-15), Mercury's in pada 2 (Virgo, Sl. 7-9), Venus's in pada 3 (Libra, Sl. 4-6) and Mars's in pada 4 (Scorpio, Sl. 1-3). Among the milder lines: Leo Navamsa aspected by Jupiter, an army chief or a king; Mercury's Navamsa aspected by Venus, a broad physique, musical skill and knowledge of sacred passages; Venus's aspected by Venus, comfort in clothes, food and drink; Mars's aspected by Venus, a minister's post and wealth. Others are harsh and not repeated.

Mars, the lord of Chitra, and the Mars Mahadasha

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15 assigns the Vimshottari lords from Krittika: Sun, Moon, Mars, so the third star of each cycle of nine is Mars's: Mrigashira, Chitra and Dhanishta, 7 years each, and all three straddle a sign boundary at their midpoint. The engine's nakshatraSubdivision() agrees, and Chitra's sub-lord arcs repeat Mrigashira's, moved to Virgo and Libra. For Mars as a graha, see Mars in Vedic astrology.

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16 gives the balance rule. Your dates are in the Vimshottari Dasha calculator; the period is described on the Mars Mahadasha page. BPHS Ch. 48 Sl. 1-8 makes a dasha's content depend on the lord's lordship and placement in your chart, not on the nakshatra.

The sub-periods inside the Mars Mahadasha

In the worked example 0.375 of 7 years, 2.625 years, had passed at birth: through the Mars, Rahu and Jupiter sub-periods (2.39 years together) and into Saturn's. The engine's sub-lord table puts Virgo 28 degrees 20 minutes in the Saturn sub (Virgo 27 degrees 53 minutes to 30 degrees), the same answer by construction; Venus's deepest fall at Virgo 27 degrees lies in the Jupiter sub just before it.

Mars's relationship to the two sign lords is where the sources part. Worked from Mars's Mooltrikona, Aries, by BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 55, Mercury rules the 3rd and 6th signs, neither a friend position, so is Mars's enemy; Venus rules the 2nd and 7th, one of each, so is neutral. The engine's NATURAL_RELATIONS matches that exactly. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's table (Ch. III, p. 85), built by another method, lists Sukra and Sani as Mars's enemies and Budha as neutral, the reverse for both sign lords. The difference is reported, not resolved.

Chitra as a dignity for every graha

Venus makes the most extreme swing of any graha in any nakshatra so far: debilitated in padas 1-2, with its deepest fall at Virgo 27 degrees, then in its own sign, and by BPHS in its Mooltrikona, a few degrees later in padas 3-4. Saturn crosses from a friend's sign into exaltation, and the Sun from neutral into debilitation, at the same line. On Saravali's ray scale (Ch. 36 Sl. 3-6, the formula the engine's planetaryRays() uses), worked by hand, Venus has about 0.14 rays at the start of Chitra, exactly 0 at Virgo 27 degrees and about 0.38 at the end; the Sun falls from about 0.65 to 0.13 as it nears its deepest fall at Libra 10 degrees; Saturn rises from about 5.96 to 6.48; Mercury falls from about 6.68 to 6.16 past its peak in Hasta.

BPHS Ch. 50 Sl. 78-83 calls the dasha of a graha in deep debilitation Rikt and attaches losses to it, and calls a graha moving away from debilitation towards exaltation ascending (Rohini); Saravali Ch. 36 Sl. 5 calls such rays Abhimukha. A Venus in Chitra just past Virgo 27 degrees is the textbook ascending case, starting from zero. Those are the texts' labels, reported as given; the rest of the chart decides, and the engine computes only the ray count.

The Sun crosses Chitra once a year: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 11 October and leaves for Swati on 24 October, so for the second half of that stretch it is in Libra and debilitated. With Chitra rising the Ascendant is Virgo in padas 1-2 and Libra in padas 3-4. For Virgo, BPHS Ch. 34 Sl. 31-32 name Mars among the malefics; for Libra, Sl. 33-34 name Jupiter, the Sun and Mars as malefics, Saturn and Mercury as auspicious, the Moon and Mercury as giving Raj Yoga, Mars as a killer and Venus as neutral. The engine's YOGA_KARAKA_BY_LAGNA rows for both signs match. So for either Ascendant the lord of Chitra, Mars, is classed a malefic. The Lagna calculator needs a birth time and place.

The nine sub-lords inside Chitra

The engine divides Chitra in proportion to the Vimshottari years, beginning with Mars's own arc. As in Mrigashira, the Saturn sub ends exactly on the sign line, because Mars, Rahu, Jupiter and Saturn's years add to 60, half of 120. The sub-lord calculator reports these for every graha.

For why sub-lords need an accurate birth time, see the sub-lord and birth time.

Chitra in the Kala Chakra, and a gap in the Shastihayani list

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 65 names Chitra among the five nakshatras (Bharani, Pushya, Chitra, Purvashadha, Uttarabhadrapad) whose padas take Bharani's Deha, Jiva and dasha rows in the Savya Kala Chakra. Sl. 60 glosses the two terms: one sign of each pada "is indicative of Deha (body)" and the other "of Jiva (life)", and the nine dasha lords then run through the listed signs in order. Adding the Sl. 84 years along those rows gives 100, 85, 83 and 86, and Sl. 89 assigns exactly those figures to Chitra's Navamsas, Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, in pada order. Chitra's rows pass the check. The app computes the Kala Chakra from these rows, and the text's span-of-life use of the totals is not repeated.

Shastihayani is a different story. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 40-41 list the nakshatras under each of its eight lords: Guru (Ashvini, Bharani, Kritika, Punarvasu), Surya (Rohini, Mrigashira, Ardra, U.Ashadha), Mangal (Pushya, Aslesha, Magha, Revati), Candr (P.Phalguni, U.Phalguni, Hast), Budh (Swati, Vishakah, Anuradha), Sukr (Jyeshtha, Mul, P.Ashadha), Sani (Abhijit, Shravan, Dhanishtha) and Rahu (Shatabhisha, P.Bhadra, U.Bhadra). That is 27 names including Abhijit, so one of the standard 27 is missing, and it is Chitra. Both translations in the corpus have the same list. BPHS's printed table simply omits Chitra. For a Chitra Moon the app gives the Moon, 6 years, but that assignment does not come from BPHS: it is taken from a published reference outside BPHS, Sanjay Rath's Vimsottari and Udu Dasa's (2002), Table 51. The balance and dates the app gives for Shastihayani also follow Rath's published rule, "as in Vimshottari", not a BPHS sloka.

Read by hand, Ashtottari (Sl. 17-20) gives Chitra to Mars, second of its four stars after Hasta, in an 8-year dasha; Sl. 21-22 give each of a malefic's stars a quarter, 2 years. For a Moon 5 degrees into Chitra, Hasta's 2 years and 0.375 x 2 have expired, leaving about 5.25 years of Mars's Ashtottari dasha at birth; the app computes Ashtottari by the same rule and dates every period. It and the six remainder systems appear in the alternate dashas calculator. For a Chitra Moon: Shodshottari (from Pushya) Mercury, 17 years; Dwadashottari (birth star to Revati) Mars, 17; Panchottari (from Anuradha) Mars, 15; Shatabdik (from Revati) Sun, 5; Chaturashiti-sama (from Swati) Venus, 12; Dwisaptati-sama (from Mula) Saturn, 9.

Chitra in Ashtakoot matching

Running the engine's ashtakoot() with a Chitra Moon gives the values below. The Kundli matching calculator applies them to two charts.

Chitra's two neighbours show how the kootas pull separately. Against Hasta it scores Tara 3 (neighbours) but Gana 0 (Deva against Rakshasa); against Swati, Tara 3 and Nadi 8 (Antya against Madhya) but Gana 0 again, since Swati is Deva in the engine. The engine's comment calls these conventional tables, kept because no corpus book prints the Ashtakoot rules; its Tara rule never scores 0, since the two inclusive counts between different stars total 29 and cannot both leave 3, 5 or 7 after dividing by 9. Advanced Predictive Astrology's Pitta column (Vol. II, p. 225) is exactly the engine's Madhya group. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara's vainasika rule (Ch. IV, p. 89), the 22nd star from one's birth star to be avoided for auspicious events, gives Pushya for Chitra; the app uses neither.

Chitra in muhurat

Chitra is on four of six lists in the engine's muhurat finder: Business launch, Property purchase, New job and Investment, but not Marriage or Travel. A listed nakshatra adds 16 points to a window and an unlisted one subtracts 6; scoreMoment() then adds the Moon's house from your chart, the tithi, the fortnight, the weekday, Rahu Kaal and your numerology personal day to a base of 34, capped at 0 and 100. The lists cite no source. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara classes Chitra as soft, and the Property purchase list holds all four of its soft stars (Mrigashira, Chitra, Anuradha, Revati), an agreement of outcome rather than a citation.

From the engine's Moon positions, sampled every ten minutes, the Moon is in Chitra from 21:50 IST on 10 October 2026 to 22:40 IST on 11 October, then 7 November 04:50 to 8 November 06:00 IST and 4 December 10:30 to 5 December 11:50 IST, each about 25 hours, longer than the average because the Moon is moving slowly in this part of its orbit. The muhurat finder samples three windows a day, at 06:40, 09:15 and 15:30 IST. The Panchang shows the current nakshatra.

Checking Chitra in your own chart

The Moon's nakshatra needs the date and a time, not the place. The app's Moon longitude is good to about 0.1-0.3 degrees, as the methodology page explains, so a Moon within a few tenths of a degree of Virgo 23 degrees 20 minutes, the Virgo-Libra line or Libra 6 degrees 40 minutes could honestly be on either side; at the middle line both the Moon sign and the Vargottama Navamsa change, from Virgo to Libra. The same document names the app's ayanamsa as Lahiri (Chitrapaksha), the zero point from which every sidereal boundary on this page is measured, and a different ayanamsa moves them all together; see the ayanamsa calculator and why apps disagree on your nakshatra. The Moon sign calculator shows sign and nakshatra together.

Chitra between Hasta and Swati

Before Chitra is Hasta, the Moon's star, which holds Mercury's deepest exaltation; after it is Swati, Rahu's star, wholly in Libra, which holds the Sun's deepest fall. Chitra is the Sthithi member of the Hasta-Chitra-Swathi triad, the first nakshatra of the zodiac's second half, and with Vishakha the only star to share its Tiger yoni.

Which planet rules Chitra nakshatra?

Mars, with a 7-year Mahadasha, in the Vimshottari scheme of BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-15. The sign lord is Mercury for padas 1-2 (Virgo) and Venus for padas 3-4 (Libra).

Who is the deity of Chitra?

BPHS Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26 names Tvasht; Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. IV, p. 101) names Viswakarma. The page reports both names.

What is the symbol of Chitra?

Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara describes a single bright star, like a pearl, represented by the bilva tree; its body part is the neck. The engine's Yoni animal is the Tiger, shared with Vishakha.

Is Chitra in Virgo or Libra?

Both: padas 1-2 are Virgo 23 degrees 20 minutes to 30 degrees, padas 3-4 are Libra 0 to 6 degrees 40 minutes. Libra 0 degrees, the halfway point of the zodiac, is its midpoint.

Which padas of Chitra are Vargottama?

Padas 2 and 3: pada 2 has Navamsa Virgo, pada 3 has Navamsa Libra. Saravali Ch. 24 Sl. 22-24 give a Moon in either its Navamsa reading in full.

Is Venus debilitated in Chitra?

In padas 1-2, yes, with its deepest fall at Virgo 27 degrees (BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 49-50). In padas 3-4 it is in its own sign Libra, which BPHS makes its Mooltrikona for the first 15 degrees; the engine labels it Moolatrikona there too.

Which Shastihayani lord rules Chitra?

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 40-41 do not say: Chitra is the one standard nakshatra missing from the list in both corpus translations. For a Chitra Moon the app gives the Moon, 6 years, taken from outside BPHS: Sanjay Rath, Vimsottari and Udu Dasa's (2002), Table 51.

What is the gana, yoni and nadi of Chitra?

Rakshasa gana, Tiger yoni and Madhya nadi in this app's matching engine, which uses the conventional tables.

Is Chitra good for buying property or starting a business?

In this app's muhurat engine it is on the Business launch, Property purchase, New job and Investment lists, worth 16 points on the nakshatra factor, but not on Marriage or Travel.

Which month is named after Chitra?

Chaitra. Jyotisha Siddhanta Sara (Ch. II, p. 24) names each lunar month after the star of its full Moon and lists Chaitra, from Chittra, first; with Vaisakha it forms the Vasantha (spring) season.

When is the Sun in Chitra?

Once a year for about two weeks: the engine's sidereal Sun for 2026 enters on 11 October and leaves for Swati on 24 October; the second half of that stretch is in Libra, the Sun's debilitation sign.

How long is the Mars dasha at birth for a Chitra Moon?

Up to 7 years: 7 times the share of Chitra still ahead of the Moon. 5 degrees in leaves 4.375 years.