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What is a Dasha?
In short
What is a dasha?
A dasha is a planetary period. The Vimshottari system divides a notional 120-year lifespan among the nine grahas in a fixed order and fixed lengths, and the point in that cycle where your life begins is set by the nakshatra the Moon occupied at your birth.
Nine periods, 120 years
The lengths are fixed: Ketu 7 years, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. They total 120, and they always run in that order, cycling round.
Which lord you start with is given by your birth nakshatra, and how much of that first period remains is given by how far the Moon had already travelled through the nakshatra. Someone born at the very start of Rohini gets a full ten years of Moon mahadasha; someone born near its end gets a few months.
Sub-periods
Each mahadasha is subdivided into nine antardashas in the same order and proportion, and those subdivide again. This is what lets Vedic astrology make timed statements rather than general ones — the mahadasha sets the theme of a decade, the antardasha the theme of a year or two.
A dasha is read together with transits. The dasha says which graha is currently governing; the transit says where that graha is now. Neither is read alone.