Vimshottari Dashas

The Vimshottari dasha is the principal planetary-period system of Vedic astrology, dividing a notional 120-year cycle among the nine grahas in a fixed order and set of lengths: Ketu seven years, Venus twenty, the Sun six, the Moon ten, and so on. The system times when the promise of a chart is delivered: each planet rules a period, or dasha, during which its results tend to unfold.

The starting point is taken from the Moon's nakshatra at birth, which fixes both the ruling planet of the first period and how much of it remains, so that no two charts run the cycle from the same point.

Where the birth chart shows what is promised, the dasha shows when, and the major periods are subdivided into sub-periods (antardashas) ruled by each planet in turn, allowing events to be timed quite finely. It is the dasha, more than transits, that carries the burden of prediction in classical Vedic astrology.

The atlas describes the system, its order and periods, and how it is calculated from the birth Moon. It rests on the nakshatras and the grahas, each treated in its own category, within the Vedic Astrology section.